As Americans, we are not one in any way, shape or form.

We are diverse, inclusive, at times exclusionary, conflicted, self-righteous and, more often than not these days, divisive. In our fast-evaporating sense of who we are, or once were, we have left our beacon of hope for the world at large adrift in a sea of uncertainty.

It was once easy to tout the United States as the symbol of desirable values, a sort of Rhodes port of entry for democracy. Oh, how we have stumbled as a nation, and precipitously, in recent years.

We continue to be warm, insensitive, confused, confusing, at times at one with ourselves, at times just a human bunch of some 331.9 (as of a 2021 count) million souls trying to make sense of what we have been given, the United States of America, and our place in the world beyond.

We are, and have always been, far from being one, and way far from being perfect. Yet our Constitution and our daily lives once allowed us to be just that, imperfect, with guaranteed freedoms … at least until the next crazed teenager or over-armed adult decided to pick us off with an automatic shotgun one by one in some unsuspecting mall, school or Home Depot.

As Americans, we are easy to hate, difficult to love, and as often as not misunderstood. Where some of us attempt to break down barriers, those of us across the street, or across our national divide, have been happy to build borders, walls and barriers. At times, it would seem that we are completely unknowable, political pundits aside.

There are still many of us alive today who remember the torn country that we were during the Vietnam War. We remember how it felt to be American then. It was confused and confusing all at once, day after day. The rest of the world did not like us at all, to put it kindly.

So, give a thought for Russians now.

Just for a minute, put yourself in the skin of a Russian today.

Russia is right now the Big Bad Wolf in headlines worldwide, and justifiably so. Russians, after all, elected Putin president once again by a vast majority as recently as 2018. Yet, remember that the Vietnam War, our Vietnam War, was prolonged under 5 Presidents until it eventually folded in April 1975.

This is hardly good news for the people of Ukraine. For a World Power to recognize its mistakes can take decades.

Are Russians as conflicted as we were during the Vietnam War? I imagine they are. Are their opinions of their country fraught? They must be. Can Russians protest within Russia? Not at all. Thousands upon thousands have been removed from the streets and silenced in a way that is unthinkable here in the United States.

I was, in more ways than one, reminded of our United States – yes, those same conflicted United States above – on a recent arrival in Madrid.

The EU is still a much newer concept in co-living than our American Union. Within the European Union, things are even now falling into place. The EU as we know it today had its beginnings with the Maastricht Treaty of 1993. The European Union is a work in progress. The United Kingdom was a reluctante partner for awhile, until they decided in 2019 to Brexit. However, their example is far from being the norm. Other countries are lining up to join the Union.

According to Wikipedia:

There are seven recognised candidates for membership of the European Union: Turkey (applied in 1987), North Macedonia (2004), Montenegro (2008), Albania (2009), Serbia (2009), Ukraine (2022), and Moldova (2022). Additionally, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, and Kosovo (whose independence is not recognised by five EU member states) are considered potential candidates for membership by the EU.^[1][2] Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Georgia have formally submitted applications for membership, while Kosovo has a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU, which generally precedes the lodging of a membership application.

 Ukraine sees things differently than the UK. Ukraine doesn’t have the UK’s options of history and geography. Putin didn’t decide to invade the United Kingdom, after all.

Putin choose a defenseless neighbor, still not a member of a nascent European Union, to try to exert his late-blooming and misbegotten manhood by invading a benign neighbor to prove somehow his macho worldview. As is now evident to anybody paying attention worldwide, Putin misjudged, and exiled his eternal reputation to the gutter.

Back to landing in Madrid. At Barajas, there were Russians dragging and pushing way-overweight bags along their way, any which way, far from Russia. That was understandable. Until it wasn’t.

For Russians with money, Madrid is just one of many escapes from the horror of the motherland to a neighbor that still extends a welcoming embrace.

The sight of Russians at Atocha, Madrid’s train station, toting Louis Vuitton bags filled with recent purchases, was unsettling. Louis Vuitton in times of war? Drinking beer, happy with their day of shopping, joking around, the Russians at Atocha disquieted me.

The disquiet continued.

On the Metro in Rome, I sat next to a bunch of loud Russians wisecracking among themselves, laughing and seemingly happy on their way to view the ruins of the Coliseum. They were oblivious to any discomfort they might have been communicating to their fellow passengers concerned about their country’s invasion of a helpless neighbor, Ukraine.

These Russians didn’t seem to care about the nuances of co-existence. Nuances be damned was what I, unfortunately, understood.

These joyous Russians were, for me, somehow complicit in Putin’s imperious view of the world.

We can do what we want, they seemed to be saying as they joshed around, just as their elected leader, Putin did, toasting a glass of champagne high in celebration of his invasion of Ukraine not even a month later.

I was disturbed by the attitude of the Russians that I saw in Italy and Spain.

Could it be that Russians, at large, really support Putin? I found myself wondering.

Could it be that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine might represent the true mindset of the majority in Russia?

I know, I know, that Russians are as diverse as we are. See above.

I know that many have been swept off the streets, disappeared forever.

Yet, could it be that Putin really represents Russia? I found myself thinking in Rome.

Could it be that Russians in general could care less about Ukraine?

Just maybe, I found myself thinking.

Is Putin the true champion of a Russia anathema to our Western view of civilization? That’s what I really wondered.

Could that be true?

Just maybe, I found myself thinking again.

The post Is Putin Russia, and Russia Putin? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The title of this article is a recent quote from Steven Crowder, an immensely popular conservative YouTuber with almost six million subscribers. “He’s not wrong about everything,” Crowder quipped about Kanye West’s recent and obviously anti-Semitic remarks. “Is there a conversation to be had about secular humanists with Jewish last names exploiting people in Hollywood?”

Crowder went on to articulate that these “secular humanists with Jewish last names” aren’t evil “because they’re Jewish”. His distinction serves two purposes here. First, it allows a modicum of plausible deniability for anti-Semites and people foolish enough to believe “I hate Jews, but not because they are Jewish” is a legitimate opinion. Second, it allows the divorcing of Jews with non-reactionary views from the Jewish populace as a whole. It separates Jews that Crowder finds worthy–religious conservatives like Ben Shapiro, the late Sheldon Adelson, the Israeli far-right–with those he finds unworthy. The fact that Crowder was referring to wealthy Hollywood executives is irrelevant here, as he does not make a distinction between powerful Jews who aren’t religious and Jews who hold left-wing views. For Crowder, there is no water between Noam Chomsky and Harvey Weinstein. They’re both part of the same cabal.

The comment section of Crowder’s video rips the mask off this farce. It’s full of open anti-Semites. So too with “journalist” Tim Pool’s Kanye West interview, in which Pool tried to make a distinction between “the corporate press” treating Kanye unfairly vs. Jews as a monolithic bloc doing so. A large chunk of these comments consisted of Pool’s fans criticizing him for not identifying the “real problem”, i.e., Jews.

Crowder is noteworthy here because he straddles the gap between American conservatism–people like Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson–and overt fascists like Milo Yiannopolis and Nick Fuentes. That gap shrinks by the day. We may soon see mainstream Republicans running on a rhetorical platform similar to Crowder’s. Donald Trump’s admonishment of American Jews for “not caring about Israel” is probably a portent of an ever-more noxious Republican Party, one an inch from Nazi talking points on Jewish issues. The predominance of conservative discourse on “cultural Marxism” (The Nazis said “cultural Bolshevism”) means we’re already pretty close.

Where does this thinly-veiled prejudice come from? Consider Slavoj Zizek’s commentary on anti-Semitism in The Sublime Object of Ideology. In response to the overt anti-Semitism of Nazis and their ilk, Zizek writes, many will say that

‘The Nazis are condemning the Jews too hastily, without proper argument, so let us take a cool, sober look and see if they are really guilty or not; let us see if there is some truth in the accusations against them.’ Is it really necessary to add that such an approach would merely confirm our so-called ‘unconscious prejudices’ with additional rationalizations? The proper answer to anti-Semitism is therefore not ‘Jews are really not like that’ but ‘the anti-Semitic idea of Jew has nothing to do with Jews; the ideological figure of a Jew is a way to stitch up the inconsistency of our own ideological system.’

Zizek is a difficult and provocative thinker, but my interpretation of this passage is that people like Crowder will find “the Jew” a convenient ideological fantasy to justify already-held beliefs. For Crowder, whose politics revolve around disgust at those he finds displeasing–black people and LGBT people in particular–”The Jew” serves as the source of the revulsion. This is to say, Crowder and company cannot admit that queer people have a legitimate right to their gender and sexual expression, or that black people have legitimate grievances with contemporary America. There must therefore be a nefarious source spreading these ideas among the populace. The source of the “repulsive ideology” is, conveniently, “secular humanists with Jewish last names”. By situating Jews as the master manipulators, Crowder legitimizes the prejudices he previously held and espoused.

We must remember that conservatives have set the bar impossibly high for what constitutes prejudice. Donald Trump, for instance, in justifying his dinner with Kanye West, denied Kanye’s anti-Semitism by saying that Kanye did not, in that particular dinner, say anything anti-Semitic. Similarly, Steven Crowder denied Kanye’s anti-Semitism by saying that Kanye was “using a Howitzer”, but “doesn’t hate Jews.” For the modern conservative, to be prejudiced is to hold hatred for a group in one’s heart of hearts. As humanity has not yet developed telepathy, this is a standard that cannot be met. The potentially virtuous inner life of a Nazi does not prevent him from doing the things that Nazis do.

History does not look kindly on these conservative fence-sitters, those who refuse to oppose fascism. Paul Von Hindenburg is not viewed as an anti-fascist but rather as the man who invited the Nazis into government. Erwin Romell, who was perhaps not a Nazi in his political inner life, still served as the general of a fascist army. Aside from Claus Von Stauffenberg, the conservatives and monarchists who fought alongside the Nazis are remembered correctly as Nazis. Ditto with Steven Crowder.

To quote the novelist A.R. Moxon: “Historians have a word for Germans who joined the Nazi party, not because they hated Jews, but out of a hope for restored patriotism, or a sense of economic anxiety, or a hope to preserve their religious values, or dislike of their opponents, or raw political opportunism, or convenience, or ignorance, or greed.

That word is ‘Nazi.’ Nobody cares about their motives anymore.”

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Like many progressives, I would be delighted to have a Green New Deal as well as a host of other progressive programs that would immediately and directly help the American people. However, this is not going to happen anytime soon. Joe Manchin has shown that he can single-handedly prevent it now; he has in the past. His help from Republicans will grow exponentially if they reclaim one or both houses of Congress this coming November.

All the same, political power in the United States is distributed in a way that gives Republicans far more influence than they are warranted. They hold half the seats in the U.S. Senate despite the fact that their senators represent only 43% of the population, compared to the Democrats 57% In other words, 43% of the American people are represented by the 50 Republican senators; the remaining 57% by the 50 Democrats. That is clearly unfair.

In the U.S. House of Representatives, five million more Americans (3%) voted for Democratic candidates than Republican candidates, and yet the Democrats have only a few more seats than the Republicans. Once again, this is unfair, especially as we will shortly have new elections for the House with hundreds of districts that are gerrymandered.

The Supreme Court is heavily weighted towards Republicans, in a particularly pernicious way since five justices were appointed by Republican presidents who lost the popular vote. They became presidents only because of the antiquated Electoral College.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito were appointed by President George W. Bush who lost the popular election to Al Gore by 500,000 people. Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett were appointed by Donald Trump who lost the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton by three million popular votes.

Over half (5 out of 9) of the justices who were appointed by semi-illegitimate presidents. This has been a grave and great injustice and needs to be corrected.

These problems of disproportionate power in the hands of Republicans exists in all three branches of our government. This is why we need a recalibration of how power is distributed in Washington and in our states. Recalibration is different from retribution. Changes should not be designed to make it “the Democrats turn.” Instead, it should be time for “fairness to prevail.”

Here’s how we would do it in three steps:

1. Either abolish the Electoral College or codify the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact in which the electors in all states are bound to vote for whomever one the national popular vote, not the vote in their state. This would be fair because our presidents would be elected solely on the basis of the vote of the people – the people who he or she represents.
2. Outlaw gerrymandering, the practice of dividing geographic areas into legislative districts in a way that gives one party an advantage over another. By outlawing gerrymandering, the number of seats from each party from each state would come close to reflecting that party’s percentage of voters in the state.
3. Institute some permanent and temporary changes to the Supreme Court:
   1. Permanent: Put term limits on how long a Supreme Court justice can serve, perhaps twenty years.
   2. Temporary: Because the court is currently leaning so far to the right, allow President Joe Biden to nominate three additional justices to the Supreme Court, temporarily constituting the court with ten members. Each of Biden’s nominees would be linked to one of the three Trump appointees. They would leave the Court when that particular Trump appointee no longer serves. The president at that time will then select one nominee to replace the two. When all six of the Trump and Biden appointees (exclusive of Ketanji Jackson Brown) are no longer on the court, it will be back down to nine members.

It is fair to ask how could this come to be. Why would Republicans accept these three changes, all of which would help Democrats, at least in the short run? These would be difficult changes to enact under any circumstances.

Naturally, there is no guarantee that Republicans would accept any of these changes. However, if the American people knew that Democrats were going to take a temporary pass on the most impactful items in their legislative agenda in order to spend several years focusing on recalibrating our democracy, it is possibly that many independents would join Democrats and a few Republicans to get this done. No guarantees, but the idea of advancing and simplifying democracy has a natural appeal to a great many voters. It’s worth a try because Manchin and the Republicans are not going away.

The post Recalibrating our Political System appeared first on Occasional Planet.

You probably did not think that a key reason why the current Supreme Court is so out of whack with much of America is because of gerrymandering. This is so because the makeup of every Court is determined by the two other gerrymandered branches of government, the executive and legislative.

Twelve of the last fifteen justices have been appointed by Republican presidents, and that is not an accident. With our Constitution, it is virtually impossible not to have partisan Supreme Courts when we choose our presidents and legislators in ways that are mired in a deep gerrymandering pie, or cesspool.

Here’s how it works:

The U.S. Senate is perhaps the most insidious form of gerrymandering that we have. A good working definition of gerrymandering from Merriam-Webster is “the practice of dividing or arranging a territorial unit into election districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage in elections.” At the time that the American constitution was created, there were no political parties. But there were political interests. The most significant of these interests was what powers would individual states have as opposed to the federal government.

For example, who would be responsible for determining whether a road should be built, or whether it would be legal for a sixteen-year-old to drink whiskey? Who would be able to levy taxes, or even tariffs? At the time that the constitution was being written, there were two key interests within the states that created the groundwork for gerrymandering:

1. The smaller states such as Rhode Island or Delaware did not want to be overpowered at the federal level by larger ones such as New York or Virginia.
2. The states where slavery was legal and was commonly used wanted to have equal power to the states that did not have slavery.

Many of the founding fathers were leery of direct democracy, meaning direct votes by the people. In order to prevent runaway “popular democracy,” the founders created a Senate to go along with the House of Representatives in the Congress. The Senate was undemocratic in two ways, both of which impacted the Supreme Court.

1. Initially, Senators were chosen by state legislatures, not the people. This would be a way of better ensuring that the interests of the states, as opposed to the people, were represented in the Senate. This was clearly undemocratic, and in 1917, the 17^th Amendment was passed, allowing the people to vote for their Senators. But at that time, “the people” were essentially only white males.
2. Each state has two senators. That ensures that there is equal representation among all the states in the Senate. At the same time, it ensures that at least one house of Congress does not include equal representation of the people. For example, California has a population of nearly 40 million people while Wyoming has less than 600 thousand. For each person in Wyoming, there are over 60 in California. What that means in the Senate is that each person in Wyoming has as much power as 60 people in California. That is terribly unfair, and it means that states like Wyoming, the Dakotas, Montana, Nebraska, etc. have far more power in the Senate than states like California, Texas and New York. The same is true for southern states such as Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina which are relatively small by population. Additionally, these states are no longer politically competitive. Conservative Republicans win virtually all state-wide elections including for the Senators.

Right now, the U.S. Senate is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. But Democratic Senators represent nearly 57% of the population, whereas Republican Senators represent around 43%. If the Senate was democratic, the Democrats would have a large majority. But in today’s real world the Democrats will probably lose seats in the 2022 mid-term election and once again be a minority.

We should also point out that the House of Representatives is gerrymandered in a different way. Take Missouri for example. It has eight Congressional seats. Recently, the state has voted between 50% – 60% Republican. Even at 60%, Republicans should get only five of the seats. However, they get six and some tried to get them seven. Why does it come out this way?

It is because in Missouri the districts are drawn by the state legislature. The Missouri General Assembly is currently veto-proof Republican. What the legislature has done is to draw two “minority majority” districts. This means districts in which some minority constitutes a majority of the voters. In Missouri, it is African-Americans. One district is in the eastern part of the state, St. Louis, and the other in the western part, Kansas City. None of the other districts is competitive.

Similar to the legislative branch, the executive (presidency) is deeply influenced by gerrymandering. The way in which the founding fathers took care of that was by creating the Electoral College. The E.C. is not really a college. It is a barely known organization that only exists every four years, when there is a presidential election. The number of representatives that each state has in the E.C. is somewhat based on population, but not entirely. What is important to know is that when the Electoral College works properly, the electors from each state vote for the candidate who won the popular vote in that state. In other words, the electors in Alabama vote for whomever carried the state and the electors in California vote for whomever won that state.

Where it gets undemocratic is let’s suppose that Candidate A carries Alabama by one million votes and loses California by a 400,000 votes. You might think that Candidate A would be ahead at that point, because she has 600,000 more votes than Candidate ‘B.’ But with the Electoral College, Candidate ‘B’ is ahead with 55 Electoral Votes from California as opposed to Candidate ‘B’ who has the 9 Electoral Votes from Alabama.

The fact that a candidate can lose the popular vote and still be elected president through the E.C. is not just hypothetical. It has happened five times in our history. The two most recent are the two most consequential. In 2000, Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote from George Bush by over a half million votes. However, Bush won the Electoral vote when the Supreme Court made a decision that gave Bush Florida’s electoral votes. That would not have mattered if the decision had been made by the popular vote.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump by more than three million votes. However, Trump narrowly won “battleground states” such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin and that propelled him to an Electoral victory.

It’s possible that two of our worst presidents ever were elected by the Electoral College than the popular vote. These two presidents are also responsible for five of the current six conservatives on the Supreme Court. Bush nominated John Roberts and Samuel Alito; Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

This is how the Supreme Court became impacted by gerrymandering. Without a gerrymandered presidency and a gerrymandered Senate, the Supreme Court would have been more balanced and reflective of the values of the American people.

To make matters worse, the Supreme Court itself has recently refused to overturn the creation of gerrymandered districts by the states.

The political ramifications of the gerrymandering dynamics is that Republicans are helped in all three branches. Theoretically, the three branches of government are supposed to restrain one another through a system of checks and balances. But that does not work when all three branches are dominated by one party, and that particular party is intent on thoroughly dominating government and extending very few levers of power to minority parties.

How can this change? At the moment, it’s difficult to conceive. Trump Republicans have a number of plans to further a radical right agenda in America. For our government to become more balanced it will require challenging victories by non-Republicans in congressional and presidential races. Stay tuned to see if that happens.

The post The Gerrymandering Virus – It’s Everywhere! appeared first on Occasional Planet.

(* Entities and characters alluded to here are entirely fictional, and are here imagined for entertainment purposes only. Any resemblance to actual events or persons alive or dead is entirely coincidental.)

In a flurry of activity, the US Taliban, once known as the Supreme Court of Our Lands, has announced another in of its nation-altering faith-based decisions. Rock and roll will no longer be tolerated.

Rock and roll has been on shaky ground ever since Colonel Parker signed Elvis back in the mid-1950’s. For context, see Baz Luhrmann’s ELVIS, currently in cinemas. Elvis shook his hips and the country went bananas.

Chuck Berry and Little Richard, back in the day, pushed those boundaries further. Would it be possible to be black and equal with Elvis, under the law, they posited?

The country’s highest courts at the time didn’t deem it the moment to weigh in on rock and roll, just yet. There was enough going on with the assassination of President Kennedy and the ever-opening chasm in our national schism called the Vietnam War.

Our courts’ decisions then, or non-decisions in fact, meant that we had to bear with Elvis through a decline in his powers until he became a pastiche of what he once was. Over time, his bellbottoms grew wider, his sideburns broader, his metal-studded belts wider and his waist – well broader again. Under Elvis’s reign, rock and roll took a tumble. And so the superstar Las Vegas show came to be.

On the other hand, Elvis’s decline opened the door for the British Invasion of American popular music. The Beatles came in, the Rolling Stones came in, Gerry and the Pacemakers came in. (Is it Pacemakers or Peacemakers – YouTube is still divided.)

The Supreme Court of our Lands hadn’t figured on that, truly.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, Detroit loomed large in popular music. We had the Supremes, the Four Tops, the Temptations, Smokey Robinson, Martha and the Vandellas, Gladys Knight & The Pips and Marvin Gaye.

Our top courts eyed intervention with this large presence of Motown in our popular imagination. It was tricky there for a while until, with the arrival of Lionel Richie, the danger subsided.

Lionel Richie gave the Talibanists here at home time to regroup.

And so, for decades, popular music enthusiasts in the US thought they were home scot-free. Rock and roll morphed and splintered, and gave rise to an enormous myriad of forms, southern rock, country rock, disco, house, heavy metal, soft rock, independent, hiphop, rap, electronic … well, the whole shebang of popular music that has been our life since the boy from Tupelo’s first appearance on Ed Sullivan’s influential TV music show way back when.

Turns out, in the past decades, we were lulled into thinking that rock and roll was our right.

We rocked, bopped and discoed to the Doors, Bruce Springstein, John Melenkamp, the imported Rolling Stones, David Bowie (another import,) Bon Jovi, Prince, Carlos Santana, Donna Summer, Sister Sledge, Gloria Gaynor, Michael Jackson and the Village People.

We could never have enough music in our lives, we thought. Little did we know that we were, in fact, living in a rock and roll golden age.

Ominously, unnoticed, a misogynist real-estate upstart with an oversized ego announced the creation of a presidential exploratory committee on Larry King live in October 1999. How many rock and rollers were watching Larry King in October of that year? Not many.

The real-estate upstart-in-question never dreamed of winning the presidential election. But surely, he thought, he could attract attention to his business ventures with a populist-based political message that went something along the line of Drain the Bayou. At his first attempt at the presidency, nothing. On his second try, bingo!

Whoever could have imagined that this bloated egocentric parvenu would one day mean the end of rock and roll?

Somehow, this nouveau riche wannbe convinced enough people to vote for him, and he was elected the president of the land.

Once President, he was confused, having never anticipating winning, unsure of his charge, and wide open to the influence of his followers on the far right. Under their direction, he – through another twist of fate – came to be be in a position to load the Supreme Court of Our Lands with faith-based fellow adherents. Faith-based fellow adherents is not entirely accurate as our US, democratically elected Supreme Ruler had no principles at all, as far as could be noted.

Thus, we – the United States – left the middle road behind.

And here we are.

Just this past week, we allowed our newly imposed Supreme Leader’s chosen religious leaders to rule that we would no longer have rock and roll in our lives.

I guess our moment of pseudo-freedom was good while it lasted.

All of those songs erased in an instance from YouTube is shocking. The immediate disappearance of rock and roll from our playlists is unprecedented. Now, it appears that we will be prosecuted if we attempt to cross state lines to hear the rock and roll that was once embedded in our lives. Nashville is closing its doors. L.A. will no longer be L.A. without its music industry.

Without precedent, rock and roll is now, at seemingly just a moment’s notice, gone from our lives, Our lives are so hugely different from what they were just weeks ago that it’s hard to fathom. Will we ever return to what we once were? As of this writing, that is completely unsure. Will we ever be able to hear a rock and roll song again? As of this writing, I honestly don’t know.

The post In life-altering decision for the nation, the US Taliban bans rock and roll * appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Age is a moveable number determined by our internal joie de vivre quotient, or so we are often told. According to this premise, we are just as old as we feel. Our true age may be 75 or 85, but we might still prefer to be 50 or 60 in our mind’s eye.

The Internet is awash in pages that celebrate aging well. You can find the

35 Best Age Quotes, 14 of the Best Quotes About Aging, 70 Best Getting Older Quotes About Aging Gracefully and so on and so forth. Amazon has no end of books that want us to get the most out of our later years. Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives is one. Lifespan: Why We Age―and Why We Don’t Have To is another. It turns out that aging may be the only thing that unites all of us living on Planet Earth at any given moment. Each and every one of us here today will be one day older tomorrow if we are blessed to open our eyes in the morning. Or as Eleanor Roosevelt once put it, “Today is the oldest you’ve ever been, and the youngest you’ll ever be again.”

Albert Einstein admonished us: “Do not grow old, no matter how long you live.”  No other than Benjamin Franklin told us that Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late. On aging, Gabriel García Márquez knowingly wrote What happens is that you don’t feel it on the inside, but from the outside everybody can see it.

There is no wealth of opinion zeroed in on aging.

No other than Sophia Loren has had her say: “There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.”  Sorry, Sophia, no matter how well felt your observations, I don’t believe any of us ever defeats age. I prefer Golda Meir’s insight, “Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you are aboard there is nothing you can do about it.”

We all age, whether we like it or not. Sooner of later, thoughts of aging will come home to roost for even the youngest of us alive today.

Many of us, getting older, are happy to share our later years with our family and long established, or even new, friends. We are ready to put our energy to work in the effort of reflection, contributing where we can, thoughtfulness and winding down. We never quite put it in terms of letting go, but yeah we are learning to let go.

Many of us, as I said, but not all.

These days, there are still music stars going strong well on in years – Cher is 76, Streisand 80, Dolly Parton 75, Bob Dylan 80, Ringo Starr 81. Yet, no other than Mike Jagger 78, recently had this to say, Rock ’n’ roll, or any kind of pop music honestly, isn’t supposed to be done when you’re in your 70s. It wasn’t designed for that.

A lot of life, in fact, was never designed for doing in our 70’s or 80’s. Of course, we have never turned to our rock stars to lead us. They get on with their business in the background of our lives. We don’t check in with them on a daily basis. A new song, a new record, drops whenever they have something new to share, every year, every 5 or 10.

We do check in, however, with those we have voted or not voted for, with those in charge of the leadership of our future more often than we should, perhaps, those who have chosen to represent, to influence or to channel their wisdom into setting the best path forward for our children, grandchildren and their grandchildren.

The desire for the glory of leadership in later life, it turns out, is distributed only among a certain few, but that certain few influence, and how, our daily lives to an inordinate degree.

Putin is on the cusp of his 70’s, younger – even if more delusional – than many of his peers. Not far behind him at all, Trump came to office in January 2017, the oldest ever US President at the time, sworn in at the age of 70. If he were to come back to haunt us and win in 2024, he would be 77 on election day and 81 when leaving office. Biden does him one better. Our current President took office when he was 78. If he runs again, wins and completes a second term, he would be 86 by the time 2028 comes round.

Here are a couple of excerpts from a recent New York Times piece on a Biden second term:

To nearly all the Democrats interviewed, the president’s age — 79 now, 82 by the time the winner of the 2024 election is inaugurated — is a deep concern about his political viability. They have watched as a commander in chief who built a reputation for gaffes has repeatedly rattled global diplomacy with unexpected remarks that were later walked back by his White House staff, and as he has sat for fewer interviews than any of his recent predecessors.

… The presidency is a monstrously taxing job and the stark reality is the president would be closer to 90 than 80 at the end of a second term, and that would be a major issue,” said David Axelrod, the chief strategist for Barack Obama’s two winning presidential campaigns.

Trump and Biden are not the only US or world leaders not yet ready to let go.

Queen Elizabeth II is the longest-reigning monarch in the history of the United Kingdom. She recently celebrated he 96th birthday and announced no date to relinquish her powers.

Nicaragua’s dictator, Daniel Ortega, is 76. His accompice wife, Rosario Murillo, is 70.

Republican Mitch McConnell, Senate minority leader, is 80. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, is 82.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was still a Supreme Court Justice when she died at the age of 87.

Diane Feinstein, 88, is at a crossroads. Once again the Times offers insight. Feinstein, the Times reports is far from the towering presence she once was on the American political stage. The Times continues:

At 88, Ms. Feinstein sometimes struggles to recall the names of colleagues, frequently has little recollection of meetings or telephone conversations, and at times walks around in a state of befuddlement — including about why she is increasingly dogged by questions about whether she is fit to serve in the Senate representing the 40 million residents of California, according to half a dozen lawmakers and aides who spoke about the situation on the condition of anonymity.

To age is human. Aging is real. As much as we might try, we cannot deny it. We lose some of our abilities as we get older. Yes, some of us can still do bungee jumps. I can assure you that those are the few and far between. The World Health Organization defines aging thus:

 At the biological level, ageing results from the impact of the accumulation of a wide variety of molecular and cellular damage over time. This leads to a gradual decrease in physical and mental capacity, a growing risk of disease and ultimately death.

Getting older, it turns out, is really a thing.

Benedict XVI ruled his Catholic flock until he resigned as Pope, aged 85, in 2013. He cited a lack of strength of mind and body in annoucing his decision. The present Pope, Francis 85 is ailing in health, and if rumors are true, also on the cusp of announcing his resignation. We should applaud him if that is the case. Knowing when to step down and when to bow out is not only admirable and counter-cultural to a certain extent, but at times necessary.

We set limits for those wanting to enter our leadership roles. To be President of the United States, you have to be at least 35. To be a Senator, you need to be 30. To be a Representative in the House, 25.

Perhaps it’s time to contemplate upper limits for those in power. We don’t have any in place. Life expectancy was not the same when our Constitution, rules and regulations were written. The World Health Organization, again, reminds us that:

People worldwide are living longer. Today most people can expect to live into their sixties and beyond. Every country in the world is experiencing growth in both the size and the proportion of older persons in the population.

… By 2030, 1 in 6 people in the world will be aged 60 years or over. At this time the share of the population aged 60 years and over will increase from 1 billion in 2020 to 1.4 billion. By 2050, the world’s population of people aged 60 years and older will double (2.1 billion). The number of persons aged 80 years or older is expected to triple between 2020 and 2050 to reach 426 million.

The Social Security Agency defines eligibility for full retirement as 66 if you were born from 1943 to 1954. Biden was born in 1942, Trump in 1946. They could both easily step back from the public arena right now with a robust pension if only humility would allow them to do so.

Is that ever going to to happen.

Of course not.

In the meantime, the internet is overflowing with positive sentiment on the plus side of retirement. AAG, (Retire Better) has the 60 Best Inspirational and Funny Retirement Sayings. Senior Living has 30 retirement quotes. Southern Living has its 50 Retirement Quotes That Will Resonate With Any Retiree.

The post Old as the Hills appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Filmmaker Michael Moore was on Chris Hayes’ MSNBC show on Tuesday, May 24, 2022. It was the day of another senseless mass shooting in the United States. The targets this time were once again school children. Twenty-one people in all killed in the town of Uvalde, Texas.

Moore is clearly for strong gun control legislation, but he didn’t say what so many proponents of gun control frequently say, “I believe in the Second Amendment.”

Instead, Moore pointed out how the Second Amendment has essentially given pro-gun people free license in opposing meaningful gun control. Then Moore raised a fascinating hypothetical question. “What if bullets had not been invented until fifty years after the U.S. constitution was written?”

His point was that gun rights are completely different from any other rights in the constitution. All of the other rights would have been relevant in the times of Greece, or Rome, or really any time. These non-gun rights could easily have stood alone without the Second Amendment.  This doesn’t mean that people could not have had guns once they and bullets were invented. The difference is that there would not have been a constitutional guarantee to be able to purchase and possess guns.

There are many who say that even with the Second Amendment, there is no such guarantee. The wording is thoroughly ambiguous:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

It may seem at first that this amendment guarantees people the right to bear arms, but the context is having a well regulated militia. So does the right to bear arms only apply for those who are in a militia (armed forces) or the United States, or can they own guns regardless of whether or not they are in the U.S. military?

This argument is one which America’s gun owners have won. Much as those who favor gun control want immediate new regulations, it appears that it will be years before Congress passes meaningful legislation or the Supreme Court chooses to value public safety above gun rights.

There are numerous reasons why the gun advocates are currently winning this dispute:

1. They own most of the guns, and that frightens many who want to limit gun rights.
2. The roots of the Second Amendment have a great deal to do with slave owners’ rights and needs to hunt down runaway slaves. Creating the constitution required considerable compromise to get southern states to agree to the document. Protecting their control over slaves who were already in the United States was essential to southern states’ acceptance of the constitution. In contemporary American society, many White Americans feel that they need to have guns to protect themselves against Black Americans.
3. Unlike most other democratic countries, the United States has this peculiar institution called states rights. In many cases, the rights of states supersede those of the federal government. For example, the state of Georgia can make a law stating that it is illegal to bring a glass of water to someone standing in line to vote, and currently there is nothing that the federal government can do about it. In the absence of strong federal gun controls, the states pass more “gun rights.”
4. The U.S. Senate favors small and southern states, and those are the states in which gun rights are most deeply cherished. This makes it very difficult to pass meaningful gun control legislation. It might be possible without a filibuster, but that arcane rule is cherished by senators from small states, rural states and southern states.

The United States did not come close to writing a constitution in a time before guns and bullets were invented. The first guns were invented in China in the 10^th Century. Michael Moore was not trying to point out that we almost avoided having the Second Amendment in our Constitution. What he meant is that it is significantly different than any other part of the constitution, and had guns not existed, we would have found a way to agree on the constitution.

It’s one of those “What ifs ….” that keep us thinking. It’s interesting talk, but regrettably, only academic now. Barring some sort of unforeseen circumstances, we’re going to have to live with lightly regulated guns for some time which means that we’ll have more Uvaldes and other mass shootings. The “thoughts and prayers” come easily; meaningful gun control is stymied by the oddity of having the Second Amendment in our Constitution.

The post What if Guns and Bullets Had Not Been Invented Before the Constitution Was Written? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Monday evening an unknown individual inside the United States Supreme Court leaked a draft decision written by Justice Samuel Alito which would explicitly overturn the landmark decisions Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. This would mean the end to a guaranteed federal constitutional protection of abortion rights and at least 22 states, including Missouri, would almost immediately ban abortion entirely. This has been the animating force behind the conservative legal movement for the last two generations and this is their grand triumph which will only embolden the court to go even further. The language of Alito leaves the door open for reconsiderations of Obergefell v. Hodges which legalized same-sex marriage and Lawrence v. Texas which invalidated state laws criminalizing homosexual intercourse, and if you compare his dissent in Obergefell to his draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization it’s not hard to imagine the Court deciding to also “Send the issue back to the states”. The Constitution of the United States of America is in the hands of 6 members of the federalist society, we are entering a new era of American politics.

President Biden has made clear that his administration has no plans to protect abortion access. In a statement the morning after the leak, the President said, “If the Court does overturn Roe, it will fall on our nation’s elected officials at all levels of government to protect a woman’s right to choose. And it will fall on voters to elect pro-choice officials this November.  At the federal level, we will need more pro-choice senators and a pro-choice majority in the House to adopt legislation that codifies Roe, which I will work to pass and sign into law.” It’s important to be clear about two points. The first, is the most important and it is that the president’s party almost always has a bad midterm. Data from fivethirtyeight.com shows a familiar pattern (that I also wrote about in 2021 here) “Overall, in the post-World War II era, the president’s party has performed an average of 7.4 points worse in the House popular vote in midterm elections than it did two years prior. Therefore, since Democrats won the House popular vote by 3.0 points in 2020, Republicans can roughly expect to win it by 4.4 points in 2022 if history is any guide…Indeed, in the 19 midterm elections between 1946 and 2018, the president’s party has improved upon its share of the House popular vote just once. And since 1994, when (we would argue) the modern political alignment took hold, the president’s party has lost the national House popular vote in six out of seven midterm elections — usually by similar margins (6 to 9 percentage points) to boot.”

It took 9/11 for George W. Bush and Impeachment for Bill Clinton, as well as voter coalitions that no longer exist, for them to break history. It is extremely unlikely that President Biden, given his approval ratings, economic conditions, and redistricting will outrun history. The second point is, when Democrats had 60 Senators there were not enough votes to codify Roe into law. In 2022 there are not realistic opportunities to win 60 Senate seats, meaning the only avenue to codifying Roe or expanding the Court or any potential remedy would be through abolishing the filibuster which cannot find 50 votes in the US Senate. Currently in the House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is campaigning for the lone anti-choice Democrat in the House while he has a viable progressive challenger in Jessica Cisneros. This is the state of our opposition party, these individuals are the last line of defense.

There are some who have used this dark moment which represents the greatest contraction of civil rights since the end of Reconstruction to deliver an “I told you so”. These people would like to do historical revisionism about the 2016 election and have taken to blaming the left-wing in this country for the state of the Supreme Court. Generally, it’s not worth engaging in this discourse, but I’ve decided to do so today if not for the sole reason that these narratives are actively hindering the success of any centrist let alone any liberal project in this country. Candidly, we are rapidly approaching different entirely preventable disasters and we shouldn’t waste any more time promulgating useless ideas. So, I’m willing to address the skyscraper sized elephant lurking around this discourse, What if Hillary Clinton had won. It’s probably the most frequent hypothetical among liberals, and my read of the alternative is blessed by hindsight but is not informed by omniscience. This is what I believe would’ve happened, it is not exhaustive of everything that could’ve happened.

It’s important to note that Clinton didn’t lose because of insufficient support from the left. In 2008, Clinton did 13 public campaign events for then-candidate Sen. Barack Obama. In 2016, Sen. Bernie Sanders did 41 public campaign events for Clinton during the general election. In 2008, 25% of Clinton primary voters supported Sen. John McCain. In 2016, only 12% of Sanders supporters voted for Trump, meanwhile 13% of Obama’s 2012 voters supported Trump. Clinton lost because she was the most unpopular Democrat to run for President in the history of modern polling and would’ve been the most unpopular candidate period if not for Donald Trump. In terms of ideology, it’s hard to remember now but a critical number of voters wrongly perceived Trump to be more moderate than Clinton. To imagine a world in which Clinton wins the election is not difficult because in spite of her weak electoral performance and rock bottom approval ratings, she very nearly did win. Let’s imagine that James Comey does not release his October letter which hurt Clinton among late deciders and Clinton narrowly wins Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Florida bringing her to 307 electoral votes. Let’s assume, for Clinton’s sake, that her improved margin extends down ballot which would mean victories in the Pennsylvania and Missouri Senate races and probably an additional 2-3 house seats. This would give her the exact same evenly divided Senate the Biden has but a GOP controlled House. So, what would have happened to Antonin Scalia’s vacant seat?

President Hillary Clinton would submit her nominee to the Senate Judiciary Committee, likely Sri Srinivasan of the D.C. Circuit or Jane Kelly of the 8^th Circuit. The nomination would advance deadlocked from the committee, NeverTrump Republicans like former Sen. Jeff Flake would not adopt their current faux moderate posture without Trump as a foil but would return to the vapid anti-Clinton rhetoric that dominated the 90s. It is likely that Republicans would filibuster this Supreme Court nomination, led perhaps by Sen. Ted Cruz who would now likely be heir-apparent for the 2020 nomination or Sen. Jeff Sessions who instead of being disgraced former Attorney General would be an ideological leader in the GOP Conference. Even without the filibuster, the nomination is in jeopardy as Sen. Manchin is non-committal about supporting the nominee and no GOP Senator wants to cast the deciding vote in favor. Senate Majority Leader Schumer undertakes an effort to abolish the Senate filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, it fails 47-53 with Senators Joe Donnelly, Heidi Heitkamp, and Joe Manchin voting with all Republicans. President Clinton is forced to withdraw her nomination and through a compromise with Mitch McConnell and Chuck Grassley nominates then Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada, a “moderate” Republican. He is confirmed with all 50 Democrats and 16 Republicans voting in favor. Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Republican appointed by Reagan, opts not to retire while Democrats control the Senate and Presidency. Justice Ginsburg again postpones retirement, fearing that she too will be replaced by a conservative compromise candidate.

In 2018, Democrats suffer sweeping loses in the midterm elections. Republicans elect Josh Hawley in Missouri, Rick Scott in Florida, Joe Donnelly in Indiana, and Kevin Cramer in North Dakota just like in our reality. However, Republicans also pick up West Virginia and Montana while holding Nevada as Democrats narrowly squeak by in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. There is no special election in Minnesota, Democrats don’t force Al Franken to resign and launch at attempt to discredit the MeToo movement as liberal figures like Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey find themselves accused of sexual misconduct. This is done partially to protect the tenuous Democratic majority, but also to discredit renewed criticism of former President Bill Clinton as his connections to child sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein become public knowledge during a special counsel investigation lead by Robert Mueller was launched by the House early in the administration. On January 3^rd, Mitch McConnell becomes Senate Majority leader once again with 55 seats. Democrats make gains in the House, although still in the minority they make gains in the suburbs bringing their numbers just above 200.

In 2019, Several Republicans announce their candidacies for President including Sen. Ted Cruz fresh off his double-digit re-election, Governor Nikki Haley, and Sen. Tom Cotton while Speaker Paul Ryan forms an exploratory committee before ultimately deciding against a run. Donald Trump is speculated to be a potential candidate, but instead successfully pivots his failed run for President into a New York Times best-selling novel with accompanying docuseries chronicling his rise to the GOP nomination self-describing as a “populist revolutionary”. Clinton herself faces a spirited primary challenge from Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley (the lone member of the Senate to endorse Sanders in 2016), and he wins the New Hampshire primary as well as a few caucuses, but he is never seriously close to overtaking Clinton and she wraps up the nomination before mid-March. The pandemic still rages across the globe in 2020, in the United States the pandemic is made worse by a severe economic recession. President Clinton and the GOP Congress deadlock on several fronts and settle on a relief package that mirrors the 2009 recovery, however it is not passed until May leaving millions scrambling to compete for resources from overwhelmed nonprofits. Infections are lower than our current reality because Clinton never disempowers the CDC and is prepared for a pandemic level event, but anti-lockdown activity begins earlier and is more violent as people are animated not just by anti-science conspiracy but also anti-Clinton sentiment. In September, Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies, and Republicans hold open her seat for the duration of the 2020 Election. President Clinton is likely defeated, not since the election of 1820 have there been 2 successive 2 term presidents of the same political party. If Clinton did win re-election, it’s hard to imagine Democrats having better midterm prospects in 2022 than what they face today. When she does lose, Republicans appoint Attorney General Pam Bondi of Florida or perhaps law professor Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Anthony Kennedy retires shortly thereafter, and Judge Brett Kavanaugh is elevated to his seat. Roe and Casey are functionally though not explicitly overruled in a 5-4 decision, with Sandoval joining the liberal minority in dissent.

Seeing as a Clinton victory might not have been enough to avoid our current reality, what would’ve needed to happen to avoid this nightmare? You don’t have to get into butterfly effect level science fiction or have had psychic super power to be able to imagine how things could’ve gone differently. If:

1. At any point between 2009 and 2015, if Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had opted to retire, abortion rights, voting rights, labor rights, and many civil liberties would not be facing near certain annihilation. In 2013, Ginsburg had battled cancer twice by the age of 80 and the political environment in Washington was increasingly polarized. It was clear to contemporary writers that should Republicans capture the Senate, something they were heavily favored to do given the history of midterm elections, because of rising partisanship it would be unlikely that a liberal successor could be confirmed. At the time, the balance of the court was 3 hard right conservatives, 2 center-right conservatives, and 4 liberals. The few liberal victories of the 21^st century were generally 5-4 decisions, and the disappearance of any justice would have a dramatic impact on constitutional law. Furthermore, the disappearance of a liberal justice would of course mean a hard right turn in the court at least until a conservative vacancy appeared. Ginsburg, understanding the stakes of her decision opted not to retire. When she died, as an attempt to shield her legacy perhaps realizing the disastrous effect of her decision to not retire, sheepishly relayed a message that she knew would not be honored. Ginsburg had no reason to believe her replacement would not be a woman, as President Obama had nominated both Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Ginsburg had no reason to believe that her replacement would be less liberal, as Sotomayor actually disagreed more with Kavanaugh, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts than Ginsburg did in the 2019 term. There was no reason for Ginsburg to do what she did, and that decision more than anything else is responsible for this moment.
2. In 2014 and 2010, Democrats lost several close Senate races and spent tens of millions of dollars on blowout losing races. If the party had decided to abandon clear losers and directed that spending elsewhere, Democrats might’ve had a Senate majority in 2016 when Scalia died. Which would’ve meant a liberal Supreme Court, not just a not as far right one, but a genuine liberal majority which hasn’t existed in generations. Let’s look at the 2010 races, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (AR-D) spent $12 million for 37% of the vote, Gov. Charlie Crist (FL-I) and Rep. Kendrick Meek (FL-D) spent a collective $23 million to receive 29.7% and 20.2% of the vote respectively, and Robin Carnahan (MO-D) spent $10 million to receive 40.6% of the vote. Meanwhile Democratic Senate candidates in Illinois and Pennsylvania failed by less than 2% of the vote. What might an extra $45 million split between the two of them have meant? So, what about 2014? Mark Pryor (AR-D) spent $14 million to receive 39% of the vote and Alison Lundergan Grimes spent $18 million to receive 41% of the vote. Meanwhile, Democrats lost Alaska, Colorado, and North Carolina by less the 2.3%. If those races had broken Democrats way, they would’ve certainly had enough votes to Supreme Court Justice. Unfortunately, this pattern has only intensified as Democrats burned a whopping $250 million dollars to be beaten by double digits in Kentucky, South Carolina, and Alabama while losing several close House races.
3. In 2009, Democrats could’ve attempted to codify Roe. For 3 months, Democrats had a filibuster proof majority and then just shy of it the rest of that congressional term. There were likely enough Pro-Choice Republicans to overcome the objections of Anti-Choice Democrats, and even if compromise legislation had to be crafted it is a near certainty that it would’ve been better than our current system which has allowed states like Texas and Mississippi to ban abortion without outright doing so. It certainly would’ve been better than allowing a conservative court to decide the fate of abortion. But the fault on this one doesn’t lay solely with Harry Reid, but with President Barack Obama. In 2007, he said at a speech to Planned Parenthood that the first thing he’d do as President was sign the “Freedom of Choice Act” which would’ve codified Roe. Before he’d been President 100 days, it had been completely dropped from his agenda and he said of the bill that it was “not my highest legislative priority” and apparently not a priority at all.

That leaves just one burning question, what can we do now? Some of you will be tempted to say “vote!” or some variation of “elect more Democrats”. I’d like you to just consider this, for a moment. In 2018, more than half of Americans could not name a single Supreme Court Justice. Although most Americans (71%) blame Vladimir Putin and Oil companies (68%) for the rising cost of oil, however a majority also blame President Biden (51%) and Democratic Party policies (52%). Most voters don’t perceive politics through the lens of obsessive partisan observers, and often are more likely to see correlations and be unaware of longer-term trends. This is all to say that there is a critical mass of voters who will say “Why should I be convinced that my support has mattered or will matter? I’ve always voted for Democrats, and they just beat Trump so why is this happening.” If Abortion rights disappear while Democrats control congress and the Presidency, the fine details will be lost and I don’t think it’s logical to assume that the response among voters will be a Democratic surge. Although, you should support candidates who support abortion rights when given the opportunity. It’s important to keep protesting, donate to abortion funds to support people who are going to have trouble finding access, and testify against state efforts to criminalize abortion.  But beyond that, what else is there? Not much that isn’t 10 years too late. What’s really important is for the left to develop a sense of our place of history and work towards a long-term vision for society. The right knows who they are and where they are going and have been working for it since the New Deal. We must have that same determination and will or there will come a day when we wake up in a country that we do not recognize as our own. We may already be there.

The post Would President Hillary Clinton have saved Roe? Probably Not appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In 1959, Chuck Berry had a hit with a song called Back in the USA, a rock ‘n roll propelled love anthem to America. The lyrics went:

Oh well, oh well, I feel so good today
We touched ground on an international runway

… New York, Los Angeles, oh, how I yearned for you
Detroit, Chicago, Chattanooga, Baton Rouge
Let alone just to be at my home back in ol’ St. Lou

.… Well, I’m so glad I’m livin’ in the U.S.A.
Yes, I’m so glad I’m livin’ in the U.S.A.
Anything you want, we got right here in the U.S.A.

Just about a decade later, in November 1968, the Beatles led off their White Album with a tongue-in-cheek riff on the East-West divide going on at the time, a track called Back in the USSR, a shout-out to Chuck Berry.

The Beatles lyrics went:

… back in the USSR
You don’t know how lucky you are, boy

Back in the US
Back in the US
Back in the USSR

Then the Beatles segued into a spoof of the Beach Boys – California Girls:

… Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out
They leave the west behind
And Moscow girls make me sing and shout

And then back to:

… I’m back in the USSR
You don’t know how lucky you are, boys
Back in the USSR

The Beatles brought many new Russian fans on board with Back in the USSR, among them a certain Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the very same thug now directing genocide against the people of Ukraine. But the Beatles were just messing around. Back in the USSR was not a love anthem to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had just invaded Czechoslovakia in August of that same year, 1968, and the Beatles were well aware of that. The song had its base in irony.

In a changed world, Paul McCartney later sang the song at a concert in Moscow’s Red Square in 2003, and Putin was in attendance. At that Red Square concert, everywhere you looked Moscovites were rockin’ and rollin,’ happy as hell that they were being acknowledged by McCartney. Putin was deadpan, perhaps already fixated on how he might recreate the empire that the Beatles had satirized and that McCartney was now flaunting right in front of him in Moscow. Putin was not amused by the irony.

All water under the bridge now that Comrade Vlad has directed his military might to invade and attempt to choke off life in Ukraine.

Despite the passage of time, inter-connected world economies, the acceptance of Russia as a partner, glasnost, the internet, Facebook, TikTok, Telegram and Twitter, here we are looking at an East-West divide, the likes of which we never imagined possible at the beginning of the third decade of the 21st century.

And what the fu .. why (expletive removed)?

Well, just maybe because Putin, going about his daily life as a dictator par excellence in Russia in 2022, has an ego even greater than Trump’s. Putin is mega-egotistical, eager for a mention in history equal to that of his heroine Catherine the Great, paranoiac in the extreme and, unfortunately for the rest of us, someone with a uniquely manhood-threatened view of civilization. He has his finger on a nuclear trigger, something that Stalin and Hitler never had. His mention in history, if the there ever is a history after this, is sure to be in the column of the latter.

Once, we might have imagined, in our innocence, that Paul McCartney knew what he was doing, penning a guitar-driven rock song that the world – Russia included – could twist-and-shout to.

Oh, how silly we were.

All the while, our real future was being decided in Comrade Putin’s mind.

Here in the USA, we were dutifully electing a new President every four years. Back in the USSR of his dreams, the de facto ruler of Russia since December 1999, according to Wikipedia, Putin was upending the last 22 years of history, consolidating power, readying his new Russia for the moment when he might recreate some semblance of his lost Soviet empire.

Soviet, you might just reasonably ask, What is that exactly?

Basically, Soviet is a synonym for Communist, an elected community council that makes decisions for a society, a country, no dissension allowed.

It’s a world vision that went out of favor in 1991 when the Soviet Union was dissolved, an empire that consisted of none other than Russia, but also Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

In the world at large, we may have thought Soviet was forever gone from our reality, a thing of the past.

In 1991, the Soviet Union was replaced by something called the Commonwealth of Independent States. The Bush Administration at the time quickly recognized the independence of Ukraine and other former Soviet republics. And some of those newly independent states immediately understood their opportunity. Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, fast aligned themselves with Europe and the West, and over a relatively short period of time became NATO members.

And so Soviet was gone from the world stage, or so we wished ourselves into thinking.

Except, Soviet was not gone. Soviet had one major shareholder remaining.

That major USSR shareholder was not at all discouraged, put off or disheartened by past Soviet setbacks or failures, but in a cockeyed view of world politics, found himself not only the President of Russia, but capable of invading a previous ally to inflict unprecedented death, pain and destruction on Ukraine.

That shareholder’s name is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

His goal?

To drag us all back to a pre-McCartney, pre-Beatles era, to a psuedo-utopia, a ghost empire that he has convinced himself he can regroup called the USSR?

What a blockhead, what a fu..-up (expletive again removed.)

Pardon my French.

The post Back in the USSR appeared first on Occasional Planet.

History is something that binds us all together, and that includes an unlikely pairing of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the affirmative action movement in the United States. To understand the motives of why Putin feels so possessively towards Ukraine and why affirmative action is central to the advancement of minorities, we must draw upon the history of both.

To comprehend why Putin is so interested in protecting his interests in Ukraine, it’s necessary to consider how since the time of Napoleon, more than two hundred years ago, Russia has repeatedly been attacked from its west. There have been three major incursions into Russia from other European countries. First was Napoleon from France in 1812. Second was Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm in 1914 and third was Germany again, this time under Adolf Hitler in 1941.

When the Soviet Union was formed in 1922, there was Russia and sixteen other states nearby republics. One of those sixteen was Ukraine, which was one of the founding republics in the U.S.S.R. Other republics that came to form a barrier of protection around Russia were Armenia, Azerbaijan, Byelorussia, Estonia, Georgia, Kirghizstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (there were four others that came later).

What early leaders of the Soviet Union, including Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, did was to form a protective shell around Russia. In some ways, it is similar to the United States asserting that it has control of the Americas (North, Central and South) through the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. The U.S. has engaged European countries twice to “protect the independence of Cuba.” First was in 1898 with the Spanish-American War and then in 1962 in staring down Russia in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The key point is that both Russia and the United States have acted in ways to protect themselves from invasion. Each has formed geographic barriers around its borders. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, it left Russia in many ways unprotected.

For many years post-1989, the Ukraine had a government friendly to Russia. However, in recent years, Ukraine has become more independent and interested in developing closer relations with western Europe. Economic trade between western Europe and Ukraine has increased and Ukraine has also asked to become part of the western defense alliance, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization).

For Vladimir Putin and many others in Russia, this is scary. This is also not the way it should be according to the Russian playbook. Russia’s field of reference is the Soviet Union of old, in which Ukraine and other republics on its western flank protected it from western incursion, or western even influence.

In this light, it makes sense that Putin would want to take control of the Ukrainian government. In his mind, doing so would include the possibility of using military force to do so.

I am not asserting that NATO countries, including the United States, should just stand by and let Russia invade Ukraine without consequences. But it is important to understand that Russia has valid reasons to want to control Ukraine. That is something that is very different from when they placed offensive missiles in Cuba in 1962, a country thousands of miles outside of their “sphere of interest.”

So, drawing upon history, it is important to understand from where Russia comes and why it is important for NATO countries to negotiate with Putin. One component of an agreement might be to include a declaration agreeing not to include Ukraine in NATO now, but to have a sunset provision whereby the issue could be reconsidered in twenty years.

In many ways, looking at Russia’s current desires is not that different from the ways in which many white people in the United States look at minorities. In 2019, the New York Times Magazine devoted an entire issue to the history of African-Americans, beginning with the estimated first day that slaves from Africa arrived on the American shore of the colony of Virginia.

Lead author of the 1619 Project, Nicole Hannah-Jones, does a remarkable job of connecting the elements of slavery to current problems that African-Americans face. She is joined by a number of other outstanding writers who provide more detail on subjects such as how urban interstate highways have been intentionally designed to divide black neighborhoods, how the work of slaves on southern plantations provided need for investment and eventually the establishment of the New York Stock Exchange. The work of the Times is greatly supplemented by lessons from the Pulitzer Center.

Many white people are now getting upset about Critical Race Theory, which is simply a recognition of how contemporary conditions (good and bad) for African-Americans is a result of the history of blacks in America.

It is because of the discrimination that black people have endured in America, now for more than 400 years, that programs such as Affirmative Action have been needed, and still are. Affirmative Action is a policy or a program that seeks to redress past discrimination through active measures to ensure equal opportunity, as in education and employment.

Affirmative Action is not something that is limited to race. It is used for those who are economically disadvantaged, or for people with disabilities, or for women. It is necessary to balance the playing field.

White people need to understand the history of minorities, just as NATO countries need to understand the history of Russia. To be fair, the reverse is true in each case. On a global level, if we are going to live peacefully and with justice, it is important to understand one another’s history.

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