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.”

The post “Secular Humanists with Jewish Last Names” 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.

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.

Being a Republican in Congress is a lot easier than being a Democrat. That’s because there are very few things that Republicans have or want to do. Most Democrats have full plates in front of them as they want to reform our society so that government provides a strong and secure safety net for all of us, particularly those most at risk. If we reach a point of gridlock, of stalemate, it is the right that wins, because if nothing happens, that is exactly what they want.

In the wake of the January 6, 2021 insurrection and other rebellious acts from the right, there is increasing talk of a new American civil war. What shape it might take is open to all kinds of interpretation. It certainly would not be like America’s first civil war, or even a feared possible upcoming war between Russia and Ukraine.

That does not mean there would not be violence. The January 6 insurrection resulted in the deaths of five individuals and the injuring of hundreds. The Right certainly does not hesitate to use threats of violence against those with whom they merely disagree.

For example, Fox News anchor Jesse Watters recently told a group of conservatives to “ambush” Dr. Anthony Fauci with questions and “go in for kill shot.” Fox News has not reprimanded Watters; in fact, they have not said a word about his using their platform to threaten to kill someone. Fox did the same things with correspondent Lara Logan who compared Fauci to the Nazi doctor Joseph Mengele (also included in the clip below).

As we approach the end of 2021, the Washington Post reports “Inside the nonstop pressure campaign by Trump allies to get election officials to revisit the 2020 vote.” The Big Lie continues more than thirteen months after the 2020 safe, secure and democratic elections.

The fallout has spread from the six states where Trump sought to overturn the outcome in 2020 to deep-red places such as Idaho, where officials recently hand-recounted ballots in three counties to refute claims of vote-flipping, and Oklahoma, where state officials commissioned an investigation to counter allegations that voting machines were hacked.

The important point in the article is that the Trumpsters are continuing their efforts to intimidate Republican-controlled state legislatures to undo the past and change the future so that free and fair elections become something of the past.

A “civil war” could include numerous other acts of aggression by the right including the intimidation of teachers, vigilante forces, Congressional action to not raise the debt limit and not fund necessary programs that are the framework of our social and economic safety net.

COVID has already played a key role in dividing the nation and threatens to do so for some time to come. Samuel Goldman in The Week suggests:

I’m not the first to compare the way of thinking about the pandemic still dominant in official statements to the military disasters of the last two decades. My colleague Noah Millman and the journalist Daniel McCarthy have both noted parallels between the interminable conflicts that followed 9/11 and the “war” on COVID. “Like the old Afghan government,” Millman wrote, “those in charge of public health have little practical ability to shape events. But they speak as if they are sovereign and in control.”

It is hard to imagine what aggressive actions those on the Left may take. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, extremists far to the left of the Democratic Party engaged in bombing attacks on both public and private buildings. But there was very little coordinated about that and as it became apparent that the bombings were counter-productive, the bombings essentially ended.

Regrettably, there is very little that the Right needs to do now to win a “civil war.” The current stalemate allows those on the Right to generally get their way.

Progressive legislation will not pass. The right to safe and legal abortions will be ended in most states when Roe v. Wade is overturned, elections will be rigged to favor far-right Republicans, COVID and other infectious diseases will continue to run rampant, gun-control measures will not be passed, climate change legislation will stall and those who do not agree with those on the Right will live in fear of violence.

The only real way that progressives and others can prevent an escalated “civil war” is by winning big in elections and having protections against Republican electoral manipulation. This means that the U.S. Senate is going to have to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act in order to maximize the chances of free and fair elections. Additionally, Democrats are going to have to figure out a way to elevate the popularity of Joe Biden and improve their chances of winning 2022 Congressional races. Perhaps a backlash to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade would help, but that seems unlikely.

The stakes are truly high for progressives; we need to do all that we legally and non-violently can do.

The post Why A “Civil War” Would Be So Hard for Progressives to “Win” appeared first on Occasional Planet.

There once was a time when most Americans revered the Constitution. The charter outlined how we mortals  structured our government so that reason and fairness were two of the guiding principles. But thanks to Donald Trump and the current generation of Republicans, our governmental structure no longer has clear definition. The rules governing what we can do are suddenly whimsical and chaotic. Where there used to be rhyme and reason, now we have fragmentation and dysfunction. Republican presidents, legislatures and judges have replaced the discretion with how we interpret the Constitution with blatant self-interest.

The reason is that Trump and his followers have little respect for preserving and strengthening the institutions and procedures that for so long have protected our democracy. If the rules do not provide most Republicans with unfair advantages, they rebel against the rules and try to change them, throwing caution to the wind.

The U.S. Constitution outlines a few basic principles that control how government in America is supposed to work. Just for quick review, here are the most fundamental of these.

1. Checks and balances. Each level of government has three branches: (a) executive, (b) legislative, and (c) judicial.
2. Levels of government. We have our national government, the federal government, the fifty states, and tens of thousands of local governments. Presumably the states are the most powerful because they came first. But the federal government has certain clear rights over the states, such as control of interstate commerce or the power to print money and control banking.

Local governments are closest to we the people and that gives the localities certain inherent advantages. For instance, public schools are controlled by local communities. Yet, the states give charters to local governments including school districts and thus the states can dictate a great deal about how we live, work and play.

Historically, the constitution has helped bring order to how our legislators pass laws and executives enforce the laws. But deciding who makes which rules can be extremely complicated. For two centuries, our constitution was helped by a strong measure of common sense among the electorate. An informed electorate with belief in the Constitution helped in determining which branches of government, or which levels of government (federal, state, or local) would make which decisions, and what would be the parameters of those choices.

Now we are finding that all levels and entities of government are wildly scrambling to advance their own power, regardless of the principles of the Constitution or historical precedent. In the world of the truly absurd, we currently find that the governor of Florida (Ron DeSantis) is telling public school districts that they cannot mandate students and teachers to wear masks to school to provide more protection from COVID-19. This is the kind of problem that historically has been solved by agreements largely forged through precedent and a commitment to promoting the common good. A school board would have control over the day-to-day operations of the school, and currently almost all local boards in the United States want to provide as much safety as possible for students, teachers, administrators and other staff.

But Republicans like DeSantis want to maximize the power of their offices and positions, showing little regard for America’s historical relationships branches and levels of government. Our system is now confusing, unpredictable, arbitrary, and capricious.

The answers to the “Who Decides” questions are not easy. The Trump era can show us how far off any beaten path we can go with these questions. It is enough to make your head spin. But that sort of dizziness has been avoided for most of the lifespan of our country because there were sound rules in our Constitution, and behavioral norms kept anyone from pulling DeSantis tricks.

Federalism was a brilliant idea conceived by our founders. It helps us determine publicly beneficial answers to a myriad of questions about “Who Decides.” But it is based on good will among citizens of different political persuasions. We will never recover from the damage of Donald Trump and his legions until they recognize the importance of governing by the rules that have provided us with a large measure of stability for most of the past two and a half centuries. Regrettably, the record of politicians gone wild in acknowledging their mistakes and reinstating the basic principles of governance is not good.

Progressives will need to reach out to others to try to forge relations built on reason and concern for the common good.

The post Republicans are destroying our founders’ Federalism appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In 2021, as summer ebbs into fall, Democrats are concerned with a number of issues, but perhaps most importantly, abortion. It has become a wildcard issue because the Supreme Court has rendered a decision regarding it that neither is supreme nor courtly.

Bullies and cowards often travel together, and that is precisely how Republicans have acted regarding the latest legislation from the hallowed halls of the capitol of Texas. The Lone Star state has enacted the strictest abortion law in the land. Essentially it outlaws any abortion that would be performed approximately six weeks following conception. That’s the bullying part – exercising arbitrary and capricious power to encroach on a basic human right. And, of course, the Republicans chose to place far more restraints on the women of Texas rather than the men. In case you have forgotten, men don’t need abortions.

The cowardice angle is that the state is relieved of any enforcement responsibilities. Rather than have state authorities monitor abortion clinics for alleged crimes, the state “farms out” responsibility for enforcement to the citizens of Texas, or for that matter, the citizens of any other state who might happen to be in Texas. They are empowered to sue any woman in Texas who chooses to have a prohibited abortion.

The “infraction” is not settled in criminal court; rather in civil court where the “apprehender” or bounty hunter can seek to recover as much as $10,000 from a fine levied on the woman seeking the abortion. In further acts of cowardice, the law states that not only can a woman receiving an abortion be sued, but any other person who is “complicit” with her can as well. This could be the receptionist at the abortion clinic, the Uber driver who gives her a lift to the clinic, and any healthcare professional who works or volunteers at the clinic.

Indeed, Americans live in a strange country when the supreme court of the land, operating under the jurisdiction of the world’s oldest and presumed fairest constitution, cannot find one, much less dozens of reasons, to rule this sham of a law unconstitutional.

Almost all conservatives vehemently oppose abortion. Is there anything that draws a similar opposition from progressives?

How about gun control? Just as conservatives see abortion as an issue if life, progressives see unfettered gun rights as a matter of life, and death. Ever since 1973, when abortion became legal in the United States in the Roe v. Wade ruling, conservatives have been successful at chipping away at abortion rights to the point where now in Texas, over 85% of what were legal abortions are now against the law. Dozens of other states are fashioning similarly draconian laws.

During that same forty-eight-year period of time since Roe v. Wade, progressives have been trying to chip away at gun rights in the interest of gun safety. In 1973, Richard Nixon was still hanging on to his presidency with its law and order mantra. The rate of violent crime in the United States was growing rapidly. Conservatives favored stricter laws against gun crimes. Some progressives favored stronger penalties as well, but most wanted to deal with the root of the problem, the presence of guns, legal and illegal, on the streets and in the homes of Americans.

How much progress have progressives made in reducing the number and the of guns in America and the power of the types that are legally permitted? The answer is virtually none. In 1994, with Bill Clinton as president, the Democratic Congress passed a ten-year ban with the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act. It did outlaw some powerful weapons, but there was the sunset provision, limiting the restrictions to ten years before the law had to be renewed.

Conservatives were outraged that the bill passed. Less than two months after the bill became law, the first nail was hammered into its coffin as Newt Gingrich and the conservative Republicans took over Congress. By the time that the ten-year life of the bill was over in 2004, Republican George W. Bush was president, and he was in a position to veto any extension of the law. Since that period, gun laws have not been strengthened; they have been weakened.

So, suppose that progressives wanted to counter the strength of guns in America in a fashion similar to what Republicans have done with abortion. If there was to be symmetry in their strategy to what Republicans did, they would choose to not have any have any government agencies or officials involved in enforcing the laws.

Instead, they would set up a bounty system similar to what Texas Republicans have done to curtail abortions. Progressives would pass a law that would enable citizens to monitor the presence of weapons, particularly assault weapons, in the streets, workplaces, schools and homes of America.

That way, progressives could try to be like conservatives and bully their foes. They could establish un-armed posses to travel throughout America, to wherever guns are present. They could courteously go to gun stores, gun shows, bars, gang hideouts and wherever else there might be high concentrations of guns and please ask the owners (legal or illegal) to surrender their weapons in return for a summons to appear in court. This method by progressives to deal with guns would have a parallel construction to how conservatives in Texas are currently dealing with abortions.

Conservatives would be pleased with these parallel laws. All that they would have to do would be to take a picture of a woman about to have an abortion, along with anyone assisting her, and issue a warrant for their arrest. They show up in court and their work is done and they are richer.

Progressives would simply take pictures of people with guns and find a way to serve a warrant on the gun owners and be sure to say ‘please’ when they do so.

This is what conservatives call fair. They can act like bullies and prevent a woman from having control of her body while the other side must forcefully try to confiscate powerful firearms.

Yes, the absurdity is very clear to progressives; not at all to conservatives. This is why conservatives are winning so many of the battles these days. They get to use firearms as their weapon of choice; progressives use a basic right on human reproduction. If you can’t see a power imbalance in this conundrum, look again.

The post Limiting guns vs. limiting abortions: The right wing wins again appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Conventional wisdom says that “in polite company,” we don’t talk about sex, politics, or religion. Of the three, sex is clearly the least comfortable topic to broach.

You see, sex is a ‘hot’ topic; it’s erotic. Some may regard sex as joy; others regard it with shame; and still others with no apparent emotion. While nearly everyone has an opinion about it that does not mean that all are willing to engage in open conversation about sex.

This problem is particularly difficult with the topic of abortion. When abortion is brought up, what is missing is the honesty in the conversation – the honesty about how and why a woman becomes pregnant; what her thinking was before, during and after the act, and how the impregnator (the man) can frequently walk away from an act in which he was either an aggressor or a collaborator or some combination of the two.

Under the best of circumstances, the sex act is a consensual on the part of both individuals. At the time, the two may or may not have desired to pro-create. Under the best of circumstances, this is how the human race commits acts of love and carries on its existence from generation to generation.

But it doesn’t always evolve that way. There are numerous ways for complications or unfortunate circumstances to develop. Following the intercourse, the couple may decide that they are not in love and no longer want to be joint parents to a child.

If both believe in a traditional nuclear family, then the change in their relationship may cause one or both to decide that now is not a good time to give birth to a child. This can be particularly so with the woman who bears major responsibility for the pregnancy and the subsequent child-rearing.

Another dynamic may also be that there are other life changes for one or both progenitors. One is diagnosed with an illness or sustains an injury. It clearly is not a good time to bring a child into the world.

It may also be that as the adults’ lives evolve during the months following the pregnancy, that one or both parties decide that they are not ready to be parents; that they feel a greater compulsion now to pursue a career or avocation. This may seem crass to a strict pro-life advocate, but it is among the myriad of reasons why one or both parties to a pregnancy may want an abortion at a difficult time.

Perhaps the most likely cause of one or both parents not wanting to carry a pregnancy to term is that the process started off informally and then morphed into a “we just want to have a good time” occasion and little or no thought was given to a possible pregnancy during the act of intercourse.

The arguments in favor of abortion for women who have been victims of rape or incest are so compelling that it is hard to fathom why anyone would oppose them. It is often said that many conservatives are mean-spirited; their opposition to abortion following a rape or incest adds clear evidence to that assertion.

All of these reasons are tried and true parts of the ongoing human experience. As you read this, similar scenarios to the ones described above are happening all around the globe, and there is no stopping them.

Because sex is viewed by most as either ‘hot’ or ‘cold,’ most people have reasons to not discuss it in so-called polite company. But it’s too tempting to simply ignore. So rather than pretend that it does not exist, most of us, and especially the news media, either ignore it, or talk about it in code. This is something in which conservatives are exceptionally skilled. They frame issues in a way that do not use literal definitions. Instead, that they are cloaked in verbiage that assuages those conservatives who think that the only way to reference it is to disguise it. They talk about it as life, and what could be more pure. But their big fallacy is that they totally ignore the life of the mother, and the father. The force of the conservatives is so strong that it essentially inundates the mainstream media as well.

Conservatives will continue to dominate the abortion issue and wreak tremendous damage on the civil liberties and economic well-being of non-conservatives. The alternative is for progressives to discuss abortion and sex at the same time, and describe how abortion policy without a realization that “sex happens” will never reflect reality, empathy, and respect for basic civil liberties. Come on, progressives. News organizations now let us use the ‘F’ word as an expletive; why can’t we talk about it for what it really means. It will greatly help the whole country better come to terms with the abortion issue and make more logical and empathetic decisions.

The post Progressives need to move beyond their fear of talking about abortion appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Ellen DeGeneres was pictured palling around with former President George W. Bush at a Dallas Cowboys game and a lot of people were outraged. Ellen was unmoved and in fact she was indignant about their outrage. Ellen quoted a tweet that said her friendship with the former President gave the tweeter “faith in America again” and argued that we should be friends with people who disagree with us. On its surface, it’s a valid point so let’s take a look at when it’s fine to be friends with those people whose politics we find “disagreeable”.

It’s fine if they voted for George W. Bush.

It’s definitely not fine if they are now or have ever been George W. Bush.

It’s fine if they supported the war in Iraq, although if they supported it even after the surge you probably don’t want to let them pick the restaurant you eat at because clearly, they lack sound judgment.

It’s not fine if they started the war in Iraq and are directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and the continued destabilization of the Middle East.

It’s fine if they have conservative opinions on LGBTQ+ rights. Well not fine per se but those decisions are up to every individual who they choose to associate with.

It’s not fine if they went on prime-time television to demand that America amend our constitution to make sure that gay people couldn’t get married or enjoy the same rights as other citizens. It’s also not fine if they were in a position of power to protect LGBTQ+ persons from hate crimes, perhaps through a law named in honor of Matthew Shepard, and then killed the legislation.

It’s fine if they like Brett Kavanaugh or don’t believe the credible accusations from Dr. Blasey-Ford.

It’s not fine if they hired Brett Kavanaugh (giving him credibility among conservative jurists) and successfully lobbied congress for his appointment to the Supreme Court.

It’s fine if they have a different view of enhanced interrogation and whether Guantanamo Bay should remain open.

It’s not fine if they made the United States into a torture nation while routinely abusing international human rights and our constitution. It’s not fine if they sanctioned the rollback of our civil liberties and empowered an unaccountable super intelligence state.

This isn’t about policing George Bush for thought crime or a difference of political opinion. It’s about his acting out his politics as the leader of the free world and most powerful person on earth and very much materially harming millions of people. Ellen and other liberals defending Bush are revealing more about themselves than they think they are about their detractors. They are indifferent to human suffering and they view their lives as existing outside of politics, for them this is an issue of class solidarity. How quickly we forget the villains of yesterday because of our current temporary discomfort with the incumbent. Liberals have forgiven Kissinger in spite of Cambodia, they’ve attempted to claim Reagan as their own because of his anti-Russia bent despite his 8 years of global carnage, and they’ve even invited the late John McCain into their hearts because he was polite while loudly promoting every potential war no matter the civilian cost. We shouldn’t be surprised if in 10 years we witness the rehabilitation of Trump because liberals are disgusted by President Josh Hawley. They’ll say “oh what a man Trump was. He served with distinction and openness though we disagreed. Where have all the Trumps gone?” The collective amnesia of the liberal establishment and the American public is disheartening. We need to learn to love one another again, but let’s not start with Bush.

The post Politically Divergent Friendships, When They’re Fine vs. When They’re Not appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice made me cry. And that, I’m sure, is not a unique experience. I can’t speak for the busloads of other people who were there, and I can’t pretend to know how black people feel when they see this stunning, symbolic representation of the thousands of lynchings in America’s sordid racial history. I can only say that, for me, it evoked deep sorrow and outrage at the cruelty that human beings are capable of inflicting upon others.

As a fitting prelude to visiting what has come to be known as the “lynching memorial,” we went to the Legacy Museum, about a mile away in Montgomery, Alabama. Housed in a building that was once part of the domestic slave trading hub in Montgomery, the  Legacy Museum sets the stage for the Memorial by poignantly telling the story of slavery and racial injustice in America through news photographs, headlines, archival film, animated and live video documentaries, and even an early 20^th century recording in which a 100-year-old former slave describes his experience.

Walking through the exhibits is a gut-wrenching, sensory-overloading experience—almost too much to take in at a single visit.

To convey the scope of slavery in America, a video info-graphic at the Legacy Museum demonstrates how the domestic slave trade evolved after the U.S. government banned the African slave trade in 1808. Limited to slaves already in the country, traders shifted masses of enslaved people from the upper Confederacy to the Deep South, until there were more than a million slaves concentrated just in Alabama, with hundreds of thousands more trapped in other states. In another area of the museum, archival 19^th century photos show the scarred backs of beaten slaves and blurry images of families on the slave auction block. On one wall of the museum, enlarged reproductions of advertisements published in newspapers tout the high quality of shipments of slaves scheduled for upcoming auctions.

Of course, the end of slavery did not end racial injustice in America. It merely shifted to other incarnations, such as share-cropping, and to laws institutionalizing white supremacy. One exhibit displays replicas of signs carried by segregationists, and notifications warning “undesirable” groups to stay out of restaurants and bathrooms. In one section, you can sit down at a simulated prison visitor’s booth, pick up a telephone, and listen to a prisoner describe his/her experiences. Many of the people visiting alongside us appeared old enough to remember the fire hoses turned on civil rights marchers, the police dogs attacking, the burning of Freedom Rider buses, and the murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi. I overhead snippets of conversations among visitors testifying to what they had seen and experienced themselves.  But I wonder how younger adults—and especially young children—experience these exhibits.

Walking through the museum, I felt worse and worse about the human race, and sadder and sadder for black people who have been regarded as lesser beings, treated violently, arbitrarily and unfairly—with nowhere to turn for help in so many cases. Their insecurity, fear and physical pain are unimaginable to a privileged person like me.

And then we went to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. As we entered, busload after busload of other visitors arrived, too. Once inside the perimeter, there was almost total silence. Photos are not permitted, so there were no silly selfies, but I don’t think many people would have tried such a thing, anyway: A feeling of reverence permeated the atmosphere. This was holy ground.

As you’ve probably read, the Memorial consists of a series of steel slabs, suspended from the roof, each representing a county in America where law-enforcement officials, huge mobs and small vigilante groups carried out lynchings. There’s a slab for every state in the U.S.—broken down by counties—with the named of lynching victims etched into the hollow steel rectangles. The memorial begins on level ground, and then you descend into what ends up feeling like a forest of hanging bodies. On the outer walls, signs give the sad details of many lynchings: People who were murdered for “knocking on the door of a white woman;” “making a white woman feel frightened;” “not showing respect for a white man.”

Since the memorial opened in 2018, people have come forward with more stories of lynchings in their families’ histories, and more names are being added. When I asked a docent about the most recent lynching in the US, I was shocked at his answer. “It was in Ferguson, Missouri,” he said. “In 2018.”

He told me that a young man had been lynched in Ferguson, but that police were calling it a suicide, “like they always do.” “But, you know,” he added, “People don’t commit suicide with their hands tied behind their back.”  [News coverage of the incident does not seem to include the hands-tied-behind-his-back detail, so I am researching the news further, to try to figure out how to interpret what he stated as fact. But, then again, who am I to say? How do I know that this is not another case—in the long history of lynchings so dramatically depicted at the memorial—of an official cover-up?]

The final section of the memorial is a stone wall, inscribed with a remembrance for all victims, over which cascades a gentle but infinite waterfall. I experienced that waterfall as a flood of unending tears shed by the families of people who innocently went out of the house one day and never came back. They were victims of hate that I once thought unimaginable in the apparently fictional America I grew up in — but that I now see, in the current political climate, as frighteningly imaginable. That’s when I sat down and cried. Many of my tears came simply from being in a place commemorating such horrific events. I was thinking about the broken-hearted mothers who lost their sons, and that made me think about the recent death of my own son, from cancer. I would not presume to equate my personal loss to that of generations of black families terrorized by lynching — but I do, in my own way, feel connected to their grief.

I’m not religious, and I’m not sure about the concept of sin. But if there is such a thing, lynching certainly qualifies, as do the perpetuation of racial hatred and the institutionalization of fear. I was heartened to note that several of the inscriptions placed around the memorial use the word “terrorism” to describe lynchings—as they were, in fact, designed to terrorize the black community into submission. I can only hope that the memorial helps people whose history has been stained by the hatred of bigotry to find affirmation of their story, and acknowledgment of their pain. In a normal ending to a post like this, I would probably add “hope for a better future.” But as to that, I am agnostic.

Watch this video to get a glimpse of the Legacy Museum and the reasons behind it:

The post Reflections on the Lynching Memorial and Legacy Museum appeared first on Occasional Planet.