owlmoose: photo of little owl in a stocking cap (owlhat)
KJ ([personal profile] owlmoose) wrote2017-02-09 12:20 am
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Semi-regular political linkspam: I'm not even going to pretend to keep up

I'm trying to keep these to stories and links that I think have long-term use, rather than responding to whatever particular outrage has happened within the last fifteen minutes. There's just no way to keep up with a White House and Congress that's churning out stuff at the rate things are coming in a long-form journal, so I'm not even going to try. I do my best to keep up on Twitter, which is the best source for whatever is the latest and "greatest" anyway.

Anyway, have some links.

  • From former Congressman Barney Frank, a guide on how to make your opinions known to your elected representatives. There are some good points here, but one of the things I appreciate most is that he doesn't try to claim that one and only one contact point is the "right" one. There are many useful ways to engage; pick the one that works for you, or take a multi-pronged approach if you like.

  • "Our Part in the Darkness": this opinion piece, by Rabih Alameddine in The New Yorker, isn't a comfortable read, but I think it's an important reminder that we Americans should not attempt to distance ourselves from our country. Like it or not, support it or not, fighting against it or not, these things are happening here, and while 45, his minions, and his strongest supporters may be extreme examples, less stark examples of their beliefs and actions have always been part of the American landscape. Although not addressed directly, this article gets at why I'm not comfortable with the "not my president" formulation -- I may not have voted for him, I may have done my damnedest to keep him out of the office, but now he's here and he is the president, and I can't look away from that reality.

  • Two on the upcoming fight over Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, one from Politico and another, much angrier but with a similar takeaway, from journalist Kurt Eichenwald. The short version, with which I agree, is that this is where Democrats need to take their stand. If they lose the filibuster, so be it. A stolen Supreme Court seat is worth making a fuss over, and although I wish they had pulled out the big guns while Obama was still in the White House, better late than never.

  • Good advice on living the resistance from Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King. I've been seeing this circulating without attribution quite a lot, so I wanted to make sure to get a direct link in here.

  • While I'm thinking about it, can I just complain about how much I hate the "cut and paste this text on your Facebook page" methodology that's gotten so popular for sharing essays and action items? I understand people's security concerns about not making FB posts public -- I almost never do it myself -- but it's a nightmare for source verification. There's got to be a better way.

  • Going back to Coretta Scott King, I know I just said I wanted to stay away from outrage of the day in my linkspam posts, but this thing where Elizabeth Warren was barred from speaking in the Senate for reading King's letter laying out the proven racism of then-nominee for Attorney General Pete Sessions is so egregious that I have to bring it up. First, a Tweetstorm on the history of the gag rule in the Senate, which was created to keep abolitionists from as much as mentioning slavery on the floor. Second, if you haven't already seen it, the full text of the letter is available in a lot of places now; this link goes to the Boston Globe (which also has an overview of the story). Finally, you've probably seen the new Nevertheless, She Persisted meme -- based on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's exact words when asked why Warren was silenced -- which is possibly my favorite rapid response weaponized meme yet. If you haven't looked at the Twitter hashtag yet, I highly recommend it.

  • From Vox, why the president is not an evil genius, and why that doesn't matter. I agree with both the initial premise of this (if the man and his top advisors were actually evil geniuses, the Republican administration would not be nearly so chaotic right now), and the upshot, which is that the outcome of the administration's actions is more important than their reasoning behind each one. This, for what it's worth, is why I avoid the "distraction" rhetoric that we hear so often these days -- "don't pay attention to this thing, it's just a distraction from that other more important thing!" Everything they are doing is terrible, and it all matters. Of course there's too much for all of us to focus on all the time -- we each have to triage for ourselves. But as the wise [twitter.com profile] sophiebiblio says, we shouldn't shame people for having different priorities.


  • If only. If only...