Greta Thunberg, the 18 year old Swedish climate activist, had some recent thoughts for the United States congress …
Thunberg threats, however, won’t have much impact. Republicans in congress already have a tested plan for what to tell their children when climate change causes deadly weather. In unison, they will all simply yell, “Pack your bags kids, we’re going to Cancun!”
“Oh can’t you see, you belong to me.” — Gordon Sumner
Most of you know Sumner by a different name. There are those that consider this song one of the more romantic songs in history. I worry about them. I worry if they believe in the same type of ownership that the subject of this song does. More than anything, I wonder if Democrats and Republicans think of their voters the same way.
Check that, I really don’t wonder about Republicans. As vile as many of them are, at least they don’t try to hide it anymore. Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a bill to make Washington D.C. a state. The GOP response was equal kinds predictable and indicative of where they are as a party.
To be perfectly fair, the Democrats know how to read numbers just as easily. Over 90 percent of residents voted for Joe Biden in the last election. The district has been Democratic for years. So, one could forgive the Democratically controlled House for having a sense of urgency here.
Then again, we must remember not to count our chickens before they hatch. Just because someone votes Democratic now doesn’t mean they will always vote Democratic. The South used to be in the bag for Democrats up until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. When you move past regional patterns you will find all kinds of demographic groups where the battle still wages.
Yet, that’s the mindset of the modern Republican party. They don’t believe in competing for votes. They don’t believe in competing in the marketplace of ideas. Their voters belong to them and not the other way around. Republican representatives accused Democrats of a partisan grab as if that has any bearing on whether the district deserves to be its own state.
Even if the barbs are true, that’s not the point. The point is you have a group of people (Puerto Rico as well) that do not have adequate representation. They have more people in DC than several states already admitted to the union. If we are going to fly down the “why should they be a state” rabbit hole we would immediately ask ourselves why we need two Dakotas, Wyoming, and Idaho.
It’s really a simple proposition. The answer is two-fold. First, our system has always been skewed towards land. In the beginning, you could only vote if you owned land. From there, we attempted to balance the needs and desires of small states with bigger states. They did this by giving Wyoming the same number of senators as California. Seems perfectly fair and reasonable when you think about it.
The second proposition is that those states have the right voters. That’s why a 50/50 split Senate sees Democrats represent 41 million more people. Instead of battling in the marketplace of ideas we are trying to kidnap our own voters and keep everyone else on the outside looking in. So, voices on the floor complained about a socialist agenda and a sinister plot to get it through. Let’s ignore that if there was such a thing, that thing is highly popular amongst those surveyed.
The movement in state legislatures is proof that they aren’t trying to convince people that their ideas are better. They are trying to limit the number of people that could possibly choose that agenda. That’s not sufficient enough reason to deny the people of DC statehood. The same goes for Puerto Rico as well.
Sorry for being a little quiet, lately, y’all. I’m trying to help Ms. JJ while she’s out but I have been in one of those short-lived (I hope) periods of emotional overwhelm. Call it what you like, depression, grief – it’s that rock on my chest that refuses to move when I try to get out of bed. I walk around with a smile on my face, doing my daily business with a smile, all the while with knees shaking and my head repeating “just go back to bed. just go lay down. Just go close your eyes.”
My photos will show me smiling and at that moment, I’m genuine! But the happiness flitters away, the smile recedes, and the boulder settles itself back on my chest.
It’s been a tough year. So many of the comforts of a passing year that give us hope for renewal were just missing for a year. For me, baseball season is and has always been the ultimate symbol of everything being right in the world. My daddy always said there are three things you can always look forward to: Death, Taxes, and Opening Day. I used to get a phone call the first day pitchers and catchers reported to spring training. “Pitchers and Catchers Report!” he’d yell. I’d make an inane comment about how fast time flies and we’d trade texts and calls for the next few months about all things baseball. This has left a huge hole in my life every baseball season and each year it becomes harder to fill. Then came the pandemic.
My heart was almost mended enough from the sign-stealing scandal to give my Astros a new shot last year, but of course, Opening Day never came. The one person I wanted to share that with, my daddy, was no longer with me. He’d have thought the people cutouts were stupid but he would have probably bought one for me.
Opening Day came and went in 2021. Things are starting to get back to normal. My husband and I are fully vaccinated and can venture, masked, out into the world. But my husband’s mama and my daddy aren’t here, and I miss them. It’s funny how grief seems to sit dormant until all of a sudden it rears its head again. Because I believe in the baseball Gods, I’ve purchased some cheap seats to visit my team this weekend. I’ll be in the nosebleeds – with the real fans – and I hope my dad will be sitting in one of the seats that have been kept open to social distance, telling me which calls were shit and which rookies to watch out for. Hopefully the Astros get the COVID outbreak under control, soon.
I’ll feed my soul with some peanuts and popcorn, a hot dog, a giant ice-cold Dr. Pepper and a big foam sombrero. Maybe next week, the sun will shine a little brighter for me.
If you’re feeling depressed and would like someone to talk to, people are waiting at (877) 870-4673. Or just get going in the comments below, we’re good people here and would love to chat. If you are having thoughts of suicide, Please call 1-800-273-8255.
Oh, and one more thing. Just since it’s a politics blog I need to keep the theme. Ted Cruz Sucks.
Each side of the political spectrum seem to throw out their own snark . What we know is that she was shot while threatening others with a kitchen knife. So, the right threw out memes about all of knife fights they had growing up. Their tongues were firmly planted in their cheeks. It’s a laugh a minute with them.
The left pointed out that she was a honor student. For instance, I usually love John Pavlovitz’s work, but his recent post on this missed out on a lot of nuance. I talked about the perception problem that came with showing pictures of Daunte Wright with a gun. The mention of her as a honor student presents the same problem. While it might be relevant to her overall character, it is not particularly helpful in sorting through the facts of this particular case.
When the officers approached they could have no idea who Bryant was. They couldn’t have known whether she was an “A” student or a potential dropout. They saw a potentially dangerous teenager that was threatening the lives of everyone on the scene. They saw the dangerous weapon. Contrary to what some would have us believe. This is not a normal scene for most of us. That would be the genesis of those jokes told in right wing memes.
However, what is equally misleading is the false dichotomy that the right forces us into in these situations. The reflexive reaction seems to be to force police to stand back and allow whatever bad is going to happen happen and then investigate after the fact. In other words, certainly don’t intervene because then you will be blamed for whatever you do.
The response demonstrates the binary thinking that usually comes from the right. You can do nothing or you can shoot to kill. They fail to see that while much of the criticism lacks nuance, it comes from a place where we want better outcomes. How do we get those better outcomes? That’s a fair question.
Community policing is just one answer. I mentioned that none of the responding officers knew Bryant. Why not? If those that patrolled the neighborhood frequently also responded to the call it’s more likely they would have known Bryant. Maybe they would have known she was an honor student and could have used that relationship and knowledge to talk her down before shots needed to be fired.
However, the more pressing question is why we always have to shoot to kill. Couldn’t they have disabled her instead? It’s a knife. All that needs to happen is to allow those in her path to get out of the way and away from danger. Maybe Bryant has a future after that. Maybe she could make good on the promise she was showing as a student. Maybe she could learn from her mistakes and become a productive member of society.
Racism is usually never overt. It is usually subtle and this is where both sides often get it wrong. Those officers didn’t necessarily shoot Bryant because she was black. They would have responded to a call of a white girl with a knife. They would have taken the situation just as seriously. Would they have done the same thing? That’s a much more complicated question.
All we need to do is consider the cases of Dylan Roof and the Santa Fe shooter. They survived their ordeals. This isn’t to say that they shouldn’t have. Maybe I wouldn’t have taken Roof to McDonald’s afterwards, but we don’t have to shoot to kill either. There is something going on here that has to be addressed. We need to ask ourselves why these situations often turn out this way.
The officers involved in the Bryant case didn’t do anything illegal necessarily. It was a dangerous situation. Lives potentially hung in the balance. They acted and that was that. What we can’t quite put our finger on is that there is a slice of humanity white officers seem to see when they see white suspects. Maybe they see themselves. Maybe they see the potential. Maybe they feel something they just don’t feel when they encounter suspects that are people of color.
Community policing would help. If police get to know the members in their community then it is easier to see them as people when bad things go down. Psychological testing of potential officers would certainly help. New training would also help. There are a number of options to try between doing nothing and shooting to kill. All of those are good things and things that would make the situation better. It won’t eliminate every situation. Perfect is the enemy of good. There will never be a perfect, but we need to do better and we can’t afford to wait any longer.
Growing up in Texas with two native Texans as parents has given me a wealth of old home sayings to fall back on in times like this. I find myself using them in class all the time and the students always snicker. I’m usually not sure if it is an age thing or a regional dialect thing. However, the phrase, “the pot calling the kettle black” just seems to be ringing in my ear.
Majorie Taylor Greene wants Maxine Waters expelled from Congress. God bless her heart. There are just some people that have been blessed without self-awareness. Greene is lucky to be in Congress and hopefully the good people of her state will get rid of her at the first opportunity. The House certainly could have expelled her and if they weren’t so divided between Q and progressive they probably would have.
At the heart of it all are supposed comments that Waters has made and a mistaken belief by many in this country. Greene cited that Waters is “inciting riots and Black Lives Matters terrorism.” Except, Black Lives Matter aren’t terrorists. Certainly, you don’t have to like them or their methods, but anyone calling them terrorists is obviously off their rocker. Of course, that’s no surprise when it comes to Greene.
As I write this, there has been no verdict in the Chauvin murder case. Yet, one cannot deny that this is one of those moments where we get to define our soul as a nation. Either we are for equal justice under the law or we aren’t. We are either for holding everyone accountable for their actions or we aren’t. While the verdict may or may not reflect our personal values, it is a moment that will take the temperature of the country at large.
The Rodney King event and subsequent trial happened when I was a teenager. I remember those same excuses then as we hear now. He was high. He was a criminal. He was dangerous. Heck, he didn’t die. Bones mend and bruises heal. He should consider himself lucky. One can only imagine the rage of hearing many of those same things 30 years later. One can only imagine the rage of seeing a country make almost no meaningful improvements in race relations with the police. Maybe those of us that want to judge that rage (MTG) can take a step back and try to understand where it is coming from. At least then we can save our own souls even if the collective one might be too far gone.
Every once in awhile you learn something new. Of course, the reality is that we rarely ever learn anything truly new. It simply is that we learn something that reinforces something we already knew in a unique way. In this case, another commentator stumbled on an idea that illustrates something we all have known for most of our lives.
I peruse a number of sites every day just to keep up with the times and to check out other writers I enjoy reading. I am a regular at John Pavlovitz’s site, I am a regular reader at Heather Cox Richardson’s site. I also go over to the Bulwark. It is a center-right blog that features a group of never Trumpers that used to be establishment conservative thinkers. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Yet, reading them has given me insight into the conservative mindset. One of their writers passed along an interesting nugget about Red Bull and Elon Musk.
Last (the author) pointed out something I didn’t know. Red Bull doesn’t actually manufacture Red Bull. In fact, the company doesn’t manufacturer anything. They outsource it to someone else and just handle the marketing. Their YouTube page and other social media are revolutionary. They are highly successful and they don’t make a damn thing.
The four largest car manufacturers sold more than 25 million cars last year alone combined. Musk’s Tesla made just over 500 thousand. Who made more? If you guessed Tesla you’d guess right. It is truly the triumph of style over substance and we are seeing the same in our politics.
This really isn’t anything new. Literature experts tell us that there are really only about 100 original stories in literature. Everything else is a riff on one of those original stories. Plato described this phenomenon in his “Allegory of a cave” in the Republic. Perception is reality and no amount of facts are really going to change that.
The book “Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus” described the differences between the sexes back in 1992. I haven’t read the book admittedly, but the general idea is that men and women are wired differently. Well duh. Yet, the same notion would probably best describe Republicans and Democrats. I hate to paint people with such a broad brush, but the two groups just don’t process the same way.
Progressives and conservatives by and large think differently. I could make value judgments, but suffice it to say that when you want systemic changes your mind goes to policy initiatives. Policy initiatives require facts and specific aims. When your goal is to say no to more government you don’t need the specifics. You think in generalities.
The aforementioned book is actually pretty relevant here. We mistakenly thought that relevant facts and trusted sources of information were persuasive. They certainly are to people that speak the same language, but some people honestly distrust all of that stuff. Conservatives are great at communicating simple points in quick bursts. They frame issues quickly and convincingly. Progressives usually shoot themselves in the foot when they try to frame issues.
The long and short of it is that we cannot get through to most people by citing facts and discussing policy aims. They just aren’t wired that way. Trump never had a specific policy and never made good on virtually any of his campaign promises. That didn’t seem to matter. So, pointing those things out really won’t work. We need something else. The alternative is to continue to bang our head against the wall.