June 27, 2018

So, it's gonna be a long fight. Did you really expect otherwise?

This is not the first time the Supreme Court has gleefully torched the Constitution. There have been other Courts, other Chief Justices that have done their damnedest to burn down democracy. (see, among others: Taney, Roger)

This is not the first time Congress has been controlled by a majority wholly owned by and subservient to a cabal of greedy, racist, xenophobic oligarchs willing to sell their own grandchildren for a tax break.

This is not the first time a President has betrayed the most basic principles of human decency.

And YES, it's not the first time all three branches of government have looked as though they're the oncoming train of Total Destruction.

And we survived.

And the pendulum swung.

It cost lives, it cost pain, it cost hard, hard losses for generations.

I did not want to see another such fight in my lifetime.

But we have it.

And we can win it.

It will not be a quick turnaround.

In this case, previous generations had the advantage of us because they were accustomed to longer time horizons for change. They didn't have the life experience of breathtakingly fast cultural, technological and economic change that we have seen.

But politics is rooted in human nature, and human nature doesn't turn on a dime. There is no one event, no one factor that will read the same to everyone and make everyone say "Woah! This changes everything!" That doesn't happen. People are invested in this or that aspect of a status quo they find comforting, even if some other aspect displeases them. Loss aversion is powerful. Fear of the unknown is powerful.

This is not a simple battle, it's a complex WAR.

The long game is not won by defeatism, nor is it advanced by unrealistic expectations.

The long game depends on steady effort, on opportunistic flexibility serving a clear and overarching strategy. On the slow building of solidarity. On determination to ensure the survival, not of our generation, but of our children's grandchildren. On willingness to sacrifice.

Those are the qualities we need now.

Yes, we can give ourselves a short interval to run in circles, scream and shout, express our horror and dismay.

The shorter the better.

There's work to be done, lots of it.

How many people have you registered to vote this week?

How many town/city/county council meetings have you attended?

How many volunteer hours have you put in at a candidate or party event?

How many letters to the editor have you written?

How many postcards have you sent to your elected representatives?

How many hours have you been in the streets, carrying a sign?

You're not alone.

If you're feeling alone, do some of those things just listed above-- they'll connect you with the fight.

Connect, and stay connected.

...to be continued...

patiently,
Bright

June 25, 2018

Liberals "Going High" on the Other Side of the Red Line

I seriously doubt that Michelle Obama, who famously said "When they go low, we go high," is walking around scolding people like Stephanie Wilkinson for 'being rude' or 'descending to their level' or whatever they're calling it today on the liberals-must-be-nice fainting couch.

There is always a Red Line.

That being the term for "beyond this point, imputing moral ambiguity to something appalling is wishful thinking at best and much more probably sheer lazy-ass, conflict-avoidant enabling."

David Roberts explained it, on the Twitwaves (here it is threadified for those who avoid that particular scrum):

The Forces of Evil (FoE) know this: If they can keep us arguing about where the Red Line is, and whether any particular action actually crosses it, they can a) generally escape any consequences of their actions; and b) get the liberals-must-be-nice fainting couch crowd to do their pushback for them. Thus the incrementalist tactics.

Above all else, they want to avoid a consensus coalescing around "THAT was the Red Line, and they have UNEQUIVOCALLY broad-jumped across it in a single bound."

Having done exactly that, they're now frantically looking to the fainting couch for cover.

So, listen up, please, to a few words about "going high" and what that is, once we're on the other side of the Red Line.

"Going high" is not:

> Acquiescing silently to evil.
> Refraining from identifying the evil of particular actions.
> Avoiding calling out those who participate, enable, or defend evil actions.
> Leaving wiggle room by focusing on the motivation of those participating, enabling or defending evil actions, rather than the evil effects of the actions.
> Scolding those who shine the light, identify evil, and/or resist evil for being 'uncivil' in doing so.

Is that much, at least, clear?

"Going high", therefore, can be identified by the opposite of what it is not:

> "Going high" includes speaking out when evil is present, and expressing opposition.
> "Going high" includes explaining the specific moral repugnance of the evil in question.
> "Going high" includes calling out those who participate, enable or defend evil.
> "Going high" includes demanding accountability for the damage of those evil actions.
> "Going high" includes refraining from discouraging those who would resist evil, unless their methods of resistance are also unequivocally evil.

And it is possible to do ALL of those things from a stance of maturity, clarity, and strength. Going high is exactly that:

Rather than letting moral outrage descend to tit-for-tat name calling and emotion-driven but childish retaliation, going high involves standing firm, stating clearly the evil, and calmly refusing to cooperate, condone, or remain silent in its favor.

Going high is demonstrating the moral principles that have been transgressed-- as when the crowd gathered at the New York airport to express love and support for the refugee children.

Going high can involve breaking rules or even breaking the law-- but doing so using the principles of nonviolent resistance.

Going high is calmly telling someone involved in evil, "You have done/enabled/defended this terrible thing. I will not allow you to escape the consequences of your action by pretending you have not done it. Nor will I enable your attempts to enjoy the normal pleasures available to decent human beings in public venues, untainted by the evil of your actions."

Going high is following through on that moral conviction, with firm serenity.

Yes, when they go low, we CAN go high.

Doing so is the best way to keep them from whining around the fainting couch, and in a media environment tainted by a mistaken belief that bothsiderism is journalistic objectivity and "civility" is defined as "inoffensiveness", it can be a potent tactic.

determinedly,
Bright

June 20, 2018

Heads Up, Assignment Editors of America!

Dear Assignment Editor,

(For those uncertain about media entity/journalism structure and titles, the "Assignment Editor" is sometimes a full-time job of its own, sometimes it's lumped in with other editorial duties. Either way, Assignment Editors know who they are: The ones who steer the writers, photogs, fact-gatherers-and-checkers, etc., toward the targets most likely to garner clicks, grab eyes, etc.)

I know some of you have had serious resentments about all the flak you get for being glued to [Redacted]'s sphincters. "We have a responsibility!" "Those are the stories people READ!" and other whines can be taken as read. Suffice to say, America's major media outlets' morbid fascination with every belch, fart, and gesture from [Redacted] has painted you, you personally, as part of the problem, and is that fair? You don't want to obsessively pan the camera over the train wreck, lingering lovingly on the dismembered limb. But you have to. It's "THE" Story. The Story that won't quit.

The story that just keeps on spawning more layers, more stories, and keeping horrified/fascinated Americans riveted to the web page/newspaper/teevee broadcast/podcast that serves up the freshest and most outrageous iteration.

(We Are All Tabloids Now)

Well, I have good news for you.

"THE" Story has just changed.

What, you ask, could rivet the attentions of readers/viewers/listeners more obsessively (and thus, more lucratively for you) than the latest bloviation of [Redacted] and his minions?

They themselves just handed it to you.

The new "THE Story". The one that won't quit, that offers a new, rivetingly appalling facet every few hours between now and November 6th is:

::drumroll::

The Lost Children

Yes, my editorial amigos, the One Story that always leads, is always on the front page, is always clickbait has been dropped into your lap in an endless series of iterations.

Here are some questions to get you started:

Where are the young girls?

Did any of the babies left on those floors survive?

How many ended up in hospital emergency rooms?

What soulless corporate heels enabled this outrage?

What brave, selfless resisters stood up for a helpless child victim?

What grieving photogenic parent hasn't seen their baby for weeks and keeps getting the runaround from the apparatchiks who won't admit they've LOST the kid?

What midnight flit allowed the ICEStasi to spirit these particular kids to some unsuspecting town in the dead of night?

What social service agency is overwhelmed to the point of collapse trying to reunite families?

What heart-rending horror happened in <your town here> when the helpless tots were sent to the wrong facility?

What thirteen-year-old girl ended up trafficked into sex slavery?

What twelve-year-old boy ended up trafficked into sex slavery?

What grieving father has been crisscrossing the US in a futile search for his two daughters?

Oh, yeah, my friends.

Headlines galore.

And they will JUST. KEEP. COMING.

Even if the Child-Torturer-In-Chief and his helots swear off committing atrocities from this hour forth, the atrocities they've already committed are spawning new atrocities even as we speak.

How much are the taxpayers on the hook for, in the attempt to clean up the mess?

Are we going to have to set up Reunification Centers? What will that cost? What will it involve? How many families? How many places? What will the Immigration Courts' roles be? How will their rules change? WILL their rules change?

What other appalling cruelties are being perpetrated under the cover of treating misdemeanors like aggravated felonies combined with bureaucratic indifference?

There's your stories, my friend.

The clicks, the outrage, the letters, the controversy, the discussion, the advertising revenues, the ratings will pile up to INFINITY, if you are smart enough to ride this juggernaut.

And if you're not seeing this as the opportunity of a lifetime, you're not worthy of your Assignment Editor chops.

helpfully,
Bright

June 19, 2018

Some Things I Want To Know

First, I want to know locations: I want to know the location of every ICE state and local headquarters facility, every federal immigration facility, every (Southern) border crossing checkpoint.

And I want to know the location of every concentration camp, excuse me, "#TrumpHotel" that is being run in my name as an American.

Where are all these places?

Next, I want to know the names, job titles, and office addresses of all of the ICE directors and supervisors. The ones who are "following orders" from above and relaying those orders to the line thugs who are then following them below.

I'd be okay starting with the ones here in New Mexico, but it would probably be good to know the ones in all the (southern) border states, and then in all the major cities, and then ALL of them.

It is summer.

The stench of the atrocities our government is perpetrating in our name is getting rank.

Light must be shone upon all of the places and people perpetrating them. Not just the vile policymakers and their sleazy enablers, but all of them, right down the line.

Large numbers of lawsuits need to be filed.

Large numbers of people need to mobilize.

Witness must be borne.

That means, we have to go there.

We have to look them in the eye.

We have to nonviolently confront them, and say "Not in our name."

No one else is going to make it stop.

We are the only ones who can do this.

But we CAN do this.

It starts with collecting and sharing information.

So.

Some things I want to know.

If you have a verified location or a verified person involved in this cheapass wannabe mass torture, post it here, please.

I want to know.

Someday there will be trials. Big, public ones.

Someday we will have to pay the economic and moral costs of this calamitous cruelty.

Data will help.

determinedly,
Bright

June 18, 2018

I'm asking NM Gubernatorial Candidates to commit to closing down concentration camps in NM.

I'm asking both Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham and Republican Steve Pearce to make this commitment now:

"If I win, I will use all the resources at my disposal to shut down child detainment facilities operated by the Federal Government within the State of New Mexico. If the Federal Government refuses to shut them down, I will use the New Mexico State National Guard to prohibit access to these facilities, and I will initiate court proceedings to enjoin their operation within our state."

It is already unbearably shameful and humiliating to be an American whose government is abusing fundamental human rights in such an agonizingly horrific fashion.

It would be nice to not be complicit, as a New Mexican, in enabling such vile practices.

determinedly,
Bright

June 11, 2018

I stand with North America

North America, the great continent. The landmass that runs from the Arctic Circle down to latitude 15 degrees, well below the Tropic of Cancer.

A continent with amazing and agonizing history.

A continent patchworked with so many cultures and peoples-- from those here since their ancestors crossed the land bridge we now call 'Bering' and worked their way south to inhabit nations and communities from the Pacific to the Atlantic, from the Arctic sea to the Caribbean, to those who brought the cultures of virtually the whole rest of the world with them in the last six centuries.

And the continent has shaped and altered those cultures, in conflict and cooperation with one another, in centuries of excitement and tragedy and adventure.

From the hundreds of indigenous nations still claiming ancestral rights and territories, to the three large nation-states of Mexico, USA, and Canada, we are a wondrous tapestry of invention, culture, art, commerce, trade and travel, innovation and preservation.

This fabulous continent contains some of the world's most precious and diverse natural resources.

And its ability to support life, and contribute to the greater web of life of the whole planet, is threatened by greed, hatred, and ignorance.

I believe that only working together --all of us North Americans, the First Peoples who have been here longest, and all the citizens of the three nations who want our grandchildren to thrive on this continent-- can we reverse that threat.

And it's clear we can't rely on leaders and governments to bring us together. Even as some try to bring us together, at any given time a significant proportion of those leaders and governments see their interests advanced by keeping us apart, and promoting more greed, hatred, and ignorance.

So we, the peoples of North America-- First Peoples, Mexicans, Americans, and Canadians-- we MUST find ways of connecting, working together, learning about each other. We must exchange ideas and wisdom, hopes and fears. We must overcome our anxieties about those who are different from ourselves in the languages we speak, the foods we eat, the spiritual communities we share, the morphology of our bodies, faces, skin and hair.

We must build bridges. We must find common concerns, common delights, common ground upon which to meet and connect with one another.

And we must do this in spite of, and in defiance of, those who would keep us apart, isolate us for their own purposes, using fear and avarice.

idealistically,
Bright

June 8, 2018

Has the GOP Actually Won a Presidential Election Since 1928?

Think about it.

First, stipulate that while Eisenhower may have been in tune with the moderate Republican ideology of his era, he was in no way a GOP apparatchik, had never run for any lesser office under the GOP umbrella, and never served in any appointed position as a Republican. As a senior military officer, like most senior military back then, he largely avoided politics or overt partisan identification until he teamed up with the moderate wing of the GOP to prevent Taft from being elected and undoing NATO and the UN and other post-WWII global alliances.

Now, look again.

What does the GOP have to do, to win a Presidential election?

Since Eisenhower, five GOP candidates have won Presidential elections.

Nixon colluded with a hostile foreign power to nuke the Paris peace accords, contributing to his victory.

Reagan colluded with a hostile foreign power to prevent resolution of the Iran hostage crisis, contributing to his victory.

GW Bush gamed the electoral process (cheated) to hand a conservative-dominated Supreme Court the opportunity to hand him the Presidency.

[Redacted] both colluded with a hostile foreign power AND gamed the electoral process (cheated).

It is just conceivably possible that GHW Bush won fairly and squarely. It's possible that his terms as GOP chair, envoy to China, and Director of the CIA, not to mention his family's unsavory history of doing business with international, er, parties, had little or nothing to do with his electoral victory.

It's possible.

So, maybe the GOP has won ONE Presidential election since Herbert Hoover's 1928 victory.

Maybe.

But colluding with hostile foreign powers and outright cheating have been much more reliable for them.

historically,
Bright

May 23, 2018

I'm Going to Offend a Bunch of NFL Fans (Maybe all of them...)

Also to be offended: Players, players' families, team owners (but who the hell cares about them), team employees like coaches, front office people, etc.

Oh, and probably a good many NCAA Football fans, and the coaches, employees, and alumni of those schools.

But here goes, anyway:

Kill it.

It has morphed into a terrible "sport."

Mind you, my stepfather had season Vikings tickets when I was a kid, and I thought it was fun to go to the games back at the old Met Stadium, tailgating in the snow, bringing along our "stadium bags" to snuggle into, and thermoses full of hot cocoa (coffee laced with booze for the grups), and watch Tark and Alan Page and Foreman and Marinaro and Carl Eller run rings around some poor schmucks whose idea of "bad weather" was a little rain.

Back in those days, though, linemen generally averaged in the 250-260 lb. range (yep, there were some bigger- and a good many smaller, too-) and around 6'3" - 6'4". They were big guys, sure. But nothing like today's behemoths.

Also back in those days, the college athletes were more about getting an education as well as playing their way through. Alan Page graduated Notre Dame, went to law school while he was playing for the Vikings and is now an Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court. And while head coaches at major college programs have always been well-compensated, in 1981 Michigan's Bo Schembechler (at the time the highest-paid college head coach) took home the equivalent (in 2014 dollars) of $285,771.

In 2017, Alabama's Nick Saban banked $11.1 million in compensation.

People got hurt playing football back then- there were some nasty ones, indeed. But we didn't know about CTE. And mortality studies of players from the 50s, 60s, and 70s show longer post-career lifespans with fewer health complications related to their football careers.

Back then, it was still a sport, more or less. Sure, the league and the owners made a lot of money and the network broadcast contract pretty much kept ABC in business. But in the days before the casino gambling boom, before Fantasy Football and high-stakes betting, the stakes were a lot lower.

Football was a path for young black men who had both intellectual and athletic abilities to break through the walls. They knew damn' well they were being exploited, to an extent (I recall Carl Eller telling a roomful of fans about hearing a (white, of course) UCLA alum tell a (also white, of course) Minnesota alum at the Rose Bowl "You're gonna have to watch our >n-word<s beat the tar right out of your >n-word<s." But the ratio of risk to return was a little better.

What is football now?

It's a high-stakes, big-money form of gladiatorial combat, stoked by media oligarchs, and dependent on the desperation of young athletes willing to risk their health and sanity in a game that's become far more brutal, far more physically debilitating to play. We're seeing signs of CTE in High School football players, now.

Young men willing to put their bodies and brains into a crushing mill, from an early age, to be winnowed through High School and College competition, to make a chance at one of a couple of hundred draftees, to get yet another chance to not be cut and hopefully stay on a roster, get some playing time, get a marginally better contract and a chance at one of those million-dollar salaries.

And while they're doing that- pounding hell out of their bodies and brains, ensuring themselves a future of pain and confusion and an early death, they get the "privilege" of being part of a milieu that enables and encourages brutality, domestic violence, and extreme behaviors of many other damaging kinds.

While the owners and media barons get wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.

And when the players stand up for themselves, when they make a push to be something more than the docile human tanks they're expected to be, they're vilified, fined, and punished.

This is not a game.

This is the bread-and-circuses of a post-democratic authoritarian oligarchy.

Its time is over. Its real value to everyone but the media oligarchs and league owners is gone.

And it should die.

sadly,
Bright

May 10, 2018

I Call It "Leetsplaining". And I'm Done With It.

A discussion began on a blog I follow: Reader Request Week 2018 #6: The Fall(?!?!?) of Heinlein

(Capsule summary for those who missed the last 20 years of posthumous literary dissection of RAH --aka "Robert A. Heinlein"-- and his ouevre: He started writing Sci-Fi stories in the 30s and 40s, became something of a phenomenon in the 50s with popular YA-oriented Sci-Fi novels, hit the Cultural Fooforaw jackpot in the 1960s with "Stranger In A Strange Land" and kept on writing a buttload of novels.

Many of his novels were controversial in their depictions of alternate histories, societies, etc., based on ideologies and concepts that ranged from hippie-lefty-libertarianism to anarcho-libertarianism to rightwing neo-fascist authoritarianism with a libertarian cherry on top. His depictions of women have been widely criticized as misogynistic in the extreme, and much discussion has focused on evidence of racism and white supremacy in his framing of cultures and characters. But even many of his most passionate detractors grant his storytelling expertise and his influence on speculative fiction and storytelling. He remains popular, his books still sell.)

I put in my two cents' worth on the discussion. I'd read and enjoyed some of RAH's oeuvre, then I ran across "Farnham's Freehold" which slammed every "squick" button I had, even at a much younger and less-philisophically-developed age. And that was more or less the end of my enjoyment of the RAH oeuvre, with one or two exceptions.

But people started talking about "Farnham's Freehold" ("FF" ) and it was pointed out that no, no, people who thought it was racist, misogynist dreck were all wrong, it was SATIRE (or maybe "zany madcap humor" or something.) And how RAH, in spite of his quite freely expressed embrace of white supremacy, was actually making a courageous stand on behalf of civil rights in a time before the great victories of the Movement.

Thing is, none of the folks carefully providing their highly enlightened literary interpretation of RAH and his underlying motivations, themes, and accomplishments in "FF" mentioned being African American, and, I strongly suspect, none of them were.

Which meant they were Leetsplaining.

Leetsplaining happens when guys tell women about how some misogynist fuckery isn't really all that reprehensible because (insert pseudo-concerned/reasonable/intellectual WHARRRGLLLE here.) Or when white people analyze for black people why "all lives matter" can't be racist because (insert pseudo-concerned/reasonable/intellectual WHARRRGLLLE here.) Or when straight people provide copious philosophical and ideological glosses on why opposing gay marriage isn't an expression of actual homophobia because (insert pseudo-concerned/reasonable/intellectual WHARRRGLLLE here.)

Or when people without any kind of physiological or cognitive impairment or challenge present the case for why making public facilities accessible just isn't reasonable because (insert pseudo-concerned/reasonable/intellectual WHARRRGLLLE here.) Or when cisgendered individuals defend other cisgendered individuals' (rarely their own-- isn't that peculiar?) "right" to be squicked out by trans people because (insert pseudo-concerned/reasonable/intellectual WHARRRGLLLE here.)

Let me be very clear, here: I'm not saying that white readers and fans of RAH have no right to have, or express, an opinion of "FF" that differs from mine. Had such a reader responded with, "Well, I didn't read it that way, it felt like satire to me," well, fine. Your experience, your opinion. We can happily discuss why we think each other are deluded without ever hitting leetsplaining territory.

But when that reader presumes, from their place of omniscience and, very likely, shared privilege with RAH (who was, well, yeah... caucasian, duh) to analyze and explain why "FF" isn't actually racist, it's kind of a classic example of leetsplaining.

And I have to say, I'm done with that shit. In all its forms. I expect to be called on it if I do it.

To be ultra-ultra-ultra clear: As someone who's been negatively affected by misogyny, I will identify misogyny, describe it, and call it out. I may even take it upon myself to dismiss something others who do not share the experience of being negatively affected by misogyny claim to be offensively misogynistic as not offensive. Ditto on other kinds of shit that's negatively affected me because I don't enjoy the privilege of an exclusively heterosexual orientation or the privilege of never experiencing mental illness and its stigma and consequences. None of that is leetsplaining.

But if I, who enjoy the privilege of a melanin deficiency, decide to explain why something isn't really racist, I am leetsplaining. Call me on that shit.

And if someone who does not have a melanin deficiency but who DOES have a Y chromosome decides to expound on the whys and wherefores of how something makes it okay to treat someone without a Y chromosome as less than fully human, and I call them on that leetsplaining, I am not speaking from my privilege as melanin-deficient, but from my lack thereof in respect to not having a Y chromosome.

This shit gets complicated fast, I know. But the essentials are fairly clear: If you enjoy some type of privilege, then analyzing, dissecting, and/or deconstructing oppression against others who do not enjoy that privilege in any way that contradicts or invalidates their experience with that lack of privilege becomes leetsplaining. And it makes you look like an ass.

Expressing an opinion based on your privilege may make you look a bit ignorant and unenlightened. I have done this, and learned from it. I think everyone does. But asserting some kind of Higher Knowledge of What Really Is and bloviating thereupon with an assertive assumption that You Have The Real Answer? That's leetsplaining and it puts you squarely in "asshole" territory.

And all of the foregoing is, of course, my opinion.

See what I did there?

exasperatedly,
Bright

April 26, 2018

House GOP conservatives kicking off an Evangelical vs. Catholic cage match?

Conservative leader: Next House chaplain should have a family



I have to wonder how much the current Pope's vocal concern for social issues, the poor, refugees, responsible stewardship of the environment, and other stuff the GOP would like out of sight and out of mind is affecting this.

There are certainly plenty of hardcore troglodyte American Catholics, in Holy Orders and in the congregations, who are also unhappy with the shift in emphasis. But my Catholic friends and family report that there is a very definite propagation of a more "Red-Letter Gospel" approach. And there are plenty of very liberal clergy in the various Orders who are invigorated and encouraged.

If this kind of stupidity pries apart the religious conservative coalition, it may actually be a positive development for Democrats. But it will put many in a tough position, because with all the will in the world to embrace the more liberal social agenda, the hardline anti-choice agenda will not be going away.

conflictedly,
Bright