Month: August 2019

We’re Better Than This?

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american flagThe country is increasingly being asked to choose what kind of country it wants to be. A multicultural nation or a white supremacist one. Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke and Marianne Williamson have repeatedly laid the choice out for the country. But for those who keep crying “we are better than this” in the wake of recent domestic terrorist attacks; Surprise! you haven’t been. One has to learn the truths of the nation’s history to understand that it has never lived up to its stated ideals. Most of the time, it wasn’t even trying. A change would take a tectonic shift for which the nation doesn’t appear to be prepared and is flatly uninterested. 

Stripped of national origin and exceptionalism myths, the truth is that the country has never even come close. The watershed moment may have been the Civil War, the fight to keep a young democracy from splitting apart. The sticking point was slavery and Union victory brought emancipation of the enslaved, yet the path to full participation for all citizens was abandoned for economic and political gain. The majority of the country refused to honor their national ideals.  union soldier

The war also birthed a new, more powerful federal government and the integration of the American land mass through railroads and telegraphs. The new federal muscle brought an end to treaty making between the federal government and Native tribes, now considered too weak to be “nations”. That landmark ushered in further stripping of Indian lands for white settler plots and an all out onslaught to eliminate Native American culture in deference to the white one. Unreformed Native Americans were exiled from “the nation” and marooned in territorial islands within it.

photo of two native americans playing woodwind instruments

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Despite their raised voices, women would remain outside full citizenship as well, and some would say they have yet to achieve equality of opportunity, much like other minorities. Except, women are the majority of the population. At every juncture it seems, a country run by wealthy white men, as it was originally intended, has chosen to concentrate power within their ranks, by somehow convincing “the masses” that the elite have their interests at heart. Despite the rhetoric, the retention of their own political and economic power was their only goal. It was convenient to talk about guiding ideals while contorting them into various rationales to muster political support for conquering territories, then isolating and torturing various groups of residents (African Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Polynesians to name only a few). With world leadership came waging wars to safeguard national interests rather than upholding democratic ideals. Nowhere did those in power spearhead a concerted effort to make the ideal, that all men [updated to residents?] are created equal, applicable to every person in the nation. Some citizens were dragged into an effort to include some minorities during the Civil Rights era, but their focus moved on before they ascertained that change would permeate the nation as a whole. That took decades in the case of desegregation. There, the progress was returned to baseline in the next decade. Today 80% of minority children go to segregated schools.

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In reality, voters are just not that high minded. They worry about their families and themselves. If they think politically, it is in short intervals, congruent with election cycles. This is precisely why the big questions are never addressed; they’re too abstract. their complexity can not be boiled down to a bumper sticker slogan.

No one seems much interested in the country’s ideals these days, despite the all too frequent references to them. People like to sing a lot of songs about them though. There appears to be a significant faction who disavow the “all” part of the Declaration, substituting “some” with the addition of “the rest are less than.”   While Beto O’Rourke, Marianne Williamson and Cory Booker say they have faith that Americans will “do the right thing”, given the history, that would be antithetical to the national character.

 

The Change In Immigration Regulations Is Nothing New

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statue of liberty usa

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Give me your tired, (but only slightly fatigued), your poor (but at least middle class), your huddled masses (not more than 10) yearning to be free (to make beaucoup bucks)

While the country was focussed on 45’s inhuman treatment of asylum seekers, he’s been nibbling away at restrictions on legal immigration. Certainly, Steven Miller has been outspoken about the threat of all immigration to his land of the free and home of the white. The number of legal immigrants has been sharply curtailed on the sly as the battle at the border has exploded. The Wall hasn’t come up so much in national discourse lately. In the meantime, Asians, the largest group of illegal immigrants has received no attention at all.

The new regs would consider immigrant use of Medicaid or housing vouchers in granting green cards and legal residence status. Logically, the extension of assistance to new immigrants helps speed their path to become productive citizens. As they adjust to a new language, new laws and a new culture, the need to remain stably housed, healthy and well nourished will improve their chance of a successful transition. In fact, the data shows this to be true. This will benefit the whole society. After all, with the birth rate in the US continuing to fall, immigration has been the source of our workforce expansion for decades. 

The Europeans have a more civilized approach. They provide housing, job training and language lessons. But then again, they asked for immigrants and accepted the responsibility for Middle Easterners and Africans fleeing war and famine despite their darker skin and worship of a different God. The backlash across Europe shows that the populace, distinct from their  governments, is no longer so generous, having fallen prey to the “we’re losing our national identity” propaganda advanced by global white nationalists through social media in the wake of lagging economic growth. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/10/world/europe/sweden-immigration-nationalism.html?action=click&module=SeriesBox&pgtype=Article. Although these European nations have imported non-national laborers since post-WWII, they tended to restrict foreign national citizenship, in contrast to the US tradition of a nation of immigrants which extended citizenship to those who qualify and their native born offspring.

Agent Orange has had a bug up his ass about immigrants for decades. (Immigrants Must be Meritorious!) He was happy to use them as low cost labor in his business projects, his contact through intermediaries meant he didn’t have to interact with them, except as servers or housekeepers. He rolled his personal xenophobia into a classic appeal about immigrants taking jobs away and depressing wages. Amalgamating the lost jobs message with their brown-skins proved to be as winning a combination as it has been in the past; it goes without saying that if one is nonwhite, they can be presumed to be predators: rapists, drug dealers, murderers. The message resonated in the Rust Belt, where their rage against the corporations that exported their jobs was easily transferred to the recipients of those jobs in Mexico, the closest target. And it is because these messages are based on stereotypes of a specific group that they embody bigotry and yes, racism.

 Although China and Southeast Asia were also beneficiaries of the exportation of domestic manufacturing, no one told them that China too is sending huge numbers of its population here. They don’t see them because the Chinese are in universities and the tech industry. It’s too complicated for supporters to integrate the fact that these Chinese are taking American expertise back home, while also using the opportunity to steal trade secrets, patents and even military espionage. They are also overstaying their visas to take up residence. Still they remain under the radar, arriving in smaller groups at airports, not a territorial border.

The Asian giant represents the most dangerous long term challenge to US world hegemony as it follows its 5 year plan to dominate the world in both the political and economic sphere. Its enormous domestic market is the apple in every country’s eye. China is more dangerous than Russia which has nothing but the threat of violence at its disposal. The Russian economy is a raw materials kleptocracy being squeezed by sanctions with little else to offer but Putin’s vision of the resurrection of the USSR. But maybe the average Rust Belter isn’t interested in US hegemony, won over by the isolationism of America First. The irony is that world leadership has been an integral part of American greatness that they so yearn to reclaim.

There is one other inclusion that administration spokesmen neglected to mention. The new regs contain a “median income” stipulation clause that counts income less than the median US income as a demerit against obtaining green card status regardless of whether the applicant has used any benefits or not. This is far harsher, since immigrants often work low wage jobs or assist family in their small businesses, making closer to federal poverty level than median wage. This is true for professionals and businessmen in their home countries who must often start over in their professions after arriving here. 

It goes without saying that these new immigration regulations are another stitch in the tapestry of fear that the MAWAPresident has woven over the immigrant community, focussing on the Latinx. Many immigrants will stop their current benefits and others will not apply because they are unsure which programs are included. SNAP, which is not included, has already seen withdrawals and decreased applications since the idea of the revisions was first floated months ago in the press. Many immigrants receive benefits for their American born children, which should be excluded from the green card ban. The announcement about the changes praised them for saving tax dollars. Here again the thrust of the announcement is that immigrants are predators, this time of “your tax dollars.” The savings presumably will come in the future, but the pittance that will be saved now will be in state budgets that carry the burden of these benefits. In reality, it’s simply cost shifting to nonprofits and charities left to try to fill in the vacuum; some deserving immigrants already in the process of adjustment will go without. These are lost opportunities for expertise and productivity and with them the taxes and consumer spending that would be generated. 

There is something different about 45’s new approach to restrict immigration to only the “best and the brightest”. It springs from their assumption that there are no people of color in that category, so shifting immigration to white countries has no opportunity cost. The probability that a German, a Swede or even a Frenchmen is going to hop a plane to become a US citizen is pretty low. Maybe an Italian or Greek? But these are the poorer EU nations without a large pool of the highly educated. Outside Europe, there are only Asians, including Indians, and majority nonwhite nations in the developing world. 

Kenneth Cuccinelli, acting US Citizenship and Immigration director tried to assuage accusations of racial bias by pointing out that if this change had happened decades ago, it would have been applied to Italians, hoping for ignorance of history. There have been national quotas and even bans in the past, but not income or professional qualifications attached to immigration. Advocates will push back to charges of bigotry by saying that there will be individuals from any country that officials will find acceptable. But acknowledgement of exceptions does not invalidate the spreading of stereotypic denunciations of immigrants. In the end,  the number of exceptions will be a trickle, which is exactly the point.

We have to assume that the new proposed MAWA immigration policy will move in the direction of scraping quotas specific to countries in favor of a total quantitative cap from all countries. That would allow maximum flexibility to permit designated individuals to immigrate without referencing countries of origin. Embedded in this approach is the potential for monetizing immigration by wealthy miscreants. This is not without precedent in the Trump organization. Kushner companies have used investment in construction projects near (but not in) empowerment poverty zones as a vehicle to obtain visas through the EB-5 program. The  minimum investment is $500,000. Kushner’s sister, highlighting his ties to the current administration toured China speaking to groups of businessmen about this opportunity with their company. The sweetheart deal comes with lower than market interest rates on project loans. In the business world, favored immigration status could come with invisible gratuities not easily seen by the public. The gang around the RealityTVPresident has shown that it excels at pay-to-play.   

And what of the hundreds of thousands of immigrants waiting under the current quota and lottery visa system for as long as 15 years, depending on their country or origin? How will they be incorporated into a new immigration system? Will newer better qualified applicants be bumped to the head of the line? The MAGAPresident who’s said that the country’s full and doesn’t have anymore room for immigrants, would argue that the country doesn’t owe them anything. As in almost everything, he sees his charge as disruption of past policies. Governmental policies change. Current permanent residents may have to accept that their family members may never join them. Oh well, empathy is not a thing for the BullyPresident or officials in his administration. 

The immigration vision of 45 and Steven Miller  will bring college educated engineers, technology majors, scientists and mathematicians into the market to compete with US grads for middle class jobs.  

Of more interest is the way the new policies shift the propagandized job competition away from his base to a real competition with the middle class. It will bring college educated engineers, technology majors, scientists and mathematicians into the market to compete with US grads. New grads, burdened with a mountain of educational debt may find themselves at a disadvantage in the job market for the choicest jobs, much like during the recession and its aftermath. The days of on-line applications thrown out into an unacknowledged, unresponsive internet void could be back. The US educational system has been falling in international rankings for years; foreign grads may be better prepared than domestic ones. All the technology companies are international; they don’t have any hesitation about grabbing the best prepared, almost certainly male candidate regardless of country of origin. But hopefully, these new immigrants will be able to bring their children and wives, even if they don’t work in STEM occupations. 

The most sophisticated analysis of the Trumpian approach would project a vision that the US workforce must shrink in response to sweeping economic changes already in motion. This is not to suggest that the administration embodies this level of sophistication, only that there is some conservative think tanker out there ruminating on this. But they would have to take into consideration the impact of expanded automation, both the type of work and compensation, even as manufacturing jobs do not return as well as the brick and mortar retail industry shrunken to a carbuncle of small businesses along Amazon and Walmart and the diminished use of fossil fuels, phenomena they currently deny. The elimination of immigration and deportation of current immigrants, removing a significant chunk of the current workforce, would soften the economic disruption. The downside is the vegetables that would rot in the fields and the chicken, still unprocessed, that would not make its way into Chick-Fil A, KFC and American homes in the interim. That will cause a bit of domestic dismay.  

This is a worst case scenario, a theoretical endpoint to a full blown apocalyptic vision. It discounts the inevitable number of court challenges currently in the pipeline and still to come. Immigration officials will continue the subterranean effort to slow walk current regulations and immigration cases in defiance of court rulings while implementing discretionary policies in areas like benefits and green card applications. As is apparent in the tug of war over separation and reunification of children and their parents, they have all the apparatus in their hands. A GOP dominated Congress will continue to hem and haw in response to the new regulations and on any proposals to revamp the immigration system with the objective to keep immigration alive as a campaign issue for the foreseeable future. Its inaction will leave in place the obstruction and confusion. 

On the other hand, a new president, a Democratic Senate majority and leader would go a long way to interrupt the vision of immigration contraction even if it didn’t change any structural components of the current policy immediately. A different goal should spawn different solutions. Granted that invests a lot of hope in current Democratic party rhetoric, but the composition of the party’s supporters may drive a response. Still, the cynical suggest that the whole trajectory of Washington politics is to keep problems unsolved in order to frolic in the playground of lobbyists and PACs and the personal enrichment that comes with that. After all, House representatives run for office every two years.

Immigration policy, i.e. xenophobia and now overt racist attacks on various minority groups, including the Jewish may be today’s moment when the rubber meets the road. Racism here is defined as actions including speech by the majority group in power, i.e. whites that characterizes individuals using racial stereotypes in order to denigrate them and discriminate against them, thus denying them equitable opportunity.      

The country is increasingly being asked to choose what kind of country it wants to be. A multicultural nation or a white supremacist one. Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke and Marianne Williamson keep telling us that. How will the nation respond?

August 16, 1965. A riot occurred in the Watts neighborhood of LA, sparked by white police beating of a young Black man. 34 people died, 1032 were injured. $40 million in damages was reported.

The Power of Otherness

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people taking group hug

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“Other” is a deadly label. Otherness made possible events like residents in small towns in Ukraine in 1938 cheering as they watched SS officers murder their Jewish neighbors. In one town, they watched an officer beat each Jewish man in the town to a pulp with a pipe, cheering as each fell dead. These were neighbors who for years ran the shops where they bought food and clothing, loaned them money from their banks. These people used to be their friends. Nazi propaganda transformed people they knew intimately into subhumans who deserved to be hunted and killed in the space of 5 years.

Otherness made possible the gathering of white families with their children in tow, responding to newspaper announcements, to picnic on a Saturday afternoon to watch the lynching of a Black man. The Black man had committed no crime; if he had a trial, it was a 30 minute kangaroo court in front of an all white jury, maybe with his family and friends watching from the segregated balcony. Black witnesses were not allowed to testify against white men, so they  could not refute accounts from prosecutors. Quite a few in the court knew him as a farmer or handyman or a businessman. And yet, the good, God fearing white folks in the county cackled as he was beaten, tortured, castrated, sometimes tarred and feathered, sometimes dragged by a chain behind a car or cart, hanged and finally burned. Not even the awful stench of burning flesh could dampen their appetite or wipe the smiles off their faces as they posed for a photo of the crowd with the dead body. These would become postcards and souvenirs. His body was often dismembered for souvenirs and then left to hang for days as a reminder. Many a relative had to risk their life to sneak the body away for burial and for a quick flight out of town. The white crowd welcomed their Black neighbors to stand segregated off to the side to witness the power and cruelty of white justice first hand. 

It is otherness that powers Homeland contractors to cage people on cement floors with little food, no water, or toilets or toothbrushes or soap. And to leave children stewing in their own excrement in dirty diapers, cared for by children only a year or two their senior. Very quickly, the whole stinking mass becomes subhuman, a further justification for their treatment. They are criminals, rapists, drug smugglers and human traffickers sent by their governments to pollute the US. It is a righteous act to show through this punishment that these animals need to stay home.

Otherness sent that young man from Houston to El Paso to specifically slaughter innocent Walmart shoppers because they are Mexican or of Mexican descent. He committed the largest terrorist attack on a group of Mexican-Americans in US history. His was a vanguard action in a war against the brown people who are flooding the country to replace real Americans, the white ones who made it great. He does not know that Mexicans are more native than he, having fought in the Revolutionary War, long before his ancestors came. Unlike the Ukrainians and southern whites, he didn’t know any of the men, women and children he wounded and murdered. He knew only their reflections in the images he’d seen and the words he’d read and written. Up close, he saw their blood.  

Otherness is the core of Rwanda, South African apartheid, Rohingya, South Sudan, Congo, Croatia, Bosnia, Chinese Uighurs to name only a few places in recent history. It crosses all skin shades, religions, tribal affiliations, borders. It seems to be central to the human race, an innate fear of those who are not me. That fear can be easily expanded to become all consuming; to overwhelm compassion, empathy, personal safety. That fear can blind, triggering attacks.

But otherness is not an errant thought that occurs to an individual or two. The examples show it spreads through groups, tugging at a primal core. Otherness floats in society like incense, ready to be inhaled. The incense billows when power rears its head. Some may be seeking power; others may just want to hold their power close. Power confers economic benefits; greed is intertwined in the tapestry stitching. For instance, Hitler was driven by an obsession for national and global power, but his Nazi regime furnished hundreds of thousands of opportunities for power at the local level in the territories he conquered. The property and businesses of those Ukrainian Jews beaten in 1938 went to some of their gentile neighbors. Lynchings beginning in Reconstruction often singled out store owners, or prosperous farmers or community leaders, no matter what the charge. Jim Crow laws made inadequate deference a crime. The charge was less important than the elimination of a competitor, the seizure of property or destruction of nascent Negro resistance. it was aimed at those who got too well off. The patterns are there in all the stories of atrocities across the globe.

Otherness super-saturates the air today. It circumscribes enclaves with walls increasingly razor wired.

And what of the immigration camp guards? What have they to gain beyond the overtime pay and the bonuses they receive? They feel the power in the oppression of the others, much as a rapist is engulfed by their power over their victim. Their lives are smaller without it. Their role is at the shock troop level; the incense fills their nostrils but the beneficiaries are higher up the food chain–their employer’s corporate bosses, GOP members of the House and Senate, officials at Homeland, the White House. Each has a power slice to jockey with the others. A guard’s chest swells at being a member of the club and contributing to the effort, much as the 15 year old Nazi foot soldier believed he was contributing to the Aryan nation as he lay bleeding to death on the battlefield. So too the vast majority of the onlookers at the lynchings; instigators got the prize; they got the power of belonging.

So too, the errant white nationalist in El Paso. He was a stormtrooper leading his 8chan forces into the real world of AKs and bullets, lots of bullets. He is a hero to his cause, like his Confederate ancestors. He hopes his action will bring the white nationalists one step closer to a race war. He will find his comrades in the white nationalist prison gangs, hopefully his new lifetime companions.

Otherness super-saturates the air today. It circumscribes enclaves with walls increasingly razor wired. Some have been electrified. Reaching across is discouraged. Exiting the gates is dangerous.  The majority of the country never interact with someone of a different race, religion or political identification. That is the currency of otherness.

August 12, 2013. A federal judge rules that NYPD’s “stop and frisk” policy is discriminatory and unconstitutional having found that 85% of those stopped were Black or Latinx.

Debating the Debates, CNN vs NBC

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democratic donkey

The two Democratic Debates focused a spotlight on the commercial media’s partiality. The cable TV networks have abandoned the pretense of “objectivity”, following Fox News in the ratings race. MSNBC and CNN searched for their own niche audience hoping it would become as loyal and lucrative as that of Fox. The traditional network news has tried to maintain the veneer of press objectivity,  but their broadcasts are identifiable not simply by the on screen personnel but also the stories they cover and the elements within them, a natural extension of the editorial perspectives of the producers and personalities of their shows.

CNN’s approach to the Democratic Debates part 2 was the Rumble in Detroit, a parallel to their trademark combative pundit panels. The network milked the runup to the event with an on air lottery to match the candidates to their respective nights; they aired ads that promoted various candidate matchups with hyperbolic positioning; they previewed candidates’ backstage activities. 

The broadcast began with the candidates emerging from a portal to cheers, then shaking hands with the rest of the lineup like a boxing match, followed by an elaborate veterans honor guard and the National Anthem. Against a red, white and blue backdrop, it was meant to project the debate as a “deeply patriotic exercise of American Democracy”, a lofty concept for a Democratic Party political event. The party is after all a private club, not an American institution and as such, it can create whatever selection criteria it pleases. 

Although candidate selection tries to simulate the electoral process, it is far from that. It is governed by state and national “officers” elected by a minority of dedicated party members. The Founding Fathers, by the way, were deeply suspicious of political parties and did not want them to become a permanent fixture in local and national politics. 

The 2016 leaked Podesta emails exposed a core of party behind the scenes manipulations in the Sanders-Clinton rivalry, skewing the selection process toward Clinton, who had paid her dues to become the anointed one. Some emails suggested that Podesta wasn’t a fan. She was the heir apparent, but no one noticed that the mood in the country had changed. Party officials showed that they completely misread the landscape by fielding an establishment candidate burdened with a ton of political baggage when people seemed to still hunger for the change that they felt Obama had not delivered. The solid challenge from Bernie Sanders that had to be put down through chicanery was a big clue that went ignored. Still, Ms Clinton chose the path for her campaign and her advisors did not serve her well. Certainly, the GOP had stoked the fire with misinformation, racism and xenophobia, but “Stronger Together” implied nothing more than more of the same gridlock. As much as many loved Obama, Americans were tired of a Washington that was not listening to or answering their needs. 

Democratic Party operatives are paid to intuit the void, and they failed miserably. The decision to mount a traditional campaign in the face of an unorthodox Pied Piper from the dark side is what sunk Clinton in the end. Where did the democrats go wrong? This is not to discount the role of Russian assistance, the right wing media bubble, social media and the commercial media’s blind pursuit of news as entertainment. On the face of it, a race between a declared serial sexual predator, failed real estate mogul with multiple bankruptcies, con man and reality TV star on one hand and a former Secretary of State, first lady and senator devoted to life long government service should never have been close to begin with, at least in traditional political terms. But then again, the former Secretary of State and senator was a woman. She was also married to a serial philandering president who was engulfed in an avalanche of decades old conspiracy theories since his election. Robert Mercer,  a member of Kochtopus and major funder of Breitbart and Steve Bannon was obsessed with Clinton conspiracies. Despair For Our Electoral Politics

In response, 2019 has brought a new process to select the Democratic candidate. That has proven to be a herculean task with an explosion of 25 candidates, far exceeding the 15 Republican candidates in the 2016 race that helped launch the RealityTVPresident. The chosen method to winnow down the field is a double tiered threshold of campaign money raised and polling percentages. Ironic, since many candidates have railed against the influence of money in politics and are committed to individual small donors. 

To counter reliance on dollar amounts, there is a threshold of individual donors that has pushed candidates to raise money from wealthy donors to advertise to individual donors. Reports are that some candidates are spending $7 to chorral a $1 donor. Anyone can afford $1. A candidate doesn’t get more credit for larger amounts in the contest for a spot in the September debate. The advantage for the Party is that news about these metrics repeatedly emphasizes the message that the party has a broad base representing a citizenry that is actively engaged. This is meant to contrast with GOP fat cat fund raisers and dark money.

Back in the real world, a candidate can’t run without money particularly against an incumbent who has a lock on the press and social media backed by conservative right PACs and media machines churning out misinformation and propaganda across the media spectrum pinpointed with computer guided accuracy down to the zip code. The specter of foreign government assistance floats over the contest as well. Perhaps the Chinese may want to reset the trade war with a different president or the North Koreans may want to keep Kim’s current admirer in the denuclearization charade or Iran may want to try for sanctions relief with a different chief executive, all by sowing the same seeds of discord as the GOP itself. Recent reports from social media say Saudi Arabia, always actively proselytizing and lobbying, has gotten into the conflict enhancing game.

So the DNC settled on 3 networks to broadcast their debates, disqualifying  Trump/FoxNews as a propaganda machine rather than a news platform. The DNC left the networks in charge of their broadcasts. In taking the Thriller in the Motor City approach, CNN moderators seized the opportunity to sick candidates on one another. They took pains to direct questions to the unknowns on the stage, John Delaney on the first night and Michael Bennett on the second, to pit them against the more established candidates. Delaney seemed to be the foil for moderates to contrast with the radical left, Warren and Sanders since most moderates were on night 2. On night 2, there were no obvious radical leftists, only second/third tier people of color, the look alike white guys and Joe Biden.

They unearthed comments from one candidate about another and asked the target to respond. They directed candidates to contrast their plans with those of specific opponents. The moderators were strict about their 1 minute time limits, ruthlessly cutting off speakers struggling to finish a thought, creating a rapid fire spectacle of sputtering politicians, with others clawing to interject. Overlying the talk was the race to create the best sound bite to be rebroadcast for the rest of the campaign season. All of these elements heightened the appearance of hostility on stage despite the prefacing of remarks with an “with all due respect”.

By in large, candidates took the bait; they attacked each other; they drilled down into the weeds of their plans that every voter knows will never come to fruition. The rules of governance dictate that any law will be the result of a series of compromises- within and between the parties and the chambers of Congress. The dizzying statistics and hard to grasp details faded into blah-blah-blah. Interestingly, no candidate responded with the deflections we see every day. It can be done directly with an “I’d rather talk about this” or by selecting one word as a cue to pivot to a different focus. Some may have thought it would sound as disingenuous in the debate as it does when administration spokespeople use it across their talking points. After all, it is what the public has come to expect from politicians. But not to switch the play book meant that the candidates could not deliver their messages effectively. Instead they jockeyed for recognition to get their two cents in. They looked like piranhas in a feeding frenzy. Some pundits and a quick survey of some friends agreed. 

CNN’s approach left candidates in a scrum with each other, forgetting Agent Orange in the tousle. Few breached CNN’s format to turn the spotlight on the White House. Warren and Sanders were somewhat successful on the first night, but few took up that mantle on the second. Audiences want to hear how candidates will challenge the gorilla in the room, not each other. If one of the criteria for capturing the nomination is electability, one aspect should be what kind of game a candidate will bring against the RealityTVPresident. This should be the place where Democrats drive home the argument that Trump hasn’t delivered on any of the things he promised. He’s even defaulted on the aspects of his policies that are repugnant to progressives but popular with Trumpophants. Remember Repeal and Replace Obamacare! He’s got several state attorney generals trying to do his dirty work in federal court as we speak. 

Why aren’t Democrats hitting the theme hard that Trump failed multiple times in business and now he’s failing the country? Is the candidate who does that best the most electable?

The obvious parallels are that he failed in business and now he’s failing the country. 45 has a transparent playbook; make a big announcement; tweet repeatedly that the job is done; shut down access to the agencies responsible for carrying them out; divert attention from the court challenges; lie bigly to MAGA rallies. He’s so wedded to the fiction that he’s solved the North Korean nuclear crisis that he’s willing to throw Japan and South Korea under the bus to let Kim Jong Un shoot off as many missiles as he likes, without criticism or backlash. Obsequious letters seem to do the trick.  And then there’s the stuff he’s done to make matters worse for his followers–tariffs, higher taxes, a huge increase in the national debt and so much more.

The contrast with NBC’s Democratic Debates No 1 was striking. The network fielded what passes for a straight up news show these days, sprinkled with banter from their topline correspondents, including MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, each rotated through the show. Chuck Todd was far too in love with the sound of his voice; the banter time would have been better spent on candidate input, given the time limitations. 

There was no fanfare, no flag ceremony. They did have a glitzy flag themed backdrop that created red, white and blue reflections from all angles.  There were no opening statements. Just questions and desperate attempts to enforce time limits and control interrupters, although moderators were far more polite in allowing speakers to finish their thoughts. They fielded submitted audience questions. NBC moderators delivered up query platforms for candidates to expound on their positions, focussed primarily on the top tiers. Andrew Yang got so little mic time that he looked like a deer in the headlights when a question finally came his way. But the more aggressive interrupters, like Insley, Bennett, Booker, Gillibrand and DiBlasio, all with low name recognition, got a few licks in.

For the most part moderators’ feeble attempts to generate candidate dissing in Miami were rebuffed although Kamala Harris infamously targeted Biden on school bussing and Swalwell hit him on his age. By in large, Democrats delivered their messages on income maldistribution, inhumane and dysfunctional immigration policies, money and influence in government and gun control centered in arguments against the MAWAPresident. But here again, health insurance degenerated into plan details more than principles meant to answer public concerns. Fortunately, there were fewer plans at that point to take the discussion off the rails. Pre-existing conditions, an important issue for the past 2 elections never came up. Obviously Medicare for All makes pre-existing conditions irrelevant, but it’s better to draw the dots between what’s important to people and proposed solutions directly for voters. Republicans tried to pretend that they supported guarantees to protect pre-existing conditions in the midterms, even as they are trying to overturn the ACA in the courts minus any legislative efforts to protect  insurance regardless of pre-existing conditions. They have no health insurance plans. But that didn’t even come up. 

In general, contrasts between the candidates emerged from NBC’s debates if the audience watched both nights, jotting notes to compare the rosters. That’s more work than any but the most committed will probably do. One might question the DNC’s wisdom for adopting this approach to primary debates. Maybe the spectacle was just to capture the media focus, even the conservative bubble, for a fleeting moment, if only to improve name recognition. At least, the debates played through the Sunday morning news recap shows.

They’re socialists/communists! If they’re anti-Trump, they’re anti-American! Critics don’t love America, they’re unpatriotic! 45 can say whatever he wants about them. And they’re racist if they call out his bigotry. Familiar strains of GOP Campaign 2020.

Alternatively, the candidates were less successful in CNN’S gladiator arena. It functioned as a trial by smoldering embers, because a run against Agent Orange is more likely to be an unfair fight to the death over open flames than a policy debate. He paints with a broad brush; if 45 didn’t say it, then its socialist/communist. If the defense of his behavior by his conservative minions is any guide, they believe that those who dare to criticize the president or his family are anti-American. That assertion, antithetical to the most American of sacred guarantees, freedom of speech, means that a criticizer is an appropriate target for the white-nationalist-in-chief’s easily bruised, fragile ego to hit back with any Tweet or oral insult, slander, falsehood, or racist slur he chooses to dish out. It’s just natural for him to punch back as viciously as possible, they say. Further, they believe that this is the president we’ve got and so his personal foibles have become the standard of national leadership. If that’s the acceptable party standard, Democratic candidates at all levels better buckle up for a wild ride.

Democrats will need to be careful not to lacerate each other or to provide media sound bites that can be construed to do. Some comments have already found their way into opposition social media and regional TV ads. At the same time, debate about these issues within the party is important and healthy for the nation as a whole. In reality, the GOP propaganda machine is dishonest enough to creatively synthesize their messages, whether by doctored images or videos or false quotations and attributions. 

The hosts of Pod Save America http://feeds.feedburner.com/pod-save-america suggests that the DNC should have taken more control of its own fate. In this day of alternative media approaches, they suggested that the DNC should have live streamed its own debates, selling access to any network that wanted it. Most news outlet would have eagerly queued up for the privilege, while individuals could view the stream through whatever device they chose, expanding the audience to include those living abroad at the same time they created fundraising opportunities for both the DNC and individual candidates. There must be a ton of people who could moderate such a debate and the DNC itself would be able to control the format. The fact that the organization has not taken advantage of this updated media approach speaks to the dominance of an older generation of campaign managers and consultants at the helm.

Democrats should not let conservatives shut down the necessary debate about how the country can address its problems, including the racism, xenophobia and nationalism being used to splinter it. Corey Booker has aptly called this election as a referendum on ourselves and who we want to be. It’s unfortunate that conservatives refuse to engage in the conversation. Or perhaps they are, by refusing to confront the world as it is, instead constructing a fantasy of happy days gone by, immune from the rapidly changing climate and the resulting flood of refugees and the subsequent political backlash. They’ve neglected to mention the technological changes that short circuited the time machine’s gyroscope to the past. They believe they can bulldoze government through manipulation of electoral levers to remain in power, all in the service of dismantling government and the law itself. Their vision is to exclude much of the country from governance. Let’s hope the Democrats don’t continue to let that happen.

August 10, 1988 The US government authorized reparations to surviving Japanese American detainees, 45 years after they were forced into internment camps during WWII. 

Presidential Condolence Visits 

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selective photo of teal cross decor

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Agent Orange insisted on inserting himself into the grieving communities in Dayton Ohio and El Paso Texas in the wake of mass shootings in each city. Like Pittsburgh before them, they asked him to respect their period of mourning before he brought his anti-semitism and xenophobia promoting presence into their midst. And with the disrespect for the Jewish and other minorities for which he’s famous, he completely disregarded their feelings for the benefit of Campaign 2020.

It is presidential protocol to express the solidarity of the nation with a community’s struggle to recover from a tragedy. As the TwitterPresident reminded us, Barack Obama dealt with several mass shootings during his tenure with stark contrast. He spoke from a pulpit in South Carolina and sang Amazing Grace in a mournful voice. He came to the people suffering, spoke with them privately and publicly in a speech for the nation. The communities welcomed him. As @therealDonaldTrump reminded us, no one blamed Obama for the tragedy, but then again, he had not borrowed segments from Trump/FoxTV or encouraged violent acts. It’s more of the whataboutism which represents the hallmark of the current administration and their mouthpiece Trump/FoxTV, which is both the source in both personnel and broadcast scripts and the echo chamber. 

 Instead, 45 slunk into these cities, carefully escorted from the airport while  circumnavigating the area around the memorials holding the body of the community to visit first responders and area politicians and then hospitalized victims. For him, there was no listening to the citizenry, only telling. (Just to insert a pet peeve, first responders are doing the job for which they are paid. They should be praised for doing it well, but not thanked for doing it, because the opposite would be dereliction of duty.) He wouldn’t be caught dead in a church, fearing the wrath of God might strike him down. 

The press was excluded from these interactions but phone videos won out, as they were supposed to. It’s Agent Orange’s recurrent middle finger to the press, delegitimizing it, forcing the public to the internet whose sources can’t be easily traced, only later to be acquired by the commercial media.  Back at the podium, 45’s remarks were not aimed at the broader communities, angry at the propaganda that spurred the shooters’ on, but as always, he was isolated from everyone other than supporters, hangers on and the press, picking and choosing his Trumpophants first.

The BullyPresident’s words can only be considered healing by people who haven’t been injured.

His words can only be considered healing by people who haven’t been injured. His minions have spread out to say he said what he’s supposed to and still he’s criticized. If he hadn’t said them, he would have been criticized. The truth lies within, because he can’t erase his daily behavior by haltingly reading from a teleprompter with the sincerity of a dish rag; because when he goes off script, he’s still goosing bigotry. His apologists are always saying that we should pay attention to his actions not his words and in this, his actions are clear. No Policy, No Friendship Can Undo a Racist Mind. WTF! The Nationalist-in-Chief Says “Hate Has No Place in America”? Are You a Racist, Mr President?He opted to speak to his cult followers because for him, they are the nation. They are the citizen fraction that he wants to chorral into a movement that will purge the country of those “others” who are his enemies, the obstacle to his own Xi Jinping status. 

Although past presidents have remained aloof from political remarks, 45 has to break with tradition in every possible instance. It’s not intentional; it’s his verbal diarrhea that spills his every narcissist thought out through his mouth rather than his ass, turning the focus to him, first and foremost. He literally can’t help himself; it’s the way he sees the world.  In his remarks, the country is grieving with you morphed into the damn Democrats and the press have been dissing me, clearly demarcating them as separate from the nation. His was not a mission to heal; he doesn’t know what that looks like. His was a mission to rub salt in our wounds to maintain a competitive edge for his red haters, oops, hatters. It was his way of saying, I didn’t mean that stuff about condemning racism and white supremacy; I’m still your boy.

This then is what has become of the presidential condolence visit. Perhaps we should put this tradition to bed.

August 9, 2014. Michael Brown was shot down by a white policeman in Ferguson Missouri, 8 days after his high school graduation. The policeman remains on the force today.

WTF! The Nationalist-in-Chief Says “Hate Has No Place in America”?

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Protestors hold up a sign towards the crowd at a rally for U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma

Protestors hold up a sign towards the crowd at a rally for U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, January 20, 2016. REUTERS/Nick Oxford TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY – RTX23AHX

Is it possible that Donald J Trump said from a White House podium “our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy”? Hearing the words on his lips made them seem tarnished, as false as his bigoted rhetoric. His teleprompter reading infused the words with a disconnectedness from his persona. It’s almost as if the body was there, but the RealityTVPresident was not.  That quality provides a handy device for later denials as if he needs one. What’s he up to?

Let it be noted that when Agent Orange wandered off script, he blessed Toledo, not Dayton, the actual site of the massacre. He exposed the level of concern he managed to squeeze into his weekend schedule in between viewing Trump/FoxTV and golf games. He seemed to think one more shooting wasn’t a big deal. He didn’t bother to do the basics, like contacting the mayor of Dayton, maybe because he wasn’t sure who to contact. It’s all fly over country anyway; is there really a difference between Toledo and Dayton? How can he have their backs if he doesn’t know who they are? The people in both cities should remember this in November. 

Of course, 45 is notorious for saying one thing one minute and the opposite the next; the next Trump critic or MAGA rally will be the test. The RealityTVPresident cleverly avoided a declaration of his own personal commitment; he urged “the nation” to condemn but there was no “I” there or anywhere in his address. He couldn’t bring himself to own up to his role in spreading hate after asserting before his speech that “we have to end hatred…we’re going to take care of it…we are doing lots of big things to bring that about”, as if it was within his power to upend history. He has stirred the pot but he can’t change the flavor by removing his spoon.   

The RealityTVPresident cleverly avoided a declaration of his own personal commitment; he urged “the nation” to condemn but there was no “I” there or anywhere in his address.

What’s he up to? My first guess is that his polls are showing his relentless racist attacks aren’t winning many supporters and could be losing some. Then, he’s probably trying to provide shade for GOP politicians who are being hammered by the press and supporters to call a spade a spade. They’ve been backed into a corner, inducing a twinge of conscious in a few. Most are unwilling to twist themselves into pretzels to defend the indefensible; they’ve struggled to find the most neutral words they can. 

A new round of several Republican members of the House who will not stand for reelection may be another factor niggling at the RNC. The party, desperate to hang on to House seats, now finds them vulnerable as open seats rather than incumbent. These districts have become questionable in the face of demographic shifts but the party can’t afford to concede to an even larger Democratic majority without a fight. Agent Orange, fresh from the weekend on the golf course probably yielded to the pressure to stop the bleeding.

The BullyPresident also threw a little sand at the Democrats. “I gave the speech,” he’ll tell rally crowds, “and the Democrats just keep calling me racist”. Similarly at the press, who took what they thought was a bold stand by actually labeling his rhetoric for what it is, abandoning terms like “racialized” and “some have called it racist”. It’s one more bullet in his war against the press.   

A few words cannot erase a life of racist behavior. No Policy, No Friendship Can Undo a Racist Mind Instead, 45 has spent the last couple of weeks draining the meaning out of racism, to foist yet another deception onto the susceptible. “It’s racist if you ask me if I’m racist,” he bellowed. Republican Kevin McCarthy was so confused, he couldn’t think of a single thing that he could call racist when asked by a reporter. Trumpophants have been pre-programmed to think “reverse racism” against whites when they hear the word. Some 40% of whites believe racism against whites is a more pressing problem than against African Americans. Astounding! “Reverse racism” is not a thing! On the other hand, if white people say it exists and they make the rules, does it? Powerful White Men Define Racism

The White Supremacist-in-chief has wiped the slate clean. There are no racial stereotypes that denigrate people of color to deny them access to the opportunities that whites take for granted. There is no race based discrimination in jobs or education or housing. There is no assumption of white superiority of the majority who hold the reins of power over the inferiority of people of color.  Instead, there is racism blindness. So those who are Trump supporters and those who are not can hold their racial stereotypes close to their hearts, comforted that there isn’t a racist bone in their bodies. And their world will go on as it is.

Until Americans see the ugly history of hate as a cornerstone of the nation, the hatred will remain within the mainstream, sometimes full blown, sometimes festering below the surface.

“Hate has no place in America” the president said.  If only that were true. For those who take the time to look, hatred IS a cornerstone of the nation from the beginning. Ask Native Americans, here before whites arrived; Mexicans native to the southwest; African Americans, here long before many whites who immigrated later; Chinese, Japanese, Irish, Italians, Germans, the Jewish, the Latinx, and Muslims who have all taken a turn. Their number have all heard that “go back where you came from”. It is difficult for Americans to see that ugly American reflection in their mirrors. But until they see that reflection and acknowledge the history, the hatred will remain within the mainstream, sometimes full blown, sometimes festering below the surface. The embers that smouldered before Obama’s election exploded after he took office, furiously fanned by the right wing media bubble to arrive with Trump in the White House fully cooked.  Short of resolution, 45’s alternative may be to eliminate altogether those who have been the objects of hate with the Wall, the Muslim ban, deportation, constriction of legal immigration to a trickle, virtual elimination of asylum status, the spread of disease among malnourished occupants in unsanitary conditions without medical care in detention centers, invigorating white nationalism and allowing domestic terrorism to flourish.

August 6, 1965 The federal Voting Rights Act is enacted to enforce the 15th Amendment passed over a century before. The 15th itself was a reaffirmation of the 14th Amendment which granted the rights of citizenship that should have included voting. 

Joe Biden Is the Past

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RIP-Van-Winkle

It’s no accident that Joe Biden remains the leading candidate after the Democratic debates simply because of his tenure as Vice President with the most popular Democratic president since FDR. At least one of the other top 3 is a woman, Elizabeth Warren; the other is also over 70 years old, the accepted image of who our president should be. Biden was the most popular candidate even before he announced. For the most part, Biden has quietly stayed under the radar, appearing at high dollar fundraisers and doing some on the ground campaigning in primary states. He’s avoided the organizational forums where the other candidates are appearing, opting to go solo most of the time. He’s tried to remain above the fray until the first debate pulled him into the mud with if not all of the now 23 candidates, then with those who wanted to snipe at him. He was slow to issue specific plans, making a gestalt pitch against the enemy of the people as if he didn’t have to tell Americans what he would do or even what he had done. He has tried to hover as King of The Hill firmly attached to Obama’s coattails, calling for a return to bipartisanship, hazily remembered without the deeply divisive target on Obama’s back to limit his presidency to one term, as Mitch McConnell calmly announced soon after his election. Perhaps he meant the bipartisan cooperation under Bush 43? Is Biden looking back to a Republican White House that declared war under the false pretense of WMDs? 

The media has taken up the chant that Joe is the most electable, primarily because he can capture for Democrats that white “working class” vote that flipped from Obama to Trump. Such an assertion represents a profound misunderstanding of both who is the working class and of the insecurity inherent in the safe approach to defeating Trump in 2020.

There are plenty of minority workers in the “working class”, from the auto industry to teachers and public sector unions. But the sad truth is that the GOP broke the power of unions beginning in the 80s and the loss of jobs in unionized industries and the movement of jobs overseas and to right-to- work domestic states has shrunk unions like Alice through the looking glass. Union membership fell to 11% of the workforce in 2015 from 20% in 1983. [At the height of the union movement in the 1940s, the percentage was about 35%]. In addition, union membership shifted from 35% to 7% of the private sector and 35% of the public sector. This shift is a reversal of the proportions in the 1950s.

Over the last few decades, unions have delivered little to their membership, having become administrative assistants to company management, helping to spoon feed the decline in real wages to members with a sauce of enhanced benefit packages. In fact, real wages have stagnated since the 1970s in this country. Between 1973-2013, worker compensation rose by merely 9% against a rise in US productivity of 74%.

With the loss in membership in unions came a loss of influence, with unions unable to deliver voters to their endorsed candidates and contributing less money to campaigns. In the pay to play economics of elections and legislation in federal, state and local governments, the concerns of the average worker fell off a cliff while business and corporations summited higher peaks.  

Debate pundits stuck with the refrain that Joe showed he is up to the task after the Rumble in Detroit, leaving me to wonder if we had watched the same event. Biden has also drawn a succession of established Democratic politicians into his corner, but not Barack Obama himself.

What I saw was an established politician who was slow on his feet. He didn’t fight back against CNN moderators who time and time again shut him off mid syllable. He simply submitted. If he can’t fight newspersons, Trump is simply going to swallow him whole.  A few times he cut himself off with a “well anyway” at the end of a recitation meant to establish his record. He seemed to just run out of material or to have lost his train of thought. And although he raised the temperature of his remarks, an inspiring firebrand of rhetorical flourish he is not. Say what you will, the RealityTVPresident knows how to galvanize a crowd and the media with a 20 word vocabulary strung in grade school sentence structures. Biden is pablum in comparison.

In fact, Biden comes with a flawed history. Infamous for his gaffs, even with minimal exposure, Biden has already stepped into shit a couple of times only partially managing to wipe it off his shoes. In leaked remarks from a fundraiser, Biden praised his ability to work with Senators Talmadge and Eastman, ardent segregationists. He has said he wasn’t praising them so much as his skills at compromise in politics. “You don’t have to like people or their views to get stuff done in politics” echoing his return to normalcy theme. Wow! He couldn’t have cited some more recent compromises, somebody like Newt Gingrich, perhaps.

Biden’s cooperation with Southern Dixiecrats gave us the shaming of Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas’s conservatism on the Supreme Court. It brought the three strikes rule, codified race based sentencing, the ballooning prison population, the Sequester to name a few.

In opening the door to the hand he extended across the aisle, Biden invited us to look at the results. Cooperation with Southern Dixiecrats gave us the shaming of Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas’s conservatism on the Supreme Court. It brought the three strikes rule that exploded the US prison population trapping millions of African Americans in a racially biased legal system. Their lives were permanently damaged; life in Black communities has been disrupted by the loss of generations of employable able bodied men ripped from the workforce. It left Black families shattered by the loss of fathers and mothers who spend more time scratching out a living than seeing their children. It brought us the Sequester which is keeping the budget tethered to mandatory cuts to social programs. Conservatives want to slash people programs further, exchanging them for expanded welfare for corporations and wealthier individuals otherwise known as lower tax rates and exemptions.

In the first Democratic party debate, Kamala Harris stung Biden for his historic opposition to school bussing by recounting her personal experience being bussed to Berkeley schools in 1983, almost 3 decades after Brown v Board of Education. His response demonstrated his continuing belief in local control and states rights. If he didn’t disagree with everything Talmage and Eastman stood for, he at least shared their belief in states rights, the guiding principle of southern secession, the Civil War, the Jim Crow police state, and “segregation now, segregation forever.” Although the heart of Dixiecrats philosophy, states rights is an odd pose for a liberal Democrat in 2019. Is this someone African Americans want to support?

Still, school bussing is not popular with any group today. Black citizens opposed the idea that their children should bear the burden of school integration. It was their children who were getting up early, spending long hours on buses, only to arrive at schools that offered little more educational opportunity than they had in their own communities. The harassment from students and teachers and threats of physical violence were a bitter pill that nobody wanted. And then there were students watching the disruption of their status on sports teams, class officers, publications etc in the schools they left behind.   

White opposition crystallized in the argument “while I don’t have anything against the Blacks, I don’t want my kid sitting next to one in school.” After all, they moved to the suburbs for like minded neighbors with schools filled with children who looked like them. They did not want the children of color to follow them. Remarkably, those 1980s arguments are still current  because schools are just as segregated today as they were then. 

The real draw for integration is not the color of the students in the schools, it’s the resources in predominantly white schools. Sure, there are arguments for diversity and changing the dynamics between whites and Blacks. Segregationist understood that integration would allow whites to see that African Americans are not the bogey-men portrayed by the media. The inclusion of different races in the same space brings different perspectives to problems and solutions. But that is not what was happening in school rooms in the 80s or indeed today. 

Education is a large part of the racial brainwashing in the country that washes African Americans out of history and insists they are less capable, minimal contributors to the growth of the nation. Because most teachers are white, their prejudices have doomed countless Black children to harsher disciplinary action and special education classes than their white counterparts, literally pushing them out of school, creating the school to prison pipeline.

Early evidence about bussing show that achievement among students of color improved, not because they were sitting next to white children but because of the books and instruction in white schools provided a better education. Bussing failed because of a lack of political will to continue it. More Black students attend segregated schools than in the 80s and Black communities are still looking to the government to invest resources into their neighborhood schools. Not much has changed, Mr Biden, and that’s what your gradualism brings, one step forward and two back such that progress remains in the minds of whites who can pat themselves on the back for making an effort and counsel African Americans to be patient out into infinity.

Beware of “I don’t have a racist bone in my body” and “I’ve worked for civil rights my whole life.” (If 45 can drop it, you know it can’t be real.) He doesn’t understand that racism is not the extremes like the KKK, but a systemic disrespect for people of color.

More importantly, it is the implications of Biden’s response to both these challenges that betray his true frame of mind. Beware of “I don’t have a racist bone in my body” and “I’ve worked for civil rights my whole life.” (If 45 can drop it, you know it can’t be real.) He doesn’t understand that racism is not the extremes like the KKK, but a systemic disrespect for people of color. Racism is the systematic role of the federal government, business, social and economic institutions in denying African Americans equal opportunity because of their color.  In that the former Senator has been an active participant in making the laws. On the personal level, it’s expressed in friendships with “exceptional negroes” because it’s a guarantee that that Black friend continues to field microaggressions from clueless white people like Mr Biden. Biden, by saying he’d never been called “boy” by Eastman, just stomped all over Black men. Eastman only called “nigra” men boy, not white ones. Biden’s flagrant disregard for the color in the insult was publicly hurtful to Cory Booker, a true macro-aggression. Ole Joe couldn’t see it or at least pretended not to for public consumption.

Work for civil rights doesn’t absolve one of racism either. Think back to the abolitionist movement that wanted to free the enslaved but the majority didn’t support Black suffrage. Some abolitionists supported voluntary and forced colonization for free Blacks. And they all supported segregation because nobody wanted to live next to a Black man. All abolitionists continued to propagate racist myths including Africans were a separate branch of the evolutionary tree, they had uninhibited sexual desires and of course the low IQ and the ironic supposition of innate laziness albeit being perhaps the hardest working group in America.

If Biden’s still thinking every Black kid in a hoodie is a gang-banger, that is the essence of racial stereotyping and white denigration of Black culture. It’s ok for the fashion industry to make billions from preempting the look but not for poor Black boys to wear it.

Similarly, civil rights work doesn’t mean that you haven’t bought into the myth of Black criminality, played out for Biden in the 3 strikes bill and fast forward to last week with his remarks conflating low slung pants with “gang bangers”. If he’s still thinking every Black kid in a hoodie is a gang-banger, that is the essence of racial stereotyping and white denigration of the validity of Black culture. It’s ok for the fashion industry to make billions from preempting the look but not for poor Black boys to wear it. In that, it exemplifies the history of America.

Good ole Joe has refused to back down, to concede that some of the criticism may have a ring of truth and that his political growth is a response to the demands of changing times.  Instead, in doubling down, he has stumbled through a series of deepening ditches which demonstrate only political cunning. He hasn’t been in politics for almost half a century to no effect, although his forays into the contest for the White House have been almost laughably short-lived.

Biden is shrewd. He appealed to whites who like to memorialize their white heroes who “gave Blacks their civil rights”.  At the same time, he’s using dog whistles to satisfy the “white working class” in ways that we’ve forgotten he used to do in the past. He’s calling out “gang bangers”, on the one hand, to whites who might have supported his anti-bussing activities and third strike law but are less enthusiastic about his civil rights by talking about their safety in the face of thugs.  Similarly, many older African Americans hold these same views about gang-bangers and their communities are demonstrably unsafe as much from crime and gun violence as they are from the police themselves. They too admire him for his civil rights history. And that’s what Biden’s counting on. He’s sticking to his guns.

Biden’s inability to respond to Harris during the debate made him look both old and weak. His thinking was so slow that he announced that he’d run out of time rather than wait for the moderator to call it. If he didn’t have a ready response to an easily anticipated question, then what will he do with the BullyPresident. He’s going to look effete and even older than his rival. 

In the end, except for understanding the history, the question before us is what will Biden do in the future to attack school segregation. Whatever it is, it has to attack on a federal level the systemic supports of segregation in housing as well as underfunding of minority school districts, not the local one that Biden says he still supports. If he’s waiting on those districts created to sustain segregation in schools to see the error of their ways, the polar ice caps will have melted away and we’ll all be under water.  

Overall, Biden’s responses to criticism emerge at a non-twitterverse snail’s pace, long after the news cycle has moved on. He will have to be more nimble if he wants to capture Democratic voters other than senior citizens. While they are the most reliable segment of voters, both GOP and Democratic, generations from millenials on down will have no patience with that; I don’t have the patience and I’m a Baby Boomer, albeit an exceptional but not too exceptional one, I hope.

By Round 2 of the debates, Biden came out slinging a little history at his opponents, at Kamala Harris’s prosecutor record and she seemed stunned and stumbled in her response. He was less victorious with Cory Booker over Newark’s record of policing during his stint as mayor, but he trumped Biden with the line, “in my community we have a saying, you’re dipping into the kool aid and you don’t even know the flavor.” That snap established Booker’s blackness cred.

Should we be looking back or forging forward? What of the most pressing issue of our time, climate change? This will require not just prioritization but bold and imaginative solutions outside the bounds of gradualistic change. Its too big and too comprehensive to settle into Congress’ emergency short-term response thinking mode. Bipartisan legislation crafted with conservative climate change deniers conceding to baby-steps that don’t upset the base will do nothing except be bowled over by the advance of science and the weather gods. 

Biden represents the way we got to where we are, Hillary Clinton incarnate.but is that the mood in the country?

Biden represents the way we got to where we are, Hillary Clinton incarnate. He wants to go back to normal, whatever that is, but is that the mood in the country where more than ever relief  is needed for the lower middle and working class, the urban poor and the rural farmer who see the booming economy happening somewhere other than where they live. And then there is the drain of the even deeper, muddier swamp ushered in by the ArtofTheDealPresident and an end to the cruelty of the BullyPresident’s administration. Many people are feeling it even if the Trumpophants possess hypnotized immunity.

One other element of Old Joe’s history has been largely overlooked; he is probably the biggest loser in presidential bids in the field. Now on his third run for the presidency, his first ended after a 1% showing in the Iowa primaries; his second, even shorter, ended after a charge of plagiarizing a speech. Barack Obama rescued him from a Senatorial backwater.

Despite his drawbacks, Biden has extensive support, at least at this point, among African Americans who are crucial to any potential Democratic victory. It remains unclear if he could galvanize Black youths to vote, even in the face of the MAWAPresident. After all, he isn’t  pretending to portend a change in the status quo, given his penchant for high roller fund raisers and corporate donations disdained by the other front runners. He’s simply offering a kinder gentler version of government as usual, undoing Agent Orange’s dastardly deeds. The other moderates, the fairly indistinguishable group of white men whose names few people can remember, haven’t been so boisterous about the rigging of the system by corporate wealth but then they’re all long shots.

Biden is a safe bet. But leading the charge to return to the normalcy that elected Barack Obama in 2008, is about the past, not the future. A decade has passed since then and the world has rapidly moved on. Is that where most Americans want to go?

August 4, 1964: The bodies of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman, three civil rights workers who disappeared in Mississippi was discovered. They had been murdered.