Three Things: Hope Within Us

/53 Comments/in /by

[NB: check the byline, thanks. / ~Rayne]

The orange bawbag signed that execrable dog’s breakfast into law yesterday all the while having his greasy ego stroked by the wretches who continue to work toward their fascist ends.

It’s gutting, sickening.

But the cruelty is their point – they want us to throw in the towel, roll over and yield to them.

Fuck that with a pointy object.

I refuse to go out on my knees. This is my country, our country, a country which is both diverse and struggling to encompass that diversity. It’s been great because of that diversity. We are rich as a nation because we do not have one groupthink but a wealth of thinking.

We are rich because we have learned how to work toward common goals without being forced to do so. We have been rowing this same craft together wielding our different knowledge and skills like paddles.

If we are going to stem fascism’s revolting cultural backslide, we need to get in touch with truth and hope.

I offer three perspective to help on this day-after, when we should continue to demand and celebrate No Kings.

~ 3 ~

Small farmer, crop scientist, former farm worker Sarah Taber published a thread yesterday noting a singular difference about this point in American history:

Sarah Taber @[email protected]

Hello Americans on Mastodon, I know we don’t feel like there’s much to celebrate this July 4th. It’s been a rough several years.

So I want to talk about how we’re making history right now.

Jul 04, 2025, 05:44 PM

It’s a long thread but you can read it in its entirety as a single page at this link:
https://mastoreader.io/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmstdn.social%2F%40sarahtaber%40mastodon.online%2F114797147748852077

You may learn some US history often hidden from Americans because it doesn’t reflect well on this nation. We need to get over this aversion to the gritty parts of this country’s experience, including how slavery was present in 1619. Otherwise we continue to cycle through the same crimes against humanity again and again.

Clearly we have the tools to do better and faster at that. This should give us hope.

~ 2 ~

MSFT VP of Developer Community Scott Hanselman also published a thread yesterday; most of you will nod your head in agreement at some point as you read along. But the most important part are these first two posts in that thread:

Scott Hanselman @[email protected]

It’s so frustrating that there is this illusion that we are all 49%/49% right now. Us versus them, good versus bad, and it’s all because of the BS that is the electoral system. It’s very likely 70% versus 30% and we’re just not seeing representative government. There’s just no common sense right now

Jul 03, 2025, 09:58 PM

Scott Hanselman @[email protected]

Absolutely insane that every vote is a squeaker, and literally no one wants this bill but they don’t wanna get primaried. This bill is insane trash and will make everyone’s life worse except mine. And I don’t want the tax break. I want to pay for kids meals and Headstart with my taxes.

Jul 03, 2025, 09:58 PM

You can also read this entire thread in a single page at this link:
https://mastoreader.io/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmstdn.social%2F%40shanselman%40hachyderm.io%2F114792483543360039

Too many of us have allowed the dominance of the right-wing media ecosphere to persuade us we are in the minority.

WE ARE THE MAJORITY. If we weren’t they wouldn’t be trying so fucking hard to suppress our votes.

Do we need to organize our much larger numbers, our greater energy? Heck yes, but our numbers should give us all hope.

There are more than enough of us to storm this iteration of the Bastille; we’ve kicked a king to the curb before, we can do it again.

~ 1 ~

As I have several times for Independence Days past, I’ll point to Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”

I wrote three years ago on July 4 after SCOTUS’s Dobbs decision that June, after Russia attacked Ukraine that spring:

But again, I think of of Douglass’s speech, made in 1852 before abolition of slavery with the 13th Amendment in 1865.

Though blunt about the young nation’s failings toward Black persons, Douglass used the word ‘hope’ and ‘hopefully’ seven times in his speech.

“…There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon.
…

I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. …”

Hope is not an easy thing when one is under constant threat of enslavement and death simply because they had the luck to be born with a particular skin color to a particular group of people. Yet Douglass had it, as have the BIPOC people of this nation who have had to resist and persevere through many waves of progress and regression.

Douglass could see a trend which fed his hopes, writing,

…my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. …

This trend remains, obvious in the response of democratic nations toward Russia’s assault on Ukraine intent on overthrowing a sovereign autonomous people. This attack will not succeed; it has already failed in many ways by encouraging more cohesion between other democracies including Finland and Sweden’s intent to join NATO. It has failed by exposing how hollowed out and threadbare Russia has become, eaten away by the kleptocratic forces which emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The increased solidarity of democracies relied on regressive action and thought, stripping away the fuzziness of economics and culture, distilling the choice: violence against a sovereign autonomous democratic nation will not be accepted by other free, autonomous, democratic nations which will unify to support defense against such an illegitimate attack.

The solidarity across the European Union and NATO – apart from the US thanks to the orange bawbag – has only deepened. There have been hiccups but the EU and NATO are in a better position to respond to transgressions against their integrity than they have been. They took the threat seriously and organized.

That could be us. That should be us. It will be us. They’ve demonstrated hope is reasonable even under threat.

Other pockets of hope exist even within that solidarity, like the city of Paris’s efforts to become green through a 15-minute city approach. Parisians are building a new and brighter future in spite of political and existential threats.

Again, that could, should, and will be us.

We simply have to consciously choose it, get our shit together, and move together in that direction – with all the hope within us.

~ 0 ~

I’ll leave you with three more things — two quotes and an aphorism:

“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.

Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.

No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.”

― Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History

 

Either we have hope within us or we do not.

It is a dimension of the soul and is not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world.

Hope is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. It transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.

Hope in this deep and powerful sense is not the same as joy that things are going well or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not because it stands a chance to succeed.

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.

It is hope, above all which gives the strength to live and continually try new things.

― Vaclav Havel

 

E lauhoe mai na waʻa; i ke ka, i ka hoe; i ka hoe, i ke ka; pae aku i ka ʻaina.

Hawaiian proverb: Paddle together, bail, paddle, and we’ll arrive together at the shore.

Share this entry

This Day Wasn’t for Fortunate Sons

/49 Comments/in /by

[NB: Check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Six years ago — what seems like forever ago — I published a post about the origin of Memorial Day.

Today’s All-American holiday didn’t come about in one fell swoop. Its origins have been a bone of contention — did it begin in the South? did it start in the North? Was it an African American celebration?

Depending on who you ask you may find yourself in a discussion not unlike those surrounding Confederate statuary — fraught with past and present politics.

And good old-fashioned racism.

The first large formal observation of this holiday was marked by African Americans of Charleston, South Carolina in 1865 when their Civil War dead were reburied.

Read more about it at Zinn Education Project.

Most Americans aren’t aware of this history, not even lifelong residents of Charleston. The reason is racism manifest through cultural erasure.

I live in the first state to declare Memorial Day a statewide holiday. In 1871 Michigan set aside what was then called Decoration Day to pay tribute to its war dead. We lost more than 14,000 of the 90,000 men sent to fight in the south — about 3.5% of the state’s population lost to the Civil War.

A Union soldier from Michigan wrote to his wife,

The more I learn of the cursed institution of slavery, the more I feel willing to endure, for its final destruction … After this war is over, this whole country will undergo a change for the better … Abolishing slavery will dignify labor; that fact of itself will revolutionize everything … Let Christians use all their influence to have justice done to the black man.

He was killed not long after by a Confederate sniper.

We sent this man and others, our flesh and blood, to fight for what is right, to defend a more perfect union, to defeat the denigration of fellow Americans then enslaved. We’ve allowed the lingering toxins of the Confederacy to obscure why it was this nation went to war — not because of states’ rights but because of an economic system dependent upon the reduction of humans to mere chattel.

We’ve sent our family members to defeat oppression in other wars, too many paying the ultimate sacrifice.

Now we’ve strayed from fighting for the ideals our country was founded upon. What was once defense against oppression has become offense for corporations, serving the US ill over the long run. It has become an excuse to create profits for the military industrial complex while ignoring the exercise of soft power through diplomacy. Our friends and loved ones who’ve died or have been injured or sickened for life are merely collateral damage along the way. …

Now more than ever before it is critically important we remember not only our war dead who defended our nation, but the Americans who commemorated their war dead in the face of oppression, thereby establishing this holiday.

Remembering all who served regardless of their sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religious creed, national origin, physical or mental disability is absolutely essential in the face of the current administration’s politicide, ethnocide, and cultural genocide by erasure.

This year, instead of news stories about statues to prominent figures of the Confederacy being removed from public spaces, statues that represented crypto-celebrations of white supremacy, we are instead faced with widening gaps where Americans who served with honor and distinction once appeared, as these examples show:

Trump’s anti-diversity push comes for Arlington Cemetery’s rich, diverse history
To comply with the administration’s anti-“DEI” policies, the cemetery has scrubbed its webpages on minority veterans and Black history.
https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/arlington-cemetery-black-veterans-women-history-website-dei-trump-rcna196586

1st all-female veterans Honor Flight from Chicago photo pulled from Pentagon website after DEI order
President Trump issued executive order to get rid of images, words related to diversity, equity, inclusion
https://abc7chicago.com/post/operation-herstory-1st-female-veterans-honor-flight-chicago-photo-removed-pentagon-website-trump-dei-order/16065051/

VA Dismisses Directors of Centers for Women, Minority Veterans
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/01/30/va-dismisses-directors-of-centers-women-minority-veterans.html

They’re celebrations of white supremacy but this time wholly overt. We should not be passive about these excisions because they cut out our own.

And when I say our own it’s personal for me; my father and sibling are AAPI and veterans, and they are proud of their service. It’s infuriating to watch white supremacy treat them as if they never existed.

Commemorate ALL the veterans who served this country today. Honor them further by defending their living compatriots who earned benefits that should not be arbitrarily stripped from them.

This day belongs to ALL of us as Americans and not just some hateful fortunate sons.

Share this entry

Breathing Room: The Three Rs — Reduce, Repair, Recycle

/125 Comments/in , /by

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

While waiting for the worst of the supply shock to hit consumers thanks to Trump’s misbegotten tariffs, I have been working on the three Rs.

Not reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic but reduce, recycle, repair.

You may already have noticed the supply shock beginning wherever you live in your local stores. I had to hunt for flax seed last week; I knew flax was grown all over the world including the US, but for some reason I had it in my head this wouldn’t be a food product affected by the tariffs.

Nope, illusion shattered – the label on the packages I found show origin USA and Canada.

The price wasn’t out of line with expectations but I bet the next time I hunt for flax seed it will be more expensive even though some of it is likely grown in North Dakota and Minnesota.

Flax isn’t just a food product; the plant is also not just a source of fiber for fabric. It’s the source of linseed oil used in many applications including painting and wood finishing.

In other words, the ripple effect of tariffs on this one agricultural product could be widespread.

I haven’t gone looking for linen fabric but I imagine worse results because the US has very little if any linen fabric production even though the US grows flax seed.

The cost may not be as bad as imports from China since linen is grown and produced in northern Europe, but it’s still not going to be good if you rely on natural fiber fabrics.

Fortunately I anticipated the supply shock back in March. I bought an entire bolt of unbleached 100% cotton muslin while it was on sale, thinking I would use it for repairs and craft work over time.

That time is now. I am patching up a vintage muslin quilt, one too ratty for conservation techniques and too beloved to cut up for other purposes. It’s not a good weather project but it’s perfect for rainy days like we’ve had this week.

This week I’ve also patched up a hot mitt for my daughter and hot pads for my own use with scrap denim from old jeans; patched a spun poly shopping bag with a weakened bottom using a woven poly rice bag; stitched up some jeans with holes and fraying hems; repaired a couple well-worn aprons with canvas and denim patches; made some reusable gift bags using thrifted fabric table napkins; and worked on re-stuffing a couple of favorite buckwheat hull pillows.

The next project I should take up is making covers for some old outdoor furniture cushions. I’ve had fabric squirreled away for a year now to freshen up some ratty-looking pads I can’t bring myself to trash. They’re polyester foam and fiberfill with a polyester-nylon cover – in other words they’re nothing but refined oil on its way to becoming a tax burden taking up space in a municipal landfill.

Ugh — I refuse to do that when I can simply recover and reuse them, especially when I can’t be certain there will be more new chair pads at the store due to the impending supply shock.

It’s going to be inconvenient for many of us if not downright painful — many families will struggle as the worst of the supply shock hits store shelves. But one of the effects should be a greater awareness about our consumption habits and how they affect the rest of the world. The climate may actually benefit from our reduced consumption of so many items requiring fossil fuels as both a raw material and fuel for production.

Let’s home this expanded consciousness has a long-term positive effect, not the least of which is the need for smarter and less corrupt governmental leadership — the kind that doesn’t tell businesses to “EAT THE TARIFFS” in all caps via social media when the tariffs look more like a shakedown and less like a rational, targeted instrument of effective policy.

What about you? Are you seeing the effects of the Trump supply shock? What are you doing to reduce, repair, recycle? Who can you help with the three Rs and how will you do it?

This is an open thread.

Share this entry

Breathing Room: Giving and Giving Up

/80 Comments/in /by

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

We could all use a little breathing room, some space in which to back up, slow down, and look around.

While many of us aren’t particularly religious, this breathing room has been inspired by religion. This past Wednesday was the first day of the Christian Lenten season. Some Christian sects observe Lent with additional prayers and/or with forgoing pleasurable goods and services. Some Christian sects instruct adherents to give up red meat and to fast on certain days during Lent, ex. Catholics avoid meat on Fridays.

This year the Islamic faith community observes Ramadan from March 1 through March 29, overlapping with Lent for several weeks in recognition of the revelation of Islamic scriptures. Observant Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset, offer more prayers, and engage in more charitable acts.

I’m not particularly religious, but I observe Lent having been raised in the Catholic faith. This frustrated my kids when they were little. “If you’re not a regular Catholic any longer, why do we have to give up stuff?” they’d ask.

I explained for multiple reasons:

— This is what our maternal forebears did going back hundreds of years, as far back as the 16th century. Perhaps even further, to when they lived in what was known as Poitou. This puts you in touch with history and tradition of some of your people.

— This is one of the few times privileged people are conscious of the act of going without; it’s still privilege to choose to do so, but in doing so we should be aware of those who are forced to go without. Our Catholic forebears were exhorted by their faith to “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.” (Romans 12:15) We go without as others do during Lent to learn empathy with those who have no choice but to live without.

— Living with a parent who has diabetes and heart disease, going without is a protective act. We have a personal reason to give up red meat and other rich foods while learning how to eat healthier; in doing so we learn skills for a healthier future. This isn’t giving up but a form of giving to each other.

— And now it’s become a matter of health for the planet. Giving up red meat and other forms of discretionary consumption reduces our carbon footprint. This is what we should learn to do during each Lenten season in order to extend this as a lifetime habit.

This year my Lenten observation includes giving up retail consumption. I will not buy goods or services which are not essential, and when I must buy the essential it will not be from businesses embracing fascist ideology.

Support the current administration by eliminating pursuit of social justice through diverse hiring and contracting, inclusive and equitable operations? I will not buy from them, and I will learn how to replace them.

There are economic protests underway, some advocating the boycott of companies that have rejected DEI to submit to the current regime’s bigotry. The NAACP published an advisory list of companies that have eliminated DEI programs and others that have continued to embrace them.

The People’s Union USA organized a February 28th “economic blackout” aimed at certain large retailers; participating consumers’ purchasing abstention may not have made a dent. But the boycott didn’t end there; they are continuing their boycott of multiple large corporations for at least two months, including Amazon and its subsidiaries from March 7-14. They ask that participants make no Amazon purchases, no Whole Foods, no Prime orders during that period.

Some faith groups have also begun a consumer fast from purchasing. Target Corporation in particular has been the subject of abstention beginning February 1 in Target’s home state of Minnesota because of its reversal on DEI.

“Black people, on average, spend $12 million a day at Target,” [New Birth Missionary Baptist Church’s senior pastor Jamal-Harrison] Bryant said. “The fact of the matter is that Target made a pledge to our community after the killing of George Floyd of $2 billion into Black business and when the administration changed, they disavowed as if it never happened. The pledge was never made under DEI or affirmative action. It was out of decency and to humanity. To walk away from it is insult to injury.”

It’s important to remember that choosing to abstain from purchasing is an exercise in privilege which many more Americans can’t share after losing their jobs because of the Trump-Musk administration’s sloppy execution of Project 2025/Agenda 47. Recently unemployed may need to curtail spending due to loss of income and uncertainty about future employment prospects. This is not a little thing for some families when it comes to choosing where to shop; Target may have been convenient for diaper purchases on the way to/from work, for example. Entirely different calculus may be needed for those essential purchases.

Being empathetic and anti-fascist may not be easy for those of us with the privilege to choose where to shop. Looking for something as basic as a hair brush or grooming products may require entirely new approaches to shopping, and learning more about local businesses. Perhaps it’s a good thing to embrace this stretch out of the groove of habit; it could mean the difference between a small local business succeeding or failing. It could mean escaping enshittification foisted on us by Big Box retail.

What are you doing this spring to reject and repel fascism? This is an open thread.

Share this entry

Open Thread: Reading Is Fundamental As Is Journalism

/63 Comments/in , /by

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

I want to kill a few birds with one post: publish an open thread, discuss a topic in which most of us have an interest, and address an essential issue critical to our survival over the next several years.

The topic is books — what have you been reading or about to read which is enlightening, edifying, and worth discussing with others? What book(s) do you believe others will find necessary as the SHTF?

The essential issue is journalism — apparently we need to burn it all down and start with the basics, by which I mean crack a book used as journalism curriculum in J-school.

The book I find essential was recommended by journalism instructors I once worked with. At less than 300 pages in paperback, it’s a straightforward and slim read: The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect, by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel. There have been four editions published to date, any of them are worth reading, and there are +100 copies available now through used book reseller Alibris so you don’t have to go to Bezos’ Amazon.

The frontispiece sets readers off in the right direction. It’s not artwork but text and it’s the outline of the rest of the text:

THE ELEMENTS OF JOURNALISM ARE:
• Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth.
• Its first loyalty is to citizens.
• Its essence is a discipline of verification.
• Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover.
• It must serve as an independent monitor of power.
• It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.
• It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant.
• It must keep the news comprehensive and in proportion.
• Its practitioners have an obligation to exercise their personal conscience.
• Citizens, too, have rights and responsibilities when it comes to the news.

Based on this manifesto, it’s difficult to say that the Washington Post is a legitimate journalistic venture. Long-time editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned this past week from WaPo. The spiking of her cartoon which criticized billionaire oligarchs and media businesses for sucking up to as-yet-uninaugurated Trump — including WaPo’s ultimate owner Jeff Bezos — demonstrated yet again WaPo’s inability to fulfill the necessary attributes of authentic journalism.

The public should be demanding the resignation of WaPo’s editor-in-chief, Will Lewis. They should have been doing so for months now, after a string of gross failures not the least of which is WaPo’s elevation of the fucked-up politicized prosecution of Hunter Biden, but the obvious preference for Trump in its coverage in spite of Trump’s manifest unsuitability for the White House.

WaPo’s management doesn’t even have the balls to come out and say it has a preferred ideology on which it frames its published work. Instead it hangs the burden on its staff.

You know damned well if it spiked Telnaes’ cartoon, it’s spiking other content, too, in ways which are much less obvious to the public.

The public bears considerable responsibility for this situation as well. It does not respond as it should to WaPo’s failures. It’s this lack of appropriate response which encouraged me to pick up The Elements of Journalism once again, because we need to get on the same page and have the same understanding about our relationship with the Fourth Estate.

The First Amendment reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

There’s no daylight between our freedom of speech and that of the press. We need to stop acting like the press is a wholly separate entity, because it doesn’t exist without us as readers. Only the business of the press is separate so long as our representatives don’t choose to regulate it otherwise. The right of the free press is our right as citizens in this democracy.

Elements explains to its readers:

What do we do as citizens if these rights are not met? What action, for instance, can and should we take if a newspaper reports on a case of business or political fraud but doesn’t follow up on the controversial issues it raises? First, of course, such contact works best if it comes constructively, as advice and information rather than condemnation. Second, if it is ignored it should be offered again, perhaps through more than one means. If, for example, an e-mail is not acknowledged, send it again, and then pick up the phone or write a letter, with a copy to the editor in chief. If you want to make other citizens aware of your complaint, keep a public record of your attempts to contact the organization and their reactions on a blog.

What can we do if as citizens we offer news organizations this feedback and our contributions, ideas, or criticisms are ignored? Rights mean something only if they are viewed as rights. At that point, withhold your business. Drop the subscription. Stop watching. Most important, write a clear explanation of why you have done so and send it to the editor or media critics, or post it on your own site. …

There’s a bit more reminding us that passivity is our failing. We get the media we fail to demand.

We need to learn how to demand better in a big fat hurry.

Share this entry

Farewell to the Man from Plains

/69 Comments/in , , , /by

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Former president Jimmy Carter passed away today. He was 100 years old, the oldest former president and the first to attain their centenary. His wife Rosalyn Carter passed away in November 2023.

He will be remembered most for his immense contributions to society post-presidency, from his diplomatic efforts to the founding of The Carter Center and its support of voting rights and democracy, his efforts through the Center to eradicate disease, and his work for Habitat for Humanity.

He will also be remembered as a national hero for his role in preventing a nuclear accident in 1952. The episode was not widely publicized until 2021:

Carter, a young U.S. Navy lieutenant in 1952, was in in nearby Schenectady, New York, training to work aboard America’s first nuclear submarine at the time of the accident at a reactor in Chalk River, Ontario, just 180 km from Ottawa, the Canadian capital.

According to a Canadian government website, mechanical problems and operator error “led to overheating fuel rods and significant damage” to the core of the reactor, prompting officials to turn to the United States for help in dismantling the device.

A total of 26 Americans, including several volunteers, rushed to Chalk River to help with the hazardous job. Carter led a team of men who, after formulating a plan, descended into the highly radioactive site for 90 seconds apiece to perform specialized tasks.

Carter’s job, according to the CBC recounting, was simply to turn a single screw. But even that limited exposure carried serious risks; Carter was told that he might never be able to have children again, though in fact his daughter Amy was born years later.

Carter was generous and humble, faithful and steadfast, true to his family, faith, and country to the end.

May he rest in power.

__________
Photo: Carter with future spouse Rosalynn Smith and his mother at his graduation from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, June 5, 1946, via Wikipedia.

Share this entry

Dear Media: Media Crit Like It’s Football, FFS

/39 Comments/in , , /by

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

I’ve been fuming about this since — oh, check the date and time on this graphic:

For the NFL football or Michigan uninformed, the Detroit Lions played the Buffalo Bills on Sunday evening at home. The hometown crowd was amped up because the Lions had a 12-1 season and already garnered a playoff slot.

But they also knew things would be tense because of the number of injured players on the team.

The Bills opened up a 14-point lead in the first quarter and the Lions were never able to catch them; the final score was 48-42.

That’s the frame from which the above report in Gannett’s local affiliate the Detroit Free Press (Freep) reported on CBS Sports’ coverage of the game.

Gannett is the largest newspaper publisher in the US; it’s the owner and publisher of USA Today and 32 other news papers. Freep’s criticism of CBS Sports coverage follows decades of CBS missteps in the Detroit market.

During what little I watched of the game, CBS’s talking heads were shit. Very little commentary on a couple lousy calls, or not-calls, in at least one case of pass interference early in the game.

I won’t bother to post his crap here but commentator Tony Romo was a dick, not exactly endearing CBS to the Detroit Metro audience. You’d think he’d know by now there’s quarterback smack talk and then there’s former player professional broadcaster sports talk, the latter for which he is paid.

All that aside, this article does more to criticize another media outlet’s coverage than we have seen among national outlets who have systematically fucked up coverage for decades.

How and why can a large newspaper owned by a national organization freely criticize a national broadcast and streaming media organization about its coverage, but the same kinds of organizations have failed our democracy by bootlicking for fascists?

By bootlicking I offer as an example ABC News which folded like a broken lawn chair settling $15 million on Trump who’d claimed he was defamed by ABC. ABC had used the same language leveled at Trump in court but somehow a national news broadcaster is no longer permitted to exercise free speech reporting facts in Trumplandia.

After the gross moral and ethical failure of the Washington Post to make an endorsement in the presidential race, after Los Angeles Times’ similar failing, one can only wonder what’s left of the country’s once-free press.

Don’t get me started on the bullshit coverage which parroted right-wing talking points over the last three presidential elections, from “But her emails” to “Joe’s old” to “Hunter Biden Hunter Biden Hunter Biden.”

NYU’s Jay Rosen has encouraged news media to depart from its toxic horse race coverage of elections and move toward reporting the stakes of the race. Stakes coverage should be a minimum across all coverage of politics and governance.

If media can’t do that — and they’ve demonstrated they can’t — if they insist on treating our democratic governance like sports, the least they can do is criticize their own industry’s performance like they do when it comes to football.

 

This is an open thread.

Share this entry

The Myths of Bluebeard and Orangeskin

/88 Comments/in , , , /by

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

I have been tamping down my disgust for the last four weeks, just as many of you have.

I’m completely disgusted with talking head punditry blaming everyone but themselves, including Democrats and Democratic Party-wannabes who decided after the election that it was a good time to kick minority groups and blame them, or turned stupid before the camera and insist the barrier to winning was something facts say it wasn’t.

But I have a specially level of revulsion allocated for – brace yourself, it’s not about some of you personally – white women.

53% of white American women have voted for Donald the adjudicated rapist Trump not once, not twice, but three fucking times – in 2016, in 2020, and yet again in 2024.

For some it was about financial issues like taxes – I earned this, I’ve got mine, fuck you, they voted, wanting Trump to ensure their rank in the economic pecking order was conserved.

For others it was about race and/or misogyny. Internalized oppression makes these voters believe they are somehow exempt from the oppression when they are only a future victim.

In a handful of states it’s clear reproductive rights were important to this bloc of voters because they voted against abortion restrictions. And yet they still voted for Trump.

Trump’s claims that he would leave abortion to states to decide apparently convinced them they could have things both ways. They could belong to the cult of Trump and white patriarchal supremacy and still retain their reproductive rights.

What poppycock. Trump had already made the biggest move possible to eliminate their rights at federal level by ensuring the Roberts’ Supreme Court would undermine them.

It’s infuriating and yet somehow predictable.

This cognitive dissonance in women is the stuff of myth, the kind of behavior we’ve been warned about in stories nearly a millennia old.

We’re watching once again the unfolding myth of Bluebeard.

~ ~ ~

Here’s the tl;dr version of the Bluebeard myth from Simple Wikipedia:

A rich man has a blue beard which frightens young women. He has been married several times but no one knows what has happened to his wives. He woos two young sisters in the neighborhood but neither are inclined to consider marriage. He treats them to a lavish time in his country house. The younger sister decides to marry him. Shortly after the wedding (and before he travels to a far land on business), Bluebeard gives his wife the keys to his house. One key opens a door to a distant room. He forbids her to enter this room. He leaves and his wife opens the door to the forbidden room. Here she finds Bluebeard’s former wives, all dead and lying on a floor covered with blood. She drops the key. It is magic and becomes stained with blood that cannot be washed away. Bluebeard returns. He discovers the blood-stained key and knows his wife has disobeyed his order. He tells her she will take her place among the dead. He grants her a few minutes to pray. She calls her sister Anne and asks her to go to the top of the tower to see if her brothers are on the road. After several tense moments, Anne reports seeing the men approaching. Bluebeard raises a cutlass to decapitate his wife. Her brothers burst into the room. They kill Bluebeard. Their sister is safe.

I’m not going to write out the full Bluebeard myth here. I’m going to trust readers to do their homework reading the original, more complex Wikipedia entry and possibly the Charles Perrault version available for free at Project Gutenberg.

There are many versions of this myth across languages, countries, and cultures. It has been adapted in contemporary culture repeatedly. In other words, humans have been telling a story in which the same familiar elements have occurred because humans universally find it relatable across history and now.

We’ve even begun discussion of universal liberation and the enslavement of fully-conscious AI “women” to serve Bluebeardian men, as in writer/director Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2015).

It should not be difficult to see the parallels between Bluebeard and Trump – the multiple silenced wives, the naïve woman/women who yield to promises of wealth and pleasure, the unpleasantness of discovering the truth beneath the promises, the mortal price to be paid.

Nor should it be difficult to see the meta layer of this myth, where wealthy men feel entitled to demand subordination by women including the suppression of knowledge and therefore consent. To slip this leash is to suffer loss unless rescued at the last moment. That rescue is the only thing separating the bride from the corpses of sister brides.

The biggest single variant between versions of the Bluebeard myth is the means of rescue. A sister or sisters, brother or brothers, or a mother figure steps in at the very last moment to save the final girl.

Unfortunately, the parallel here is that they believe naively they will always be the lucky final girl; in truth we as societal siblings are always the rescuers.

We did a shit job three elections in a row, mostly because we assumed the victim(s) were fully informed and aware of the danger, failing to reach them at a level mythic stories connect. Many were fully informed and blithely voted for Trump because he said he would leave reproductive rights to the states.

Like the last bride in Bluebeard’s myth, they may have been amply informed of the manifold deaths of previous wives yet plunged ahead into marriage believing they were somehow immune.

What if the victim(s) refuse efforts to save them?

~ ~ ~

Three women married Trump, two of whom should have known better. More women were involved with him consensually; they, too should have known better.

Note status of consent here – some girls and women were forced to be involved with Trump without their consent, from minors at the Miss Teen USA pageant to E. Jean Carroll. Don’t confuse these persons with the former. Many of them fought in some way not to be involved with Trump, informing more women about his nature as they did so, clawing back against his efforts to stuff them in his bloody oubliette by way of SLAPP suits and other forms of legal harassment.

The women who voted for Trump three times are among those who expressed their consent at the ballot box. They agreed to what he offered them as a candidate.

Like the younger sister who heard all the rumors about Bluebeard, who may have been warned by mother and sisters against him, they went ahead and consented to Trump as president.

The only thing which gave Bluebeard’s final wife pause was her own discovery in the personal pursuit of information. In many versions of the myth she is merely overwhelmed by her own curiosity about the forbidden. In other versions she is upset about being denied access to what is hers by rights as his wife. Whatever it is that drives her, it is she who must put the key into the lock, she who makes the discovery of the many corpses, she who in terror drops the key and eventually exposes her intransigence to Bluebeard.

It is she who must be threatened for her failure to obey and she who must face the intense fear of death.

She will seek her ready rescuers only after she has been confronted with the reality of Bluebeard’s immense monstrousness and his intent to kill her.

In short, the 53% of white women who voted for Trump will only realize the enormity of their mistake when he threatens them personally at immense personal cost.

They will ask us for help once they are fully aware of the immediate danger to themselves and loved ones – not before then.

Or as Adrian Bott as @Cavalorn tweeted so elegantly on the dead bird app back in 2015,

‘I never thought leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.

So very prescient that he used a woman as a face-eaten victim.

Until a substantive number of these 53% of white women voters actually lose their faces so to say, they will not reach out for aid.

~ ~ ~

You may be depressed now. You may already be angry. But you must be prepared for the day that last bride, the final girl, the blundering substantive number of white women Trump voters emerge from their privileged state of heedless unawareness – unwokeness, dare I say – holding out a bloody key of knowledge asking frantically to be saved.

Because you’re going to have to be ready to save her sorry stupid ass in order to save us all.

If this wasn’t true humans wouldn’t be telling this story over and over so many times in so many ways, both as a warning to the women who need to be informed, and as a reminder to the rescuers they will be needed if Bluebeard is to be stopped from taking yet more victims.

Furthermore, you need to prepare yourself to tell your children and grandchildren about the myth of Bluebeard.

Now with Orangeskin.

Share this entry

To You Charming Gardeners

/81 Comments/in /by

Save for my spouse’s football games on TV, this Thanksgiving holiday is very quiet here. Our family celebrated together this past weekend because my youngest works in manufacturing at a facility which can’t shut down for holidays. They’re at work now as are millions of others who continue tend to our needs, forfeiting time with friends and family for us.

Someone sent me this graphic for which I have no originating attribution:

Thank you to the workforce whose labor has ensured our holiday feasting is amply endowed with this growing season’s finest.

Thank you especially to the undocumented workers who are worried about the incoming administration and what may happen to them and their families. Without these hard-working folks we would have a fraction of the produce and meats on our tables today.

Thank you to our neighbors Canada and Mexico, who likewise are concerned about what is to come, who have ensured our country’s economic growth through trade with the U.S. Some of the produce we’ve eaten this week wasn’t picked in the U.S. but imported from both Canada and Mexico.

It’s not easy to give thanks now. It’s tough to look past the pain of loss and the fear of what’s to come. But there may never be a better time to give thanks than right now, because we don’t know what lies ahead. Let’s do it while we can.

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” ― Marcel Proust

Thank you to you, our readers and donors who are the charming gardeners of this site. You help motivate us to slog on when it gets tough.

Best to you and yours this holiday. May we all find joy when we need it to keep us going in the year ahead.

Share this entry

Our Choice of Fathers

/37 Comments/in , /by

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers in our community, to the fathers-by-proxy who’ve stood in place of missing fathers, to the mothers and others who’ve had to take on more than one parenting role.

Happy Father’s Day to my friends who aren’t parents at all – may you enjoy the convenient gender-biased hardware marketing blitz aimed at the do-it-yourself dads among us.

(I’m really going to enjoy my new power rotary multi-tool, must say. Been needing one for years and this summer I’ve got a lot of projects a certain father here won’t touch – it’s on me.)

This day offers us not only a chance to thank fathers but to think about fatherhood. It’s hard to escape fathers and fathering in a patriarchal society, but perhaps this is a best reason to consider the nature of fathers.

Especially when this year’s presidential election once again comes down to a choice of fathers.

~ ~ ~

The Los Angeles Times has an excellent piece on its front page below the fold today – Biden, Trump and 2 Very Different Dads – comparing and contrasting fathers Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and their progenitors Joe Biden Sr. and Fred Trump. (Sorry – I want to share a link but LAT makes it impossible for subscribers to do so this soon after publication. As I wrote this it wasn’t available on the LAT website. Article now available at LAT but the headline has changed to Biden brings up ‘Dad’ a lot. Trump, not so much.)

In essence the article describes a father who values dignity and a father who values transactions.

What a distillation.

While we’ve already made comparisons between these two candidates at the polls in 2020, the essentials of these two men have only become more stark over the last four years.

They exemplify neatly George Lakoff’s Moral Politics model of the nurturant parent and strict father which Lakoff first laid out in 1996, again in 2001 and 2016 editions, and discussed further in his 2010 text, Thinking Politics in Chapter 4, The Nation as Family. (Thinking Politics is available for free online for download as a PDF.)

It’s telling that Lakoff categorizes a bifurcated diametric model as nurturant parent and strict father – patriarchy is autocratic, rejects departures from black-and-white, wrong-or-right, my-way-or-the-highway binary thinking. Do as your father orders you to do.

The nurturant parent model is inclusive, in contrast. Any gender can identify as and model nurturing. Nurturing is adaptive, because needs change with conditions though fundamental values affirming the dignity of humanity remain set.

Which parent of this nation should we choose at the polls?

I can’t help think of a particular story about Trump as father, in the wake of Hunter Biden’s conviction and Joe Biden’s loving response.

Before the 2016 election, a classmate of Donnie Jr. recounted an episode of physical abuse they felt necessary to share with the public before voters went to the polls.

I was hanging out in a freshman dorm with some friends, next door to Donald Jr.’s room. I walked out of the room to find Donald Trump at his son’s door, there to pick him up for a baseball game. There were quite a few students standing around watching, trying to catch a glimpse of the famed real estate magnate. Don Jr. opened the door, wearing a Yankee jersey. Without saying a word, his father slapped him across the face, knocking him to the floor in front of all of his classmates. He simply said “put on a suit and meet me outside,” and closed the door.

A father willing to do this to his own namesake in front of witnesses, a father who apparently failed to assist his son whose classmate called him a “drunk,” isn’t the kind of person Americans needed in 2016 or in 2024 in the White House.

Reports surfacing only now that Trump while in the White House talked about executing persons including those who leaked information is extremely troubling. What if it had been his own family members leaking information?

If we are a nation as family, whoever the prospective leaker might be is family – and Trump has expressed a willingness to kill them.

Trump has already displayed openly a bent toward violence. The extrajudicial assassination of Iran’s Major General Qasem Soleimani was a demonstration of Trump using violence at the furthest reaches and beyond of his presidential powers. We have heard and read numerous examples of his incitement to violence including the attack on the capitol on January 6. What would he do to Americans at home and abroad if he was elected again?

And of course Trump has already promised retribution against his perceived enemies if he should be re-elected.

Which parent should we choose, indeed.

At least this election we still have this choice. Choose wisely.

Share this entry