Totally agree

Dave Granlund

* * * * 

Keep calm and carry on.  :::  March 20, 2023

Robert B. Hubbell

         I acknowledge that the motto used by the British government to sustain public morale before the German blitz in 1940 has been overused. But the sentiment is appropriate for this moment in American history. In the next several months, a former president will likely face three indictments in three jurisdictions for three separate sets of crimes—all of which relate to his effort to gain or retain the presidency. That's a lot! To say the indictments will dominate American politics for years to come would be an understatement.

        A "once-in-the-life-of-a-nation" event will be made more trying because Trump has signaled his defense strategy—threatening violence to intimidate the participants in the judicial process, to disrupt the proceedings, and to undermine the legitimacy of the verdicts. Although we do not have confirmation that Trump will be indicted, he and his legal team have begun leaking information to the press and mounting attacks from Trump's vanity social media platform. Based on those statements, Trump expects to be indicted, to surrender, and to enter a plea this week.

         In language eerily reminiscent of Trump's incitement on January 6th, Trump posted a statement calling on his supporters to "PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!" That was the only encouragement Trump's followers needed to set social media aflame with calls to violence to protect Trump. Basement-dwelling trolls and miscreants called for MAGA extremists to create a "patriot moat" around Mar-a-Lago and to commence a "civil war." See Rolling Stone, MAGA Forum Suggests 'Patriot Moat' at Mar-a-Lago to Stop Trump Arrest.

         Marjorie Taylor Greene echoed those calls with a tweet urging Republicans to adopt a "scorched earth" strategy and claimed that "feds" would turn the MAGA protests into "violence." (FYI: a common conspiracy theory about January 6th asserts that "feds" provoked the protestors to violence.)

         The most disgraceful reaction came from Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who should have condemned Trump's oblique call for violence. Instead, McCarthy legitimized Trump's call to "take back our nation" by tweeting that he is

directing relevant committees to immediately investigate if federal funds are being used to subvert our democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated prosecutions.

         Huh? Someone needs to do a wellness check on McCarthy to see if he is okay. His statement was so monumentally stupid that he might be feigning illness to distract from the fact he did not immediately rebuke Trump's implied call for violence. His failure to condemn Trump makes McCarthy an accessory to any violence that follows. He has disgraced the Speaker's office in a way seldom seen in our nation's history.

         [Update: Late Sunday evening, McCarthy tried to walk back the implications of Trump's post and McCarthy's tweet. McCarthy called for "calmness," saying,

"I think the thing that you may misinterpret when President Trump talks and someone says that they can protest, he's probably referring to my tweet: educate people about what's going on. He's not talking in a harmful way, and nobody should."

         As I said above: "Huh?"]

         After January 6th, it would be irresponsible to dismiss the potential for violence. Indeed, it seems inevitable that there will be isolated incidents during proceedings that will span years. Trump will use his campaign rallies to inflame passions and foment unrest.

         But . . . we should keep calm and carry on. Whatever happens, our system of justice is bigger and more durable than Trump. He is using the threat of violence to instill fear and raise anxiety in those who seek justice. We cannot surrender to the second-rate tactics of a third-rate demagogue.

         Remaining calm will require discipline and perspective, especially because any violence will be amplified and distorted by the media beyond all recognition. The media expects violence and is prepared to deliver round-the-clock replays of every incident without respite or perspective.

         If violence occurs, we need only reflect on the vastness of America, on its size and heft, on its immensity and scale to place the incidents in perspective. If several dozen protestors disrupt traffic in four blocks of Manhattan, that leaves 332 million Americans peacefully going about their lives in nearly four million square miles of a land that remains effectively boundless more than two centuries after its founding.

         Perspective will not diminish the significance or depravity of any violence, but it will help us remain focused and committed to ensuring that justice prevails—come what may. In this, we cannot fail. We must not. If we retreat or relent because of threats of violence, the rule of law is no more.

         While we should not underestimate the danger posed by Trump, America's strength is rooted in justice and fortified by righteousness. That strength will allow America to hold Trump accountable for his crimes and endure for generations to come. Future generations will know Trump as a faithless servant and traitor—and as a convicted felon.

         Keep calm and carry on. We have elections to win in 2024 and cannot be distracted by the slow wheels of justice.

This explains a lot.

         The current wave of retrograde extremism and mean-spirited divisiveness is sometimes difficult to comprehend. One partial explanation is that an entire generation of white Christian evangelicals see their ranks and power slipping away, and they are angry and fearful about the future. That is the thesis of Jennifer Rubin's op-ed in the Washington Post, Why white Christian nationalists are in such a panic.  

         Rubin writes about the newly released PRRI 2022 Census of American Religion— based on over 40,000 interviews conducted last year. In short, the census confirms a decades-long decline in the absolute and relative portion of Americans who identify as white Christians. The percentage decline of white Christians has been dramatic: 2008 (54%), 2014 (47%), and 2022 (42%).

         Per the report, the MAGA subset of white Christians has been particularly hard hit by the decline:

The group that has declined the most is at the core of the MAGA movement, the group most devoted to Christian nationalism. "White evangelical Protestants have experienced the steepest decline. As recently as 2006, white evangelical Protestants comprised nearly one-quarter of Americans (23%). By the time of Trump's rise to power, their numbers had dipped to 16.8%," Jones explains. "Today, white evangelical Protestants comprise only 13.6% of Americans."

         In a closely divided electorate, a dedicated group representing 13.6% of the population can nonetheless have an outsized impact on elections decided by a few hundred or a few thousand votes. That, in turn, explains the unholy dedication of white Christians to the suppression of votes.

         The shrinking number of Americans who identify as Christians should be a cause for reflection and introspection. It is not—at least not for MAGA Christians. Per Rubin:

With those kind of numbers, the responsible thing to do would be to think about "fixing" what's wrong by adapting to a changing market. Instead, many in this cohort have doubled down, becoming the foot soldiers in the red-hatted MAGA movement. The decline isn't going to be reversed by angry, gray-haired folks demanding abortion bans and "don't say gay" bills.

         While we can never count on Republicans to defeat themselves, neither should we overestimate the strength of our opponent. The current wave of anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ legislation across the nation is being driven by a shrinking minority of religious extremists who appear to be driving people away from their church with their politics. That fact should help us maintain perspective about our prospects for success in reversing the wave of hate-based legislation sweeping the nation.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

« Republicans are challenging labor leaders to fights and allegedly physically assaulting one another. Donald Trump says he will abolish reproductive rights entirely and is openly calling for the extermination of his detractors, referring to them as “vermin” on Veterans Day. The Republican Party has emerged from its corruption cocoon as a full-blown fascist movement. »

— Laura Clawson at Daily Kos writing about the state of the Republican Party.

If anything can possibly be both blood-curdling and laughable at the same time, it's the current GOP.

We all know about Trump's demented Hitlerian rantings and the failure of most Republicans to condemn them. But perhaps some of us missed news of the GOP on Capitol Hill getting personally hot-headed.

Tempers flare at Capitol as McCarthy denies elbowing colleague, senator challenges witness to fight

And that bizarreness doesn't include the latest hysterics from Marjorie Taylor Greene or indictments related to George Santos.

The next thing may be Chip Roy placing a Whoopee Cushion on the Speaker's chair to protest the temporary government funding extension.

GOP = Group Of Psychotics. It's certainly not a bunch of people you want running the country and messing up your life.

Of course, the disruptive Putin Puppet had to show her lack of understanding of the word, “ decorum”.

The White House has a plan for Big Tech

This week, the White House released its long-anticipated plan for addressing monopoly in the tech sector. Fixing Big Tech is important, because a free, fair and open internet is a necessary precondition for organizing all our other fights about human rights, equity, labor, the climate, and racial and gender justice.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/09/08/readout-of-white-house-listening-session-on-tech-platform-accountability/

The White House plan is a mixed bag. They set out six action points, each of them amorphous enough that they could all be summarized as “the devil is in the details” — that is, depending on how these are handled, they could be great, or terrible.

But one point stands out as especially fraught, controversial and dangerous: a vague promise of “fundamental reforms to Section 230,” which is incorrectly characterized as “special legal protections for large tech platforms.”

I’m going to go through all six of the points below and describe how they could go right, or wrong, and in the end I’ll get into more detail on 230 — it’s one of the worst-understood areas of internet law, a favored punching bag of the right and the left, and getting this one wrong could deliver permanent dominance to Big Tech platforms.

1. “Promote competition in the technology sector”: This covers both meat-and-potatoes trustbusting (breakups, merger scrutiny) and modern, tech-specific tactics, like interoperability mandates and bans on self preferencing. This is generally great stuff, but there are three important pitfalls to avoid:

i. Interop mandates that expose users to risk through hasty action. The EU’s Digital Markets Act unwisely kicked off by mandating interop in messaging tools on an unrealistically short timeline. Maintaining the security of encrypted messengers is extremely important; failures in messaging encryption are a source of existential risk to human rights workers, journalists and marginalized people all around the world. Recall that Jamal Khashoggi was lured to his slaughter by the Saudi government after they broke into his peers’ encrypted messages using a cyberweapon produced by the NSO Group.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/04/eu-digital-markets-acts-interoperability-rule-addresses-important-need-raises

ii. Must-carry rules that force platforms to carry speech. Big online platforms have become our new public square, except that they aren’t public — they’re private. Their choices about which speech to block and which speech to carry are enormously consequential for our civics and politics. But rules that allow regulators to force providers to carry speech they disagree with set a dangerous precedent. Even if you think that the Biden admin’s compelled speech will be fine (say, a rule requiring warnings alongside vaccine disinformation), imagine how this power will be handled by President Marjorie Taylor Green’s administration.

The platforms’ moderation choices are a danger because the platforms dominate our discourse. Allowing the platforms to corner the market for online speech has profound First Amendment implications:

https://locusmag.com/2020/01/cory-doctorow-inaction-is-a-form-of-action/

But the answer isn’t to turn the platforms into an arm of the state — it’s to make their moderation choices less consequential for all of us, by devolving control over community norms to the communities themselves:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/07/right-or-left-you-should-be-worried-about-big-tech-censorship

iii. Self-preferencing bans are very hard to administer. If Apple puts its own weather app at the top of the app-store listings, or if Google shows you an infobox with its weather prediction at the top of a search, that might feel like self-preferencing. But maybe Apple really believes that it has the best weather app. There isn’t an objective standard for “best weather app.” Unless you’ve got a front-row seat for the wall of Plato’s Cave, distinguishing self-preferencing from good-faith curation is often impossible.

That’s not to say that we should tolerate self-preferencing, nor is it to say that we can’t ever detect and punish self-preferencing. Sometimes, tech companies actually document the fact that they’re self-preferencing, as Google did when its engineers emailed their bosses to complain about being forced to put Google’s inferior results ahead of rivals:

https://blog.yelp.com/news/yelp-testifying-in-google-antitrust-hearing/

But we can’t rely on Big Tech tripping over its own dick every time it does a bit of nefarious self-preferencing. The real remedy for self-preferencing is “structural separation”: banning platform operators from competing with platform users. Referees shouldn’t own one of the teams on the field, period.

https://locusmag.com/2022/03/cory-doctorow-vertically-challenged/

2. “Provide robust federal protections for Americans’ privacy.” A no-brainer. The US needs a federal privacy law, with a private right of action that allows individuals (and human rights groups) to sue firms that violate it, rather than waiting for a prosecutor to take up their cause. Do it.

I’m entirely unsympathetic to the argument that “targeted ads” are better than “untargetted ads” because they are “more relevant” to users. Users fucking hate targeted ads. Ad-blockers are the largest boycott in human history. When users are given the change to opt out of targeted ads, they do so in such overwhelming numbers that the holdouts are likely to be people who accidentally clicked the wrong button:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-out-of-app-tracking-in-ios-14-5-analytics-find/

3. “Protect our kids by putting in place even stronger privacy and online protections for them, including prioritizing safety by design standards and practices for online platforms, products, and services.”

Sounds good. As a dad, I like the idea. But there’s so many ways it can go wrong. California’s version of this rule was so vaguely worded that it’s effectively impossible to comply with.

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/09/06/techdirt-podcast-episode-328-the-problems-with-the-california-kids-code/

It’s not just that this could result in kids being banned from using any online service — it’s also that all online services might institute invasive verification procedures (like requiring and storing — and, inevitably, leaking — government IDs to prove that none of their users are kids).

But the difficulties here don’t mean we have to be nihilists. We can demand that platforms that target kids — that market themselves as services for children — eschew advertising, minimize data collection, and take other steps to protect kids from commercial predation.

5. “Increase transparency about platform’s algorithms and content moderation decisions.” Opponents of this one will claim that telling people how you moderate is a gift to trolls and griefers. I’m unsympathetic to the idea that there is “security through obscurity”:

https://doctorow.medium.com/como-is-infosec-307f87004563

There’s a lot of room for debate about how the “civil justice” system of big platforms should operate. One thing is clear: automated judgments about user speech can’t be balanced by human review. The former happens at scale and near-instantaneously. The latter will either be deliberative and too slow to matter, or rapid and too quick to make sense of nuance.

One intriguing idea is to structure content moderation review as a “systemic” matter, which can address “immoderation” (the content that isn’t moderated) as well as moderation. Note that no one has tried this yet, so while it sounds great, it’s also a gamble:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/12/move-slow-and-fix-things/#second-wave

6. “Stop discriminatory algorithmic decision-making.” This one is also maddeningly vague. If they’re talking about ensuring that machine learning classifiers don’t discriminate on the basis of speech, it’s going to be very hard to make work. Remember, algorithmic moderation often operates on the context of speech as much as the content — if a bunch of seemingly coordinated users all post something that seems like harassment all at once, that speech might get labelled or suppressed or deleted. The exact same speech, posted by one person, once, might be left alone.

But there’s another kind of algorithmic discrimination, whose most obvious case is the algorithms that target predatory financial products to Black users, or exclude women and racial minorities from being shown good jobs on employment sites. This is illegal — and we don’t need new laws to prosecute it. But we do need new enforcement powers and resources for existing regulators to tackle it.

All right, that’s the five least controversial points in the White House plan. But I left out point IV: “Remove special legal protections for large tech platforms.”

Here, the White House is talking about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, AKA “The 26 Words That Made the Internet.”

https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501714412/the-twenty-six-words-that-created-the-internet/

CDA230 is a rule that says that if a user’s speech violates federal law, legal responsibility for that speech falls on the speaker, not the intermediary that brought you that speech. It’s a rule that makes hosting user speech possible, period. It’s how we get Facebook and Twitter, sure — but also how we get blog comments, Mastodon instances, and other independent platforms.

It’s also how we get the infrastructure that makes it possible for individuals, nonprofits, private groups and co-ops to create their own speech forums. CDA230 means that a hosting company doesn’t need to review all its customers’ users’ speech before hosting them (imagine if every web-page had to be vetted by your host before you could make it live — and then every change also had to go through legal review).

This is important in a competitive market, but it’s even more important in our current, monopolized world, where getting kicked off of a platform might doom a speech forum (and again, if you’re comfortable with this being used to nuke forums that the politicians you agree with get rid of, imagine which forums President DeSantis will target).

Any gun on the mantlepiece in Act I is sure to go off by Act III. If we hand any aggrieved party the right to remove speech without a trial, we can be sure that this facility will be abused by the worst people in the worst ways.

We know this because we’ve got decades of experience with the “notice-and-takedown” system for copyright enforcement, which allows anyone claiming to be a rightsholder to get almost anything taken down from almost anywhere, irrespective of whether a copyright infringement took place.

To see that in action, check out Eliminalia, which uses fraudulent copyright takedowns to launder the reputations of dictators, torturers, murderers and rapists, getting news articles and personal accounts of their victims and survivors removed from the internet:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/23/reputation-laundry/#dark-ops

In Germany, Sony Music is attempting to force Quad9, a public DNS provider, to block the records of websites whose users have allegedly posted links to other websites where infringing copies of Sony’s copyrighted works can be found:

https://quad9.net/news/blog/an-update-to-the-quad9-and-sony-music-german-court-injunction-august-2022/

Sony is a serial abuser of its ability to moderate speech; the company routinely and wantonly deletes independent musicians’ performances of classical compositions by falsely claiming that they violate Sony’s copyrights — in other words, Sony is a music pirate on an unimaginable scale:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/22/crisis-for-thee-not-me/#filternet

Our evidence for what a post-CDA230 internet would look like isn’t limited to the copyright wars — for a more recent, more direct look at what happens when you make intermediaries responsible for their users’ speech, look at the aftermath of SESTA/FOSTA.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/how-congress-censored-internet

SESTA/FOSTA is a (nominal) anti-sex-trafficking rule that creates criminal liability for companies whose services are used in connection with the heinous crime of sex trafficking. The immediate impact of SESTA/FOSTA was the mass, internet-wide removal of sites that sex workers used to keep themselves safe.

SESTA/FOSTA pushed sex workers back onto the streets, deprived them of the forums where they shared information about dangerous clients, and created a renaissance in pimping, as sex workers were forced to turn to third parties for their protection.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/02/fosta-already-leading-censorship-we-are-seeking-reinstatement-our-lawsuit

Curbing CDA230 is especially dangerous in light of the calls for a “fairness doctrine” for online platforms. One of the activities that CDA230 protects is moderation, allowing online hosts to remove harassing, hateful, threatening or otherwise odious speech without worrying that this requires that they remove every such instance.

This allows moderators to distinguish between a racist who calls another user by a slur, and a user who says, “Can you believe that racist called me :slur:?” Before 230 was enacted, courts took the position that once a service moderated any speech, it took on the duty to moderate all speech, creating the perverse incentive to ignore bad speech.

Some say that CDA230 protects Big Tech platforms only to the extent that it protects all online speech forums, including independent ones. But this is wrong. CDA230 protects small platforms more than it protects large ones — because large ones are better situated to hire the armies of lawyers and moderators to pore over and comma-fuck everything their users post.

That’s why Mark Zuckerberg supports eliminating CDA230. As he is fond of pointing out, Facebook’s budget for human moderators exceeds Twitter’s total revenue. He understands that if you need to be as big as Facebook to compete with Facebook that:

a) No company will ever compete with Facebook, and

b) No government will ever make Facebook any smaller.

It’s not just Zuck that hates 230 — it’s also Donald Trump. Trump understands that removing legal protections for intermediaries will make them less able to stand up to rich and powerful people who can hire vicious attack lawyers who pride themselves on suppressing speech:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/60-minutes-boss-hired-law-firm-over-metoo-story/

Trump loves the kinds of lawyers who kept #MeToo at bay for decades, not just by threatening the survivors of abuse, but by scaring anyone who might host their testimony into removing it.

The fact that Zuck and Trump think killing CDA230 is a great idea should at least give its progressive opponents a moment’s pause.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/09/biden_tech_reform_section230/

[Image ID: The logo for the White House, superimposed over a Matrix 'code waterfall' effect.]

House MD Drag Race Simulation Week 5: The Snatch Game!

Why did my screenshot not capture the name of maxi challenge on the day of the most iconic maxi challenge? For the uninitiated reading this, the Snatch Game is an impersonation contest in the format of the game show The Match Game.

Because the simulator randomly assigns Snatch Game characters to each contestant, I didn't screenshot them, as many were extremely dicey (black celebrity impersonations assigned to white contestants, for example). The Snatch Game is where my computer reset and lost progress, and the first time it did assign House to do Gypsy Rose Blanchard which is just messed up and tactless enough that I think it does actually fit what he would do. So we can keep that one.

Here are my (likely terrible) ideas for the others (tell me your ideas in tags/replies!):

Masters: Elizabeth Blackwell (the first female doctor given a medical license in the United States). It flopped because she memorized a handful of jokes about feminism and couldn't figure out where to take it from there. Once it became clear she was losing she couldn't recover. At one point she couldn't even write a response to Ru's question.

Wilson: Taylor Swift. Thought he could translate House's myriad of jokes about Wilson's and Taylor's dramatic breakups into an impression that would be hip with the youths. Was very, very wrong. So wrong it will go down in Drag Race herstory as an iconic mandatory-watching performance.

Cuddy: Barbara Streisand. Not an inspired pick but she did okay. Mostly was kept out of boring territory for giving Wilson acting notes during the challenge.

Chase: Courtney Act (Australian Drag Race competitor from season 6). His impersonation was spot on but it's understood to be a mistake to do past Drag Race competitors and he ran out of mannerisms to make a joke out of. He's lucky Masters and Wilson flopped so hard.

Thirteen: Taylor Swift. Once she saw Wilson was doing Taylor, and heard his impression, she switched to Taylor because she knew she could do a better one-- which would at least put her into safe territory. A vicious strategic move that will be remembered and studied. Her Taylor Swift was secretly enacting a master plan to win the United States Presidency and take over the world. She brought a prop of a binder to show a fake agreement between her and the CIA to use mass-market music for mind control. She pointed to Wilson's Taylor and said that they switched to that plan because the cloning experiment was an abject failure, just look at how off her clone was.

Foreman: Marjorie Taylor Greene. He knew everyone expected him to be monotone and wanted to show the judges "flexibility." His completely batshit insane acting impressed everyone. In the werk room he said he would just be imitating House.

House: His Gypsy Rose Blanchard was dark, line-crossing, and borderline in very bad taste. It resulted in So Much Twitter Discourse. This was the episode where the producers made him talk about his parents. In context, some of his darker jokes were excused. Seeing how Ru accepted Trixie Mattel's audition tape to be on the show even though her proposed Snatch Game character was Anne Frank, the bad taste argument still wouldn't have stopped him from winning.

Additional commentary:

House has been studying Drag Race after losing the first quiz challenge to Masters. It paid off, and he was even more of an asshole about it than usual to cover for Feelings around the whole "produces making him do the backstory reveal" thing.

Wilson's Taylor Swift was so bad even House tried to gently talk him out of it. House and Thirteen's alliance was threatened by him subconsciously being displeased that she was making a strategic move against Wilson. They survived because in the end he was proud of her for her evil.

Untucked is wild this episode. "Shadying" is not a word. What exactly are Wilson and Thirteen planning on doing to Cuddy?

Wilson tried to make one of his Serious Psychology Arguments about House only going after Foreman's makeup skills because Foreman's comment about acting like him to be Marjorie Taylor Greene hurt his feelings. House responded by saying that in regards to Foreman's mockery, he was going to shake it off and singing the chorus of the song off-key.

All the judges thought Masters had actually walked off out of humiliation, which hinted to them that maybe they did need to send her home.

Wilson and Cuddy are no longer friends because he thinks she sabotaged him by going after him during the Snatch Game.

Is Scott Adams an exception, or The Rule?

The hoopla over 'Dilbert' Creator, Scott Adams, is a classic example of 'White Fragility' in a Real Life situation. He (sarcastically) claimed that he 'identified as Black' (because he wanted to be on 'The Winning Team'), & supported Black Causes for years. Suddenly, a Rasmussen Reports survey on 'Whiteness' got him so worked up, that he now reidentifies as White. On top of that, he now says that 1/2 of Black America is a Racist Hate Group. His claim is based on the survey results to the question: 'Is it okay to be White?'

According to the Report, 53% of Black respondents answered 'Yes'. Adams is reported to have gone on an Anti- Black racist rant during the airing of his podcast- 'Morning Coffee w/ Scott Adams'. During his 'rant', Adams suggested staying the hell away from Black America, because 'it can't be fixed'. Keep in mind that his comments are based on the survey results of a right winged conservative Organization. The question itself is Open Ended, & necessitates additional probing. The response to Adams' comments has been swift & decisive. Hundreds of News Publications have cancelled 'Dilbert'.

So far, Adams is standing behind his comments. He acknowledges that he is likely Cancelled, saying 'you can't come back from this'. I'm not sure how much he really cares about cancellation, being 64Yrs Old & having a net worth of $70M... Regarding his comments, Adams says that he wasn't being emotional. He said that his words had context, & so far, No One has disagreed w/ him. I appreciate his honesty. I think his rush to judgement was sincere & should be taken at face value. If I were to interview Scott Adams, I would ask: Did he take the 'context' of the 47% into consideration? What motivated their response? 26% answered 'No' & 21% 'Not Sure'- did Adams consider why?

As someone who supposedly 'identified as Black', I would've expected him to pause. Maybe take a moment to ascertain the reasons 47% of Black respondents may not think of 'Whiteness' as a good thing. Instead, he deadpanned that those respondents represent a 'Racist Hate Group'. Then he says that he doesn't want anything to do w/ them, & suggests that All Whitefolk do the same. Judging from his 'racist rant', it sounds like Scott Adams was being less than facetious about his identification w/ Blackfolk. What I did hear in his comments, was the use of Black people, like Don Lemon, to support his racist actions.

His comments aren't unique. Marjorie Taylor Greene's recent demand for a 'Secession' of Red & Blue States; due to rampant Wokeness & Biden's failure to 'Make America Great', is a similar sentiment. Add to that, Ben Stein's lamentation over 'Aunt Jermaima' syrup, along w/ Elon Musk's comments in support of Scott Adams, & a pretty easy connection can be made. These are the thoughts of The Silent Majority. Their collective fear of Black Expression goes back 50Yrs. They tend to come from 'Middle America' or 'Flyover States', but they generally represent White Families that migrated to Suburbia (White Flight). 'Dilbert', is basically a chronicle of individuals from this background, so I wouldn't be surprised if Adams isn't alone in his sentiment.

What I found intriguing about Scott Adams' comments, was his tonality. He wasn't ranting to me. He was clear & concise in his deduction & conclusion. What stands out, is how easy it was for Scott Adams to discard the 53% of Blackfolk that felt that it was 'Ok to be 'White'. Why didn't he consider working w/ that group, while changing hearts & minds of the Other? Instead, he threw Everyone into the same 'Racist Hate Group' pot, & concluded that 'it can't be fixed'. I'm immediately reminded of those Black Veterans that faced angry White Mobs in full uniform, & saluting... I imagine they were of that 53%.

Our Ancestors were morally upright, & idealistic, but were naive. They actually believed that The American Dream applied to them. It's clear that it didn't. Recent comments prove that it still doesn't. There is a direct correlation between the increase in discussions regarding National Reparations for American Descendants Of Chattal Slavery (ADOS), & the cries of Anti- White Racism, Wokeism, & the Bringing down of America. The Biden Administration has spent $113B in Ukraine over the last 12 months, w/ billions more promised; but Flint, Detroit, & now Jackson are forced to wait for Water Filtration Systems. East Palestine however, is an 'All hands On Deck' scenario... America's priorities are brutally clear.

Elon Musk's assertion that Mainstream Media is Anti- White & Anti- Asian, is confusing, when we consider the fact that Asian Americans are the wealthiest demographic in America. As a White Man & an immigrant, Elon (The Afrikaner) Musk has outpaced EVERY Black American financially, so We fail to see the 'racism'. What Adams,Musk, Stein, & Taylor- Greene all have in common, is a fear of an inevitable 'Leveling of The Playing Field'. America, as an Institution (Columbia), has perpetually propped up Whites & Honorary Whites in a position of dominion over Black America. Clear examples can be seen from The Homestead Acts to The New Deal.

White Supremacy dictates survival of the fittest, but Poor Whites are assured Living Wages, or Federal Assistance (in worse case scenarios) to maintain a lifestyle above the 'average Black family', in return for their participation in America's collective Anti- Black agenda. Small wonder how the most brutal Anti- Black attacks occur in Poor White areas. As I said numerous times before, NOTHING IS ABSOLUTE. There were Allies in the past, & there are Allies now. Unfortunately, their number has dropped over the last 50Yrs. Hard Times makes scapegoating easy. Groups that might have been indifferent to an issue, may be motivated into taking a side.

This is the Case of America over the last 50Yrs. When Working Class Black & White Americans were feeding their families & living their lives, both Communities prospered. As Benign Neglect hit Black Communities, Factory Closings hit White Communities. The American Institution once again bailed White America out, by extending Credit Lines (MasterCard, Visa) & Bankruptcy Law to individuals; allowing them to offset current debt. Few Black Americans were able to take advantage of this. In addition, White Families were given the opportunity to refinance their homes, while Black Families were largely denied. As White Families struggled, it's understandable how Self Preservation can kick in. They can't really emphathize w/ another's Struggle, when they're going through their Own.

That said, this group took the Reagan narrative of ''Black Welfare Mothers' & 'Black Male Degenerates' & ran w/ it. They raised their children on it, Educational Systems taught it in Schools & Citizenship Classes. Meanwhile, some White Teens & Young Adults 'Raged Against The Machine', & developed a love affair w/ HipHop- that continues today. Despite this, a good number of Today's Parents still hold the values of their upbringing. The Age of Political Correctness stalled a lot of tongues, but a collective frustration w/ Quality of Life is motivating them to speak frankly. Again, I welcome it.

Regardless of their Economic or Political Standing, Whitefolk that express a problem w/ Black America collectively, are using some variation of the Segregationist Era 'Fear Of Black Rule' argument. This rhetoric goes back to Reconstruction, when the Post Slavery Era saw the largest & fastest expansion of ANY GROUP in American History. The number of Black Landowners, Businessmen, & Politicians that rose to prominence from 1865- 1875 scared Whitefolk. The result was the rise of The KKK & Daughters Of The Confederacy, along w/ Black Codes; that stalled Black progressive efforts, while terrorizing Black Citizens under Local & State Law.

All of the individuals mentioned express some impending threat of Black 'Rage' & Violence. Meanwhile, Police Officers & Anti- Black Racist 'Vigilantes' are allowed to assault and kill Black Men & Women wantonly, and w/ impunity. This is by virtue of the Collective Silence of Mainstream America. It is especially important to take note of this, as America cultivates roughly 2 Million illegal immigrants, 100,000 Afgans, & 100,000 Ukrainians- All of whom identify as 'White'. As an Indigenous Black American, I sense a Lesson In American Protocol being taught: How to Engage Black America 101. Meanwhile, NO ONE of Any Ethnic Group can tell you about a Time when 'Black American Hegemony' ravished their Community, Town, or City...

These passive aggressive Anti- Black Racist types are a funny breed. They talk ad naseum about why they should be separate from Black America; but despite being far removed from ANY Black person, these people still can't seem to leave Us alone... Makes me question What Scott Adams & Co. are REALLY afraid of.

I’m amazed nobody has taught this dumb f**K a lesson and removed him from politics. He is the new Louie Gohmert, an inbred redneck bomb thrower that’s dumber than Lauren Boebert or Marjorie Failure Greene.

New Post has been published on Books by Caroline Miller

New Post has been published on https://www.booksbycarolinemiller.com/musings/thoughts-on-invictus/

Thoughts On Invictus*

Surrounded by books in a well-trafficked bookstore, I sat down to coffee with a former student.  We’ve been meeting this way for many years.  By now, he is in his early 70s while I am staring down at 87.  Happily, we are both in robust health, and I always look forward to our conversations, particularly on that day as he’d recently returned from a year in Japan.  As he related his experiences about life aboard, I noted he spoke in a  booming voice as though his words needed to carry to the back of a large hall. As we were seated at a  pedestal table no more than 3 feet apart, I took exception. “Why are you yelling at me? I can hear you perfectly well.”    My companion paused, his features creased in a puzzled expression. “I’m sorry.  I thought you might be hard of hearing.” He was right in his assumption.  I am hard of hearing which is why I wear earbuds that are as expensive as diamonds but without the glamor. At 104, my mother could hear a fly drop on a marshmallow at twenty paces.  Sadly,  I follow in my father’s footsteps.  His hearing loss began in his 50s. Even so, he refused to see a doctor and seemed to delight in forcing friends and family to shout at him. Rejecting his example, I take pity on those around me and wear my hearing aids when I’m in public.  The doctor says I should wear them all the time, but they make my ears itch.  In any case, my point about the difference between my mother and father makes one thing clear.  People don’t age in the same way.  Hopefully, my mother’s genes will bestow a long and healthy life on me but science gives me no assurance.  Genes, they say, have a  10-35% influence on longevity.  The rest depends on diet and exercise.    Those born at the tag end of the Baby Boomers and the generations that followed probably see 80-somethings as prehistoric.  Born before the advent of television, we are folks presumed to live in the shadows, figures bent like candy canes who shuffle about unobtrusively with the aid of wheelchairs, walkers, or canes.  Would it surprise them to learn that  Helen Mirren, age 78 and two years younger than President Joe Biden, made 5 films this year? (“Up/front Watch,” AARP, Aug/Sept. 2023, pg. 12.)   Or, that in his two years in office, Biden has fulfilled so many campaign promises historians predict he will be remembered as one of the country’s ablest presidents?  Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia’s Republican member of Congress, disagrees with that assessment.  She roots for Donald Trump,  age 77,  to win the 2024 Presidential election.  Not only blind to Trump’s age, his previous presidential failures, and the many court indictments pending against him, she insists a higher power works in his favor. God has plans much bigger than this.  (“They Said What?” FreeTought Today, September 2030, pg. 2)  If the past is a prelude to the future, I shudder to think what these plans may be. True, a significant swathe of the country shares Greene’s view.  Like her, they don’t have the force of the pulpit behind them, but they claim to know God’s will and are determined by means fair or foul to convert the rest of us to their religiosity. They proselyte on social media, shout their hallelujahs over public school and prison speakers (Ibid pgs. 5-6), as well at sporting events–any place where they find a captive audience. Nature thrives on diversity, but their God demands conformity.  With each book banned from a school or library, these zealots celebrate– as if free will and free thought were worthy of a public hanging.  By degrees, their successes rob the world of color.  Once invention, imagination, and originality become exiles, we find ourselves confined to a grey pallet– a place of shadows where fear and hatred are free to spin their mischief.    The average lifespan for our species is 74 years.  Measured in days, that represents 272,000 sunrises.  Compare this number to the life of our sun which will burn another 4. 57 billion years.  Given the contrast between it and ourselves, a question arises.  Can we afford to be profligate with our brief hour upon the stage? Whether young or old, rather than busying ourselves judging others, we’d do better to contemplate our common destiny and how our actions make either heaven or hell of the earth. The journey each of us takes may be private, yet we know it has public consequences.  A good rule of thumb might be to consider looking inward and holding ourselves accountable for the good or ill we do.  Only when we have shouldered that burden as a compass can we claim to be captains of our souls. *Poem by William Ernest, Henley

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 31, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

FEB 1, 2024

Stef W. Kight and Zachary Basu of Axios reported tonight that the border measure, on which a bipartisan group of senators have worked for four months, is “on life support” after former president Trump urged his supporters in the House to block it so he can run on the issue. Senators are still holding out hope they can get it through, blaming “misinformation” about the bill, whose text has not yet been released. 

The attacks on the measure are revealing the increasing extremism of the Republican Party. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) appointed Senator James Lankford (R-OK), who is well liked and is known as a calm conservative, to lead negotiations for the party. Suddenly, Lankford finds himself on the side Trump and his followers oppose. Lankford is now under attack from within his own party. 

The Republican about-face is also threatening to take down U.S. aid to Ukraine, which is fighting off a Russian invasion. House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) linked aid to Ukraine to the border deal last November with the argument that the U.S. should not be helping other countries until it helped secure its own border. After Trump’s attack on the border measure, congressional reporter Max Cohen of Punchbowl News reported this afternoon that McConnell has suggested moving ahead with aid for Ukraine. 

"It's time to move something,” Cohen reported McConnell saying, “hopefully including a border agreement. But we need to get help to Israel and Ukraine quickly…. There is bipartisan support here in the Senate for both Israel and Ukraine, hopefully at some point we can get them the support they need."

Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) told reporters: “It would be nice to change the status quo on the border, but if there is not the political support to do that, then I think we should proceed with the rest of the supplemental,” referring to the measure that provides funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, and humanitarian aid to Gaza.  

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), a Trump loyalist, has said she would move to overthrow Johnson as speaker if he puts Ukraine funding up for a vote. 

Meanwhile, Ukraine is running short of weapons and ammunition.

Tonight, Senator Angus King (I-ME) spoke on the Senate floor about what U.S. refusal to aid Ukraine would mean. 

King harked back to the failure of European allies to stop Hitler when it would have been relatively easy. “Whenever people write to my office” asking why we are supporting Ukraine, he said, “I answer, Google Sudetenland, 1938.” “We could have stopped a murderous dictator who was bent on geographic expansion…at a relatively low cost. The result of not doing so was 55 million deaths.”

The upcoming vote on whether to support “the people of Ukraine as they fight for our values,” King said, “will echo throughout the history of this country and the history of the world for generations…. If we back away, walk away, pull out and leave the Ukrainians without the resources to defend themselves, it will compromise the interests of this country for 50 years. It will be viewed as one of the greatest geopolitical mistakes of the 21st century.”

Abandoning Ukraine would embolden Russian president Vladimir Putin, King said. Putin “told us in 2005 that he felt that the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century was the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He has…pursued the remedy to that catastrophe in his eyes ever since…. In 2008 he gobbled up part of what had been an independent country of Georgia. In 2014…Crimea and eastern Ukraine. [In] 2022, he tried for the rest of Ukraine.”

People say Putin will stop with Ukraine, King said, but “the Finns don't think so. The Swedes don't think so. The Baltic countries don't think so, and the Finns and the Swedes know Russia.”

“Maya Angelou once said if someone tells you who they are, you should believe them,” King said. “Putin has told us who he is. He’s an autocrat. He’s an authoritarian. And he wants to rebuild the Soviet Union. And I believe he wouldn't stop there….  We have to take him at his word…. He despises the west. He thinks NATO is an aggressive alliance, somehow designed to invade or otherwise threaten Russia. NATO doesn't want to invade Russia. NATO wants to keep the lines where they are.” King noted that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “the first crossing of a border of this nature since World War II.”

“[W]hat we're looking at here,” King said, “is…the struggle between the idea of democracy and the rule of law and authoritarianism and totalitarianism…. Ukraine is the opening wedge in that…conflict.” Turning away from Ukraine would embolden Putin, King said, but not only Putin. “[I]f we cut and run in Ukraine, that will change Xi Jinping's calculus about Taiwan. He's going to say well, the Americans aren't going to stick. We don't have to worry too much about them helping the Taiwanese defend themselves.” 

King, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, identified the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy and warned what is at stake if the U.S. abandons Ukraine. “Our asymmetric advantage in the world right now is allies,” King said. “China has customers. We have allies…. But our allies are going to say well, wait a minute. You’re with us now but when the going gets tough and you have to maybe have a budget supplemental to stick with us, you're going to walk away. It's going to undermine the confidence of our allies, and in places like Japan and South Korea, they may say we can't count on the Americans to defend us.”

If we abandon Ukraine, he said, we will have destroyed “our ability to negotiate and make deals in the future. Who the heck is going to deal with us if they know we can't be trusted?.... What an…incredible…self-inflicted wound on this country.” King recalled that in the 1780s, France had stood with the fledgling U.S. even as the Revolutionary War dragged on, and noted that “[t]here’s a reasonable chance we wouldn't be the United States of America today, if our ally had walked away…. The whole idea of an alliance is that you can count on somebody when the times are tough. We're sending ammunition. They're sending lives.” 

Addressing right-wing talking points about aid to Ukraine, King said that U.S. aid to Ukraine is “one of the best and strongest and most closely accounted for provisions of aid ever” and that “the idea that nobody else is contributing and Europe isn't doing its part is just bunk.” Europe has given far more to Ukraine than the U.S. as a percentage of the wealth each country produces, he said, and other countries have also taken in millions of refugees.

“[D]emocracy matters,” King said. “Values matter. Freedom of expression, the rule of law matter, and that’s what’s at stake…. This is a historic struggle between authoritarianism, arbitrariness, surveillance, and the radical idea that people can govern themselves. That's what this is all about. This is a battle for the soul of our democracy in the world…. It's worth fighting for. And in this case we don't even have to do the fighting. We just have to supply the arms and ammunition.”

“I have a question for my colleagues,” King said. “When the history of this day is written, as it surely will be, do you really want to be recorded as being on the side of Vladimir Putin?... Or on the side of China, as they contemplate the invasion of Taiwan…. [H]istory's going to record this vote as one of the most important votes that any of us have ever made.”

For his part, King said, “I want to stand on the side of resisting authoritarianism, on the side of democracy, on the side of the values that the country has stood for and that people have been fighting for 250 years.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene isn't afraid of a GOP civil war.

"We're going to fight it out. I'm telling you — I've always said I'm not afraid of the civil war in the GOP. I lean into it," Greene told former Trump adviser Steve Bannon on his "War Room" podcast on Monday.

During her conversation with Bannon, Greene broke with her House Freedom Caucus allies and backed McCarthy's bid for House Speaker. Leaning into new fault lines in the GOP's right wing, she called a leadership challenge "very, very risky."

Striking a contradictory note, Greene in the same conversation also called for unity in the GOP in the face of what may be a thin majority in Congress.

"Politics is a blood sport," she told Bannon. "We have to do everything we can to stop our enemy. And the enemy is the Democrat Party."

McCarthy, the current House minority leader, is angling to take House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's job if the GOP wins the congressional midterms. He's facing a challenge from Arizona congressman and House Freedom Caucus member Andy Biggs.

Greene's stance on McCarthy has shifted over the last year. In November 2021, she said she did not think McCarthy had the votes to be Speaker. She added that she did not respect his leadership after he did not prevent Congress from stripping her and her GOP colleague, Rep. Paul Gosar, of their committee assignments. McCarthy, as minority leader, had little sway over whether Greene and Gosar could keep their committee assignments in a Democrat-led Congress.

Gosar was punished in November 2021 for tweeting a violent anime video that depicted him killing Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Democratic lawmakers in February 2021 accused Greene of endorsing violence against her colleagues and supporting right-wing fringe conspiracy theories.

Greene stands to benefit greatly if McCarthy wins. McCarthy has made efforts to patch things up with Greene, even pledging in March to give her key committee assignments if the GOP takes the House.

Greene's backing of McCarthy also highlights fault lines within the House's far-right faction. Her close ally Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz has for months slammed McCarthy, branding him a failure and proposing that he not lead the House GOP.

This schism became even more apparent on Monday when Gaetz said on "The Charlie Kirk Show" that he would not be voting for McCarthy to be Speaker.

Representatives for McCarthy did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.