How Does It Get This Far?

Another elementary school has suffered a tragedy that should not happen with the frequency that it does in this country.  A teenager fought off police to enter the building and slaughter 21 people, mostly children.  Children, whose bodies were so abused by the bullets, could only be identified by DNA.  While many of the children in the one classroom are dead, the ones who survived are deeply wounded, some physically, all emotionally.  This happened on a Tuesday and by the weekend another story will push it off the front page.  Like so many before it is a few survivor victims, family members and a handful of elected officials who will remind us, but often they don’t get the forum they deserve.  It is clear we have given up on trying to keep kids safe in order to not even do some reasonable and Constitutional restrictions of gun ownership.

Instead, we run children through drills to deal with the possibility of an active shooter in their school.  Those too are traumatizing.  Children have suffered psychological damage after such drills.  On twitter one father told how his Kindergarten student was taught that if they are near the door as a shooter comes in to wave their arms at the shooter and throw things, so their classmates might have a chance to escape.  We are asking 5 year olds to put themselves in harm’s way to save others.  Another comment mentioned the fact that if a student is outside the classroom when an active shooter is in the building, you must not let them in the room.  Even if they pound on the door and start screaming. One adult who remembers being caught outside the room during one such drill was so unnerving (he didn’t know it was a drill since his school did them by surprise) he needed therapy.  “The life of the many must outweigh the life of the few or the one” should never have to be a 1^st grade motto.

 When events like this occur the camps are already in place.  Too often if you raise a concern using the latest example of a shooting you are told to not politicize it.  If you talk about common sense gun reform you are attacked for wanting to take everyone’s guns away.  If you discuss the gun at all the clap back is we need better mental health or criminals will still get guns.  However as I write this the shooting in Buffalo and in Uvalde were committed by 18 year olds with no criminal background to speak of and their mental health issues seemed to be ignored or go unseen.  They both had easy access to guns and in fact in Uvalde, the shooter had access directly due to the fact that the law was changed so someone his age could buy the weapons he used with no real questions asked.  The law stopped him from buying it sooner, he waited until it was legal.  A law that not long ago would have prevented him from buying the weapons until he was 21, but the current state government was embarrassed that more guns weren’t being purchased in their state. 

There is no panacea for this, I know that by the time this is read there will likely be another mass shooting.  But we can put up speed bumps to perhaps find a way to prevent it.  I don’t want people not to be able to own and use fire arms.  I know why there is a second amendment and why the founder felt the need for a state based way of responding to tyranny.  I know what it is like to have a loved one murdered in my home. I know that guns are both a way of defending oneself, a hobby, and for some a way to feed their family.  We shouldn’t want to ban all guns.  That is not what most people want.  But most people want to find some way to find a way to make it harder for people who shouldn’t have weapons to get them.  Simply raising the age one can purchase certain weapons, limiting high capacity magazines and universal background checks.  I would love to have waiting periods for buying more than one weapon but that is a tougher thing to get passed and may get too close to the 2^nd amendment.  Calls to repeal the Second Amendment, by the way, are non-starters.  It is that kind of rhetoric that is as bad as those who think “cannot be infringed” means there are no rules.  Both do not help the debate.   

There is also a cultural issue in our country that can’t be denied.  We fetishize guns and that has to change.  Be it the way guns play a role in cultivating an image in parts of the entertainment industry, or those whose family holiday card includes everyone holding a rifle this is not healthy. 

Little kids should not have to make a split second decision to Run, Hide, Fight.  They shouldn’t have to think like a forward battalion in war zone deciding who will live and who will die.  They shouldn’t have to know how to see a classmate so destroyed by bullets that even their parents can’t recognize them.  We can work together to fix this.  We can find a way.  

I am Not a Biologist

 When Ketanji Brown Jackson, the latest Supreme Court Justice, was asked in her confirmation hearings to define a woman, she replied "I am not a Biologist".  Of course this made the right wing of the country set their hair on fire.  The answer was terse to a question that was way outside of the discussion.  Another culture war question from a party that has devolved into discourse worthy of a social media comment section.  But her answer does make sense.  It is far harder to define what is a woman or man as the long known diversity of human sex, sexuality and gender becomes more mainstream.  About 30 years ago I helped organize a conference on the Cultural Construction of Sexuality.  This looked at the then changing view of homosexuality, bisexuality, polyamory and what we called the heterodoxy of our culture.  It explored the wide variety of gender expressions, sexual attractions and the overall view of sexuality at the time.  I am surprised that an entire generation has grown up since then and we still are having the same discussions.  

This question was likely prompted by the recent win by a female transsexual college athlete.  So how do you define a woman.  Well by looking at her.  No, you can see an expression of gender when you see someone, but you know nothing about a person's sex just by seeing them in public.  Fully clothed.  Virtually everyone has encountered someone where they assumed a sex and made a mistake.  Now we are probably hardwired to tried to identify the person we are looking at as a potential mate and look for attractive features.  But we know those can be faked and disguised.  There is also the question of non-gender conforming people whose appearance could not fully define one way or another.  This is not as uncommon as you think and hasn't been for a long time.  So mere physical appearance isn't a good indicator.

Now, for some, it is whether a penis is present.  You will hear this a lot.  If someone has a penis they are male.  In most cases that is true.  But it would also make the opposite true, without a penis means female.  Here is the problem.  When a child is born sometimes their physical appearance is unclear, or worse undeveloped. In the Dominican Republic there are children known as  Guevedoces , which effectively translates as "penis at twelve". These are boys born with what looks like a vulva and vagina.  At puberty they develop a penis and tentacles descend.  So now they are girls for their entire life, brought up as such and suddenly are not boys.  There are also cases were an injury causes the removal of a penis does the make someone a woman.  Those big eunuchs of the past would be woman by that definition.  

So some say the ability to give birth makes one a woman.  Well, there are many women incapable of giving birth, does that make them men?  Senator Josh Hawley used this definition and was immediately stymied by the fact that post-menopause woman can't have children.  Do they become something else?  

So genetics is the answer right?  XX is a woman, XY is a man.   Well it isn't that simple.  You see there are six fairly common genetic possibilities in the human genetic code for sex chromosomes.  They are:  

X – Roughly 1 in 2,000 to 1 in 5,000 people (Turner’s syndrome )

XX – Most common form of female

XXY – Roughly 1 in 500 to 1 in 1,000 people (Klinefelter's symdrome)

XY – Most common form of male

XYY – Roughly 1 out of 1,000 people

XXXY – Roughly 1 in 18,000 to 1 in 50,000 births

Each of these has their own different expression and in some cases, like Klinefelter's, a person may not know their genetic make up or that they have anything wrong in their genes and it is not uncommon.  So genetics might not be the answer either without making some subjective discussion.

Couple this with the fact the gender and sex are not the same thing, that for about 100 years we have been able to perform sex reassignment surgery and in very recent times we are returning to a time when gender expressions were far more comfortably diverse, the question requires even more than a biologist.  

Human sexuality, sex, gender and social interactions are all complicated.  Saying it is simple doesn't make it so.  Real fear of this diversity is more of a problem that if someone wants to redesign their body and outward appearance to match their mind.  

It is difficult to make a lot of change quickly for many people.  But the fact that members of the Senate are trying to use it as a cudgel to divide the country is disgusting.  I would hope that as a culture we can embrace the diversity that exists in the human condition and not continue to force people to hide who they are.  In the meantime, I am glad that Justice Jackson is confirmed on the court.  Maybe next time we won't have to deal with this nonsense.   

I Shouldn't Have to Tell You This

There has been so much nonsense vomited out on the internet recently that I thought I would vent a little about it.  Some will make you angry and some will just make you wonder how the person talking dresses themselves and finds food.  It continues to be an amazing world on the web.  

1,  Your Inconveniences are NOT like the Shoah* (Holocaust) :  Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said this at a rally, “Even in Hitler’s Germany you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.” This was in references to recent restrictions on people who have not been vaccinated against Covid 19.  It isn't the first time he dabbled in Godwin territory.  This however was an extra stupid an offensive statement because the unvaccinated could easily get out of their, so called crisis, by getting a shot.  But what is more interesting is that RFK Jr. apparently didn't read to the end of the book. 

2.  Speaking of the Shoah, a recent county in Tennessee decided to remove the graphic novel MAUS from the school curriculum citing a drawing of a nude woman (which is a mouse) and bad language (found in many other books in the curriculum).  Of course that and several other recent statements by many on the teaching of Nazi Germany (true story, one Indiana lawmaker suggested it would should be taught objectively, this trying find out if he is Swiss), have led to people asking why the Shoah should be taught and what makes it unique.  I would be able to write a book on why but here are a few points.  

a.  Germany at the time of the rise of the Nazis was a Republic and Hitler and his supporters used the system to change to a dictatorship leading to the events of World War II. 

b.  The government didn't just attack the Jewish people and others they didn't like, they used the tools of state and then built vast infrastructure for the purpose of killing an entire people, with the vision of doing it worldwide.

c.  By killing the Jews of Europe that was not land won, there was no political gain, and very little economic gain to be had.  The Nazis killed people simply because they wanted them dead. 

d.  It wasn't just the Germans or the military who helped in the effort.  Ordinary citizens supported the deportation, killing and cover up of the Shoah, and we are still uncovering stories today.  

The idea that this is unique does not diminish the horrors of other genocides or attempted genocides in the 20th or 21st centuries.  But it is a point in history we can all learn from and hope to stop in the future.  And no, you having to wear a mask to go into Kroger or the Court House is not a sign imminent concentration camps. 

3.  A law professor, who has become a favorite of the right wing noise machine, Jonathan Turley, suggested the President Biden's pledge to appoint a black woman to the Supreme Court may be unconstitutional.  For someone who teaches classes on the constitution he may want to read it.  Still others in the echo chamber that is the Republican disinformation cycle also suggested it violates the Civil Rights Act.  Neither is true of course because, like many of the Executive Branch responsibilities, it is absolute and the review is the advise and consent of the Senate.  He can nominate anyone, doesn't have to be a lawyer.  He can announce who he wants to nominate long before there was an opening.  Which he did by saying during the campaign that he would nominate a Black Woman to the bench.  Some have called that unprecedented.  However they are either massively ignorant of the history or the court or are simply lying.  Ronald Reagan, while running for President, promised GOP women that he would appoint a woman to the Supreme Court if given the chance and they repeated it.  When a seat came open he did just that.  When this was pointed out they said that Reagan didn't do that.  They said he never ruled out anyone.  That of course is nonsense.  But the right wing noise machine finds facts to be an allergen.  

4.   Joe Rogan, who apparently wants to be the next Alex Jones, had Jordan Peterson, on the show.  Two white guys who decided that the only people who should be called Black are those in what they called the darkest parts of Africa.  Trevor Noah, a man who grew up in Apartheid South Africa and current host of The Daily Show, did a segment on what it means to be Black.  Including reminded the two ignorant fools that in Africa no one referred to themselves as black.  In fact in the United States there were rules about how even the smallest of African ancestry made you black.  So of course someone who wants to appear relevant in the right wing theater had to speak up. Josh Denny, a comedian of sorts, decided to say that Noah had only lived in the US as a millionaire so Denny, an Irishman, knows more about being Black than Noah.  Seriously, he said that.  But then he got fired from the Food Network for suggesting he knows that woman can tell they are pregnant within 6 weeks of conception.  So being without a uterus or dark skin doesn't stand in his way of thinking he knows better about what that is like than people who do.  He is wrong but that is not unusual. 

These are just a few of the things that are just part of the mountain of nonsense that gets dumped on social media and the right wing airways every day.  It is always a good idea to take any of it with a grain of salt.  But I shouldn't have to tell you that.  

*Shoah is the Hebrew word for catastrophe.  Used since the 1940s it is a more direct description of the killing of 6 million Jews by the Nazis.  In English this is often referred to as the Holocaust, which is Greek for sacrifice by fire and has a religious connotation.  

CRT Is Not the Problem: Ignorance Is.

In 1897 the Indiana State Legislature tried to pass a bill that would legally make the value of Pi, a mathematical constant that is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, 3.2 when in fact it is an ever growing decimal approximately 3.14159 (so they couldn't even round correctly).  Thankfully a professor from Purdue University was able to help stop the nonsense.  And nonsense it was.  While the idea of solving the unsolvable problem of trying to square the circle, the was a clear thought that math can be changed for the sake of discomfort.  So it is no surprise that the wise leaders of this state are at it again, with how to teach history.

There is an epidemic of state Republicans who are trying to make laws to limit how and what teachers can teach.  A response to the ginned up fear of Critical Race Theory (CRT), state elected officials are passing laws to prevent anything they think might connect itself to this legal and social theory in the public schools.  Most can't seem to understand what CRT is but they think it is bad for children.  This has led to laws both proposed and passed that would limit among other things, certain books being part of curriculum, certain words being banned from the classroom and in Indiana allowing a few as one parent to object to something in the curriculum for it to be removed.  This led one State Senator to say even European Fascism of the mid-twentieth century should be taught objectively.  Apparently there is a good size to Nazism for some Republicans. 

Republicans across the country have been trying to use the power of the State House to define what teachers can and cannot say using CRT as the reason they must step in.  They have expanded this to include any attempts by schools to move forward any social justice discussions.  This could include LGBTQ+ rights and in some cases acknowledgment and for some religious freedom.   Much like Indiana in 1897 they are swayed by nonsense that has led some to trying to outlaw words or concepts including “equity,” “inclusivity education,” “multiculturalism” and “patriarchy,” as well as “social justice” and “cultural awareness".  Others are looking to literally burn some books they don't like.  Funny how they love the Constitution until they don't.  

They also have created a list of things they are calling patriotic education.  In some cases it smacks of jingoism training.  But what is funny is just how ignorant some of the elected officials are of their country's history while trying to disappear so many stories of people.  In Virginia a new bill lists a series of things that should be taught in school.  It included, in the text of the bill, that one thing to be taught is the debates between Abraham Lincoln and Fredric Douglas.  Except Lincoln never debated that Douglas. It was Stephen Douglas and  my guess is that the moron who proposed it never read any of the debates they had.  This new crazy move by Republicans in a growing number of states feels like an attempt to make any education on the growing pains our country continues to have illegal.  This is not American and nor is it better for us.  

Let's be clear, CRT is not taught in our schools.  It is a complex academic concept that suggests that racism is not merely a product of individual hate but deeply imbedded in our societal structures. It also sees race as a social construct and we know this to be true because several ethnic or national groups were once considered non-white but not today.    At times the racist ideology is clearly the product of intentional discrimination and other times one can promote racism without intention because our bias is unnoticed.  Recent discussion of race and anti-racism have caused a large number of conservatives to react and try to lump all of any social justice movements in CRT and also tried to link CRT to the Critical Theory of the Frankfort School.  (Can you say Marxism).  Thus the ever popular RED SCARE is back in fashion, only around race and social justice.  When confronted with the fact the CRT is not a Marxist ideology (though to be far some academics who work in the area are Marxists) the sputtering sounds like my old lawnmower without adequate gasoline.   

CRT does have an influence on education as it broadens the stories of our history and brings in narratives lost due to willful bias or unconscious neglect.  Take the role of people of African descent in the Revolutionary War.  People will easily remember Crispus Attucks, a sailor of mixed race (African and Native American) who was killed at the Boston Massacre by British soldiers.  By many accounts the first to die and thus the first to die for the Americans in the war.  Celebrated since he has been seen as an icon during abolish, a hero to many especially African Americans, referenced in poetry and rap songs and is well known to most middle school students.  Worthy of praise there is some discussion to be had when it comes to who else might we remember.  Four times as many people of African descent fought on the side of the British than for the colonists and among them Harry Washington.  Washington was a slave to future President George Washington and was one of many who declared loyalty to the King and when the war was over was a free man who made it back to Africa.  Attucks died for a new country that kept black people enslaved for another century almost, while Washington lived out his life no longer a slave.  My guess many people never hear of the black loyalists and the various lives they lived after the war.  It expands the discussion and looks more deeply at something a scholar once asked at a conference:  Who's History is Black History?  

Who's indeed?  And that is final argument of these conservative carnival barkers who have attacked anything that even attempts to discuss racial justice as anti-American.  They couch it in the idea that parents should have the right to control what their kids are taught.  To the point that if it makes them feel uncomfortable it needs to be banished.  But it isn't all parents they want to extend the power to, that has become clear.  For decades ethnic and racial minorities have been made to feel less than in many classrooms and there was no attempt to give them the power to choose textbooks or curriculum.  Only when the status-quo of today is challenged does the ugly head of censorship rise from the conservative caucuses around the country.   So when you see your school board trying to ban books, words and ideas, stand up.  Say something.  Truth and reality are important to us all.  Be it that Pi is not 3.2, that Abraham didn't debate Fredric and that when you add a new narrative to the story of America you don't have to edit out the others, just make sure that when we see them together we can see a bigger, clearer and brighter picture.  

 

What is the Color of Their Sky

 As I write this we are a few hours away from the anniversary of the attack on the Capitol building by the right wing Trump supporters hell bent on stopping the certification of then President-elect Biden as the new President.  I remember sitting in my office occasionally checking in on the certification process when I saw it was delayed.  Then I saw what really happened.  Crowds of violent right wingers pushed passed police barricades and broke windows and doors to enter the building.  Chanting things like "Where is Nancy?" and "Hang Mike Pence".  They were not interested is securing anything like democracy.  They were a gang of anti-democratic and anti-American hoodlums who, egged on by the outgoing President and his gang of sycophants, driven by their blood lust.  They were and are criminals.  They attacked the heart of what makes our country great.  They were the opposite of patriots.  Driven by a lie and the idea that they knew better than every elected official running the election they almost succeeded in ending the great American experiment.  But they failed, on that day, to stop it.  And while some of their allies in the Congress tried to continue the charade of upholding election security by challenging the decided, investigated and certified election, the true patriots worked late into the evening to make sure we had a new President.  But now we deal with the aftermath.

One would think that the sight of so many people looking to attack and maybe even kill members of the Congress of both parties might stir the country.  Seeing a gallows built in front of the Cathedral of Democracy would chill many to the bone.  Seeing people destroy, steal and desecrate the personal belongings of our elected official might make one rethink their allegiance.  But it didn't.  For a few hours we saw some in Congress who stood behind the former President during even his most egregious actions while in the office speak out against him.  But that didn't last long.  It was less than a few days until their tune changed.  The Republican party has since created narrative after narrative to try to take any blame away from the then President, themselves and even the people who did the attack.  It is maddening watching members Congress who have said in open hearings and in speeches that it was like a tourist visit, that they were not Trump supporters but Antifa or Black Lives Matter protestors.  There were even those who blamed the FBI.  I am sure most don't believe what they are saying, in part because the facts don't agree with the nonsense.  But they say it.  It is echoed by the right wing noise machine and trickled down to the average Joe or Jane on the street.  The same people radicalized by the then President who didn't come to Washington.  And we are off to the fascist races.

But if it was just the right wing gangs who are promoting the anniversary tomorrow not as a day of sorrow but one of joy.  It is the actual Republican party that will host events lionizing the criminal rioters who stormed into that sacred space to do violence.  It is the former President who had intended to have a press conference of a sort on January 6th to somehow give his view.  It is famous members of the very Congress that was attacked who call those arrested and waiting trial political prisoners and those serving their time martyrs for a cause.  What cause?  

I don't understand.  There was no massive fraud in the last election.  Joseph Biden won in a free and fair election.  If you can't believe that and justify the attack on our country as a good thing, as a patriotic thing, as a blow against tyranny then I have to ask if you have become detached from reality.  Last year a man, unfit for office, voted out by the people, tried to stage a coup.  Using gullible angry people who said they were ready to kill the sitting Vice-President to keep the outgoing person in power.  The threat was so high that if stories are to be believed, that same Vice-President didn't want to get into a car with the Secret Service for fear he wasn't going be brought back to fulfill his duty.  If you continue to support the idea that attack on January 6th was good for the country and led by patriots then you are either fully delusional or evil.  There is no other choice.  I pray that you will come to your senses as the year continues.  However I have little hope.  My hope is however in a committee that will work day and night to find the truth, in a DOJ that said today that they are on it and working from the low hanging fruit to the top of the tree, and on the spirit of America.  In the meantime we hope that the color of the sky in the world that those who continue to support Trump as a good American is pretty enough to distract them and those who are with us can focus on fixing the broken world we now inherit from him.

It Has Been Awhile Since I Wrote Anything

Last Tuesday the State of Virginia did what it has done for the last several election cycles and voted in a Governor from the opposite party on the recently elected President.  The Washington Press Corp created a tsunami of stories about how this was a referendum on President Biden.  It wasn't really.  The politics of the race has little to do with the Biden agenda.  But the Washington Press Corp sees their jobs as trying to find fault with whoever is in power.  Then the House of Representatives passed an historic infrastructure bill that was a huge win for the President and the press corp focused on 6 progressive Democrats who voted against it in protest.  That came after they knew enough Republicans had voted for it.  But then why would these journalists do any research or deep exploration.  They had a story to sell.  The Democrats in disarray.  

On the same day as the election Republicans from the QAnon/Trump wing of the party gathered on Dealey Plaza in Dallas.  Why?  They were expecting John F. Kennedy Jr. to show up, declare Donald Trump the real President, and arrest most of the federal government.  This group has quite a hold on the GOP and we see it in the way people are campaigning for the next election.  But this was blip on the radar.  JFK Jr. has been dead for 22 years and yet the GOP is apparently holding out hope he will come back and usher in a new Trump era.  This is on top of the nonsense coming out of the mouths of the Pillow Guy and Giuliani and the Fox News, OAN, Newsmax propaganda wing.  

While Democrats may be having arguments with each other over how far the government should go to help those suffering and to create a nation that mirrors most Democratic Republics in the world, the GOP is arguing with Big Bird.  Sesame Street got back into the vaccine game as they did in the late sixties and early seventies to help children feel at ease with getting the Covid vaccine.  A member of the United States Senate, Ted Cruz, tweeted out to Big Bird that the beloved muppet was engaged in propaganda.  Meanwhile there are other high ranking elected officials announcing they will be running campaigns to restore masculinity to America.  I wish I knew what that meant.  Did we lose masculinity?  How are we defining it?  

Not to be outdone, one Republican member of Congress posted  on his personal and government twitter feed of a cartoon video of him killing another Representative.  Still others are calling for the release of violent mob members who stormed the Capital in and attempt to overthrow the government.  

But still the media is hyperfocused on the Democrats and President Biden, who have done more to rebuild our country and create a pathway out of the pandemic.  But instead of looking at the disgusting mess the GOP has or the accomplishments of the Dems there is a steady diet of low approval numbers, distrust among caucus members and of course personal attacks on the President.  This is what I call Storm the Castle journalism.  It is the lazy nonsense that somehow the media is supposed be the loyal opposition to those in power.  They aren't, the media should report facts and do deep analysis of them.  Not with the idea of getting at the power but in a way to give the American people the eyes to look into the government they hired.  If the media was doing their job they would cover the Dealey Plaza nonsense from the perspective that this kind of ginned up anger coupled with politics has always led to violence.  They should be asking Republicans what they are doing about their fellow party leaders fantasizing in public about killing another member or why some members think January 6th never happened and the violent mob members who were arrested should be set free.  

Yes it is important to hold the country's leadership's proverbial feet to the fire.  But when during a long speech the President closed his eyes of less than 10 seconds you don't have to play the video and asked if he fell asleep.  All the while ignoring what is becoming a huge threat to democratic principles with the Trump wing of the GOP.  This is serious, and as people fail to get access to quality journalism the very core of who we are as a nation suffers.  The Washington Press Corp has to stop seeing themselves as playing characters in a drama about government and start seeing themselves as a megaphone to let the American learn what is going on.  January 6th, the Dallas gathering and of course the constant din coming from the former President about all part of a bigger story than if President Biden nodded off during a droning speech or the progressives did exactly what they said they would.  We need you more than ever, so start doing your job. 

What I Learned From YouTube...

In the last 20 months or so the world has been remarkably chaotic.  The US Presidential election and the Covid 19 pandemic and subsequent politicizing of it, as well as the wars around the world there was a lot of news and little good.  In the before times I would spend a couple hours each evening watching news and/or opinion shows.  But by April of 2020 the anxiety it produced was too much.  At the time we also had lockdowns so sports shut down for a while (I actually spent time watching marble racing and NASCAR drivers doing E-racing) but the savior was YouTube.  While Dianne and I did catch up on some movies we missed and a few released to streaming services YouTube became a bit of a savior.  In part because there were show length programs but also a few minute videos that could serve as a slight bit of entertainment without an investment of lots of time.  This came in handy while working at home, after a particularly bad or tense meeting or phone call it was great to walk into the other room and be mindless for 5-7 minutes of escape and get back.  What I found was a world of wonderful things I was surprisingly ignorant of and wanted to know.  So here are a few.  

The first thing you learn about YouTube is just how long 5 seconds is...you know or you don't.

Herons:  Our pond near the house is home to a number of herons at various times.  I love those majestic birds and so does Dianne.  It is always cool to watch them pull small fish out of the pond to eat.  Well there is a whole category on YouTube of Herons eating and small fish are just an appetizer.  I had no idea that that they eat fish up to 20% of their body weight.  But also rats, gophers, chipmunks, baby ducks, (sometimes not so baby baby ducks) snakes, frogs, alligator babies, and all kinds of other things.  They are skilled hunters on water or land and will snatch animals out of their underground lairs.  It is amazing.  Watching them swallow a large rodent is remarkable and could be the stuff of art or nightmares.  

Cows:  There is a man in southwest Scotland named Graeme Parker known as the Hoof GP who travels the area in Scotland and England visiting farms and trimming cow hoofs.  I didn't know that was a thing.  His videos are remarkably educational about the care of the animals he trims and sometimes attempts to heal of damage or disease of the hoofs.  While I guess it makes sense that cows, especially on large farms where cows are kept indoors a lot, that cows aren't going to naturally keep their hoof horn trimmed and cleaned properly but it was amazing to me how much you can learn from him.  His love of the job, the countryside, the act of farming and the animals comes out strong and he hit 1 million subscribers today after about 5 years of posting.  

Sovereign Citizens:  I can't post a link for these guys because I don't want to give them traffic.  There are people, in the US and other Western Democracies, that declare themselves sovereign and the law of the land doesn't apply to them.  They use misinterpretations of court cases and historical documents to declare themselves not under the authority of the legal system.  They have even in some cases created their own language and declare their legal names are not theirs.  It is amazing what these people believe and they spend a great deal of time taunting legal authority from police and sheriff personnel to judges and DAs when they are finally arrested and brought to trial.  In some cases they pretend to have legal documents from their friends claiming they have legal authority.  Often they pretend to be lawyers saying that they don't have to be admitted to the bar to practice on behalf of someone else.  FYI:  Judges don't put up with that.  

1st Amendment Auditors:  Closely related to the sovereign citizen movement are so-called first amendment auditors.  These are people who seem to chosen a vocation of trying to provoke people by filming in public from what they would say is a public property.  Filming in public is legal in many places but they do it in a way to provoke fear.  Like filming outside a corrections facility or government office or filming inside a courthouse or other municipal building.  When approached by police they often are rude and insulting and sometimes belligerent.  While testing the 1st amendment could be an admirable thing most of these YouTube heroes don't understand the limits of the amendment and often run afoul of the law by crossing the line.  Their intent is to provoke in the hopes of suing.  

YouTube Itself:  Ann Reardon is an Australian food scientist and dessert making with a popular YouTube channel called How to Cook That.  She will teach on the channel how to make funky cakes and such but what I was interested in was her debunking videos.  She spends a great deal of time debunking wild viral videos about cooking.  Many of these videos show fantastic results from simple things you can do.  The heavily edited videos, for example showing adding Skittles to popcorn as it pops will make rainbow popcorn, will not work and while entertaining to watch can even be dangerous.  People have been seriously hurt following some of the video ideas.  Reardon shows how these are made by massive operations that post same or similar videos across several platforms and accounts to gain revenue.  While YouTube has rules against some of this behavior the click bait generated has gain them awards from YouTube.  This often leads to real individual content providers with innovative and instructive videos are often pushed off the platform as the algorithms promote the fake stuff over them.  

These are a few of the things that caught my attention over the course of the last 20 months or so.  I am sure there are much more.  What is great for me is learning there are things I knew almost nothing about and finding out more has been a delight.  I will never trim a cow's hoof nor likely create a content rich YouTube channel but I love learning about the inner workings of those things.  It is amazing the vast amount of stuff I don't know and rarely encounter.  So I am glad to have stumbled into what at first was a mindless endeavor to be truly educated and perhaps the connections will take me to new places.  

Masks are Back and We can do This.

So many Americans didn't listen to the warnings.  They didn't follow the simple rules and suggestions and they didn't get vaccinated.  And now, after a few weeks of thinking there was a clear vision of a horizon and not just a light at the end of the tunnel, we are back in the dark.  Cases are rising again and the unvaccinated are filling hospitals in several states.  We are back to seeing tired medical professionals pleading for people to take the virus and its new variants seriously and stories of people saying good-bye to loved ones as they struggle for enough breath to express their regrets for not listening.  And of course we are now back to wearing a mask.  For me, I never really stopped wearing one but didn't all the time.  But now there is one always on my desk at work, in my car and several hanging near my keys.  They are part of a regular routine and frankly I am back to forgetting I have it on.  But with masks comes the amateur epidemiologists with their quips about masks.  My favorite is that the virus is so small that a cloth mask is as much of defense to it as a chain link fence is to a mosquito.  But here is the thing.  While it is true that a cloth mask has a weave that would allow singular virus particles to come through, they would be unlikely to survive for long, be taken into the respiratory system of another, nor survive the trip into someone's body to attack the cells needed to duplicate.  And frankly an exhaled virus particle would have to be pretty damn lucky to make it through one face mask, float through the air, land on someone else's face mask, make it through that and take root in the system of that person.  What the mask does stop is the variety of fluids we exhale when we talk, breath, sigh, sneeze, cough or burp.  Each carrying thousands if not millions of those virus particles that are more likely to remain atomized and inhaled carrying a lot more virus to survive the first lines of defense in our system.  The mask holds them in place.  Going back to the  chain link analogy, the virus is less like a mosquito, which will fly around to find a suitable host to bite, it is more like a tick that is opportunistic.  The chain link fence will not stop an individual tick, but will stop a deer, rabbit, fox or neighbors dog who is carrying hundreds of ticks that could be deposited in your yard ready for your animal or you to collect it as you go out.  Stopping the spreading of large amounts of virus or ticks makes it less likely to contract them.  It really is simple. 

But in this day and age simple facts like this are lost on the those who follow politicians who spew nonsense for political gain.  Members of the Republican party in leadership positions are not only not mandating or even suggesting masking as a way to try to quell the massive spreading of the new variants, but are making it illegal (or attempting to) for communities and businesses to impose masking.  They are also downplaying vaccines with the help of their right wing noise machine amplifiers, all of whom have been vaccinated.  They seem to be attempting to fund raise off of the people of this country who refuse to believe the reality of pandemic because it is too big for them to think it just happens like this.  Even today people think it is overblown, still use the word PLANdemic and suggest nonsense about how they are safe because of their immune system.  It appears certain members of the right wing want their vote, their money and their eyes and ears on their shows more than they want reality and science to help us get through this tragedy.  In recent weeks we have heard stories of some of the people the GOP is exploiting who caught Covid and from their hospital and even death beds explain they were wrong.  Trying to maybe see the errors of their ways and help others who fell for the carnival barkers of death.  Yet even today, as some states are reaching capacity in hospitals again, their governors are punishing school systems and employers for trying to mitigate the spread of Covid.

Listen, for many of us the last 18 months have been a nightmare, we want it to be over.  I know I want to sit in a crowded bar and listen to music and dance with my wife and look like a fool.  I want to go to the theater or see a movie with full Dolby sound on a IMAX screen.  I want to hug my friends.  I want to travel and feel safe.  I want to be free.  But we won't wish it away and the solution is simple.  Get the vaccine, wear a mask in places the virus is rampant, remember to stay distant and to protect children and others who can't get the vaccine.  And listen to the experts, directly.  Not the spin of a news industry who gutted their science teams to the point they mix up Hydrogen and Helium in a story.  Not the politicians who, trust me, do not have your best interests top of mind, not radio hosts who look for anything to make the other political party look bad while ignoring their own party short-falls, or celebrities, sports figures or your Uncle who sends you those grainy pictures with the subject line WE FOUND BIGFOOT (yes all in caps).  You didn't Uncle Bob that is a fir tree.  

We as a nation and a world can do this.  We can defeat this disease or at least make it less of a killer.  I know this because I am typing this on a device small enough to fit in my briefcase yet more powerful than the devices used to send people to the moon (yes Uncle Bob we did send people to the moon).  I know this because there are thousands of people around the world who have dedicated their lives to not simply responding when a virus like this shows up but trying to predict how it might and create the proper mitigation.   I know this because humanity survives.  So mask up again, think of it as another way to show your brand, get vaccinated if you haven't.  Get the booster if it seems necessary.  Pressure those in power to respond based on science and not politics.  And vote, every time you can, for those who will put you above their own personal interests.  You are worthy of that. 

 

Reality is Broken

What we know to be true can sometimes be a matter of perspective.  Earlier this month, Peter Sagal, host of NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, was tweeting about the death and funeral of his mother, of blessed memory.  He mentioned one of the officiants, Rabbi Lila Kagedan, as the first Orthodox woman Rabbi.  The statement is true for many.  But I have met the first Orthodox Woman Rabbi and it wasn't Rabbi Kagedan, but Rabba Sara Hurwitz.  Can they both be the first?  Well, maybe.  You see while Rabba Hurwitz was ordained in 2009 and Rabbi Kagedan in 2015 time is not the only factor.  While Rabbah Hurwitz is seen as the first ordained, some see Rabbi Kagedan as the first with the title and full responsibility of a Rabbi in an Orthodox congregation.  So when that happens, when outside interpretation comes into the conversation that is not only legitimate and understandable, a fact can evolve (or devolve) into an opinion.  This debate will be something talked about in the future.  Both women are trailblazers and in the decades to come will likely be seen as changing Judaism. 

And that is partially the problem in a world where facts and opinions are intertwined and sometimes misunderstood.  But there are objective facts in the world and they must be seen as such and we as a society should share that understanding, but we don't.  David Brooks, recently writing in the New York Times, about the destruction of truth. In the article he focuses on the fact that for some a knowable truth is actively ignored by some for their own emotional convenience.  He writes,  "But Donald Trump doesn’t get away with lies because his followers flunked Epistemology 101. He gets away with his lies because he tells stories of dispossession that feel true to many of them."  This is exactly what Steven Colbert referred to Truthiness almost a decade ago. Brooks goes on the attempt to both-side this argument but in United States today there is one side leading the way to break down the foundation of shared facts.  The phrase alternative facts has become part of the language because a conservative spokesperson didn't like being challenged on the lies of a President.  Let us remember, anything alternative to an established fact is a lie.

Those lies abound in today's political discourse.  Be it the January 6th attack on the Capitol or the medical data surrounding a global pandemic right wing politicians are simply lying about things we clearly have evidence of and when challenged they have the gall to say things like "this is how I see it" or worse "I am just speaking my truth".  No they are simply lying and frankly destroying any possibility of discourse.  Since many are backed by far reaching so-called news organizations, who will repeat the lies as if they are facts many Americans, who like Brooks notes, want to believe the stories being told and repeat them.  Social media amplifies these voices of the misinformed and there is little one can do to change their minds.  (But it can be fun trying sometimes).  If someone states something outrageous and you ask for proof the response is often "Do your own research" or "I won't do your homework".  

The fantasies of so many have become mainstream and thus it creates a universe where provable facts are disputed openly, even in the halls of Congress.  When people think their vision is as legitimate as any other regardless of evidence there is no talking to them.  As a significant number of people claim that President Biden is not the real President despite the functioning government under his leadership, showing them information to prove it doesn't help.  While these people always existed, this is the first time in my life that leaders in the country fed and continue to feed this nonsense.  Next week a handful of books are being released that members of the last administration had reservations in private about the actions and lies of the President, but publicly repeated the lies about the election.  People in positions of authority and had the ability to stop the continued and dangerous rhetoric were nervous about, but for reasons beyond comprehension, continued to feed the anger of people who believed they were disenfranchised and responded violently.  They now are trying to both play hero in print and also pretend it wasn't that bad.  

But this is not about conservative and liberal ideology.  There are people on the left who perpetuate their own set of fantasies.  However, there are few leaders and people in power that blatantly make statements that are in opposition to reality. We can talk about misinformed opinions, that is ubiquitous, but they are not being elevated to positions of leadership over those who are just stating facts that GOP leadership doesn't like.  

When Congress people say things they must know are false, I often think of a line from Dire Straits' song Industrial Disease:  

Now, I go down to Speaker's Corner, I'm thunderstruck

They got free speech tourists, police in trucks

Two men say they're Jesus, one of them must be wrong

'

Indeed one of them must be wrong.  The attack on the Capitol was not like a tourist visit, yes it was violent, yes they had weapons and yes they meant to stop the legal transition of power.  Yes, Covid 19 is dangerous, yest the vaccines will help mitigate the disease's impact on individuals and the public.  Yes, the Earth is not a flat disk floating in space with the sun moving around it (or whatever I don't get the Physics of Flat Earthers)   When we can't fully agree on these fundamental facts we can't debate the real important things.  Like what kind of tax cuts will better help the economy, what laws should be passed to make voting both safe and easy, what industries should the government help support in the energy sector of the economy?  The isn't a functioning partner to have a debate.  There are people, who for whatever reason live in a fantasy world of comfort and are recruiting allies to prop it up.  That truly breaks reality.  Frankly, I don't know if there will be enough metaphysical duct tape to ever repair it.

 

A Day That Should Live in Infamy

On January 6, 2021 the then President of the United States called for his supporters who had not accepted the results of 2020 election to come to Washington D.C. to protest the perfunctory duty of Congress and the Vice-President to count the Electoral votes from each state.  At a rally a series of speakers ginned up the crowd to a fever pitch and then the out-going President told them to go to the Capitol and he would be with them, to make their voices heard.  He told them to fight like hell.  And they did.  Trump supporters stormed the Capitol Building, with weapons of all kinds, attacking police and chanting for the death of members of Congress.  They violently entered the building breaking police barriers and beating law enforcement officers causing hundreds of injuries to them.  We all saw it either live or in hours of video.  The intent was simply to stop the transition of power in the Federal executive.  It was an insurrection, the should be not debate.  But there is. 

This week, the Republican party has decided that this didn't actually happen.  Liz Cheney was ousted from her leadership position in the GOP because she won't go along with the continued lying of former President about the election.  She also voted for impeachment after Trump's inciting the attackers of democracy on January 6th.  Cheney has been a classic conservative and voted with the former President nearly 100% of the time.  Her conservative credentials are not at all in question. However she is replaced by a member who has been less conservative, less a Trump supporter in her Congressional votes, but promotes the lie of the President about the election.  A lie that includes saying that the people who stormed the Capitol building were patriots.  

To put a finer point on that, there was a Congressional hearing this week on January 6th.  Elected members of Congress, while taking their time to question the people in-charge of security for the day, said completely insane lies.  Representative Andrew Clyde said, "Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall showed people in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes taking videos and pictures," Clyde said. "You know, if you didn't know the TV footage was a video from January the sixth, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit."  Even the footage that may have shown that included people wearing Nazi slogans and carrying Confederate flags.  He and many in the party seem to be ignoring the video of attacks, some of which was released this week, showing the desire of the anti-American/pro-Trump attackers calling for the death to police and reports of them calling out for the death of elected officials and the use of the N-word.  

On Friday, Congress agreed to a commission to investigate the events leading to and during the attack on the Capital.  The GOP leadership is not happy with this bipartisan group looking into the events of the day because so many will have to speak, under oath, after having changed their tune to support the former President who continues to control so many members of party.  So many want to link it to anti-police protests in 2020 that led to vandalism and rioting in general.  While that is something that needs to be understood.  Attacking the heart of democracy is different and the question of whether elected officials and the then Executive branch members were involved.  We need to know what happened, why, and if there is future danger of it happening again.

The Republican party has given up its leadership to the former President who continues to call out anyone who doesn't bend the knee to his fantasy vision of the world.  They have given up on policy and conservative values over it.  Liz Cheney was replaced by a woman who has a lower Club for Growth (a conservative political action committee) than Democratic squad member Ilan Omar.  If the Republican party continues to walk down this road they will simply become the cult they look like and not the loyal opposition to Democrats.  Cults have a way of destroying themselves.  The GOP has already starting do it.  If they are able to push January 6th into a memory whole they will succeed.  That could be the beginning of the end of our Republic.  

Dr. Seuss is Not Being Canceled

 When is the last time you saw a minstrel show?  Think hard.  Not a movie with a minstrel show in it, in context.  Not a documentary on minstrel shows.  A full live action show where white folks dressed up in costumes, portrayed Africans, often in slave motifs, making stereotypical gestures and language.  My guess is you haven't and frankly that is understandable.  While black-face continues to pop up now and again and has been part of British TV very recently, though not full accepted, the idea that a theater would put on a minstrel show today is beyond ridiculous.  Have they been cancelled?  In the 19th century they were all the rage in entertainment and comedy, but today the very notion makes us cringe.  Certain types of entertainment have a time and frankly then they don't.  

So this week, after years of concern, Seuss Enterprises has made the decision not to continue publication of some of works of Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss.  In a statement they wrote:

Today, on Dr. Seuss’s Birthday, Dr. Seuss Enterprises celebrates reading and also our mission of supporting all children and families with messages of hope, inspiration, inclusion, and friendship.

We are committed to action.  To that end, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, working with a panel of experts, including educators, reviewed our catalog of titles and made the decision last year to cease publication and licensing of the following titles:  And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, McElligot’s Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambled Eggs Super!, and The Cat’s Quizzer.  These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.

Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises’s catalog represents and supports all communities and families.

Of course this has the right wing noise machine and their audiences losing their minds.  Many voices on the right and a few on the left started screaming about book banning, cancel culture and even book burning. Watching elected officials suggest that some how this is government overreach when the government wasn't involved at all.   I don't understand how if someone who owns the rights of a piece of art, who chooses not to share it any longer is a ban.  Dr. Seuss Enterprises has taken this seriously and made a wise decision to put on the shelf a historical expression based on how the culture saw people.  Seuss was a product of his time, and over time changed the way he saw his own work.  As the noise continues and we hear how much these hypocrites say they learned so much from Dr. Seuss the only thing I can think of that they learned was how to be like Sylvester McMonkey McBean and con the crowd.  It wasn't that long ago that the same voices were calling Seuss works left wing propaganda as people read The Lorax as part of educating on environmentalism.  So they were ready to cancel Seuss then I guess.  

But that is par of the course for these people.  We have watched these propagandists call for boycotts of Starbucks, Keruig, Target, and many others over social issues.  There are even members of Congress wanting to host a hearing on cancel culture.  The big worry is the private internet companies like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have deplatformed voices promoting the lie of election fraud that drove the attack on Capital on January 6th.  The idea is again that somehow this private company doesn't have the right to decide what they promote.  Funny story however about these people.  The recent Conservative Political Action Conference where many of the people crying about the cancel culture had a theme:  UnCancel America.  One of the speakers they were  promoting was a rapper and internet bigot Young Pharaoh as a speaker until it was pointed out that he is a raging anti-Semite and Qanon conspiracy supporter.  So they canceled him.  Literally.  Apparently protecting your brand is important to CPAC but shouldn't be to Seuss Enterprises.  

The fact is there have always been changes on what is culturally appropriate.  What worked in mid-20th century for entertainment meets a very different audience in early 21st.   We have a long history of what we are comfort with in public and what we find offensive.  That history has almost often been driven by conservative advocates. While we hear about what some call political correctness today, the actual calls for using government to impose restrictions or force certain requirements have come from conservatives.  We can see this historically in two children's books about rabbits getting married.  In the play Alabama Story a state politician wanted to fire a librarian who didn't remove a book with a black and a white rabbit getting married in the Jim Crowe era.  This play, based on a true story, showed how what some are calling cancel culture today might actually work.  In the satirical book A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, the author imagines the then Vice-President Pence's rabbit, the star of an earlier book, was gay and getting married.  Many of the same commentators worried about the action of Seuss Enterprises were ready to trash this book and it has been on the list of the most banned books from schools and public libraries since it was published.  Of course we bought a copy.  

I am not a fan of censorship, I have fought book banning by government agencies for decades.  But that is not what is happening here.  We know our history is full of many images and ideas that are hurtful to people who didn't have a voice when they were created.  Our cultural myopia allowed for these hurtful expressions to thrive in public spaces and now we question whether they should still be promoted.  They won't go away.  We know this because in Germany promoting or showing Nazi imagery is illegal, yet all German school children learn of the horrors of that era.  We also know about minstrel shows and many understand why black face is wrong, even if we don't produce or encourage either.  We don't want the government banning things and that is not what is happening with these Dr. Seuss books.  However we don't want to promote hurtful things.  So in the words of a wise but complicated man "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not”  Dr. Seuss Enterprises has decided to take the words of their namesake to heart.  We should be thanking them and we don't need those books they will no longer publish when we can learn so much from his later works.  However I caution them, in the story of the Sneetches,  McBean is the bad guy.