KJ

umadoshi

Sometimes it seems to me a better way to organize the political spectrum than along a continuum of right and left would be the ideology of disconnection versus the ideology of connection. In the short term we are working to protect the rights of immigrants and to prevent families from being torn apart at the border—and to address the relationship between our greenhouse gas emissions and the global climate, between our economic systems and poverty, between what we do and what happens beyond us, because the ideology of isolation is in part a denial of cause and effect relations, and a demand to be unburdened even from scientific fact and the historical and linguistic structures governing truth. In the long term our work must be to connect and to bring a vision of connection as better than disconnection, for oneself and for the world, to those whose ideology is “I really don’t care”—whether or not it’s emblazoned on their jackets. Somewhere in there is the reality that what we do we do for love, if it’s worth doing.</blockquote

• There are a lot of really great takes on the outing of film executive Harvey Weinstein as a sexual predator (and even more truly terrible ones). One I particularly appreciated was from former actress and director Sarah Polley, who talks about her own encounters with harassment in Hollywood and damns the entire system. I've been glad to see more people speaking up, not just about Weinstein but other serial harassers and predators, and the systems that protect them, in other industries as well. Is the dam finally breaking on this issue? It feels like we might be reaching a real turning point as a society. I can only hope so.


• Also recommended: "I Have Been Raped by Far Nicer Men Than You by Natalie Degraffinried at Very Smart Brothas, on men always putting the burden of preventing harassment and assault on women and why she (and the rest of us) are sick and tired of it.


• Emma Thompson also says smart and true things.


• Rebecca Traister talks about past attempts to report on the Weinstein story and speculates about why the New York Times finally felt able to publish the allegations.


• Another important event was the #MeToo hashtag, in which people (mostly but not exclusively women) shared their stories of sexual assault and harassment. An important thing to know: this idea wasn't new, but a revival of a movement created ten years ago by a black woman, Tarana Burke, to bring greater attention to another well-known predator, the musician R. Kelly.


• I have long believed that the whole "mothers, daughters, and sisters" response to these sorts of stories needs to die. Here's a good Vulture article on why it's so terrible. (P.S. Harvey Weinstein has daughters. So does Donald Trump, lest we forget that the anniversary of the Access Hollywood tape was this month, and the numerous allegations of assault and harassment against him. It is very much not just about Harvey Weinstein.)


• On to other topics, like all the GOP Senators who are saying mean things about Donald Trump but not making any substantive moves to rein him in. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate their speaking up. But talk is cheap. Nice speeches and two dollars will buy me a cup of coffee. Get back to me when someone actually does something besides decided not to run for re-election.


• Meanwhile, the white supremecist assholes came back to Charlottesville with their tiki torches. This issue is not over.


• Here's an excellent write-up of the oral arguments for the Wisconsin gerrymandering case that went before the Supreme Court at the beginning of the month. Challengers' lawyers are cautiously optimistic, so keep your fingers crossed. This one could be the whole ballgame.

• Many people have been bothered by the fact that the ACLU went to bat for the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville last weekend, when the town tried to revoke the permit they'd already granted. I give a monthly donation to the ACLU, and I was fully aware that they do things like this when I made that decision, so I'm not upset -- it's exactly what I expect from them, and they do enough good work otherwise that I chose to support them anyway. Still, I think it's time for them to re-evaluate whether or not it's possible for a white supremacist gathering to be considered a "peaceful assembly" -- and the ACLU branches based in California broke with the national organization on this point today. Is it time to switch my monthly donation to the ACLU of Northern CA instead? It's time to think about it, anyway.


• The city of Baltimore took down all of its Confederate monuments yesterday, quietly and in the middle of the night. Alec McGillis wrote a great article on their removal, including lots of history and context about race and racism in the city.


• A fed-up citizen in Arizona -- who is a registered Republican, although not a Trump supporter -- turned Phoenix's Confederate monument into a participation trophy. On the other side of the country, activists in Durham, North Carolina, staged an "I am Spartacus" moment by turning themselves in en masse for tearing down a Confederate statue there. Whatever else happens, it feels like the momentum on the issue of Confederate symbols in public spaces has really sped up. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see most or all of them gone by the end of the year.


• Wondering why there even is a Confederate monument in Arizona, which wasn't a separate US territory until partway through the Civil War, much less part of the Confederacy? Because these monuments were mainly built to support Jim Crow laws and frighten civil rights activists. They have nothing to do with memorializing Confederate soldiers and everything to do with enforcing white supremacy. I didn't know this history myself until relatively recently, and I'm glad it's becoming more common knowledge.


• Tired of endless articles on the state of the white working class? Mother Jones went to talk to working class people of color.


• More on voter suppression, this time Ohio purging its voter rolls, and the Justice Department backing them up. I really wish the Democrats would get louder about this issue.


• A couple on urban planning and housing, which is not something I talk about much but still a topic of great interest to me. (And also broadly relevant to the other issues at hand -- look up redlining sometime.) First, Gary Kamiya on the small city of Brisbane's reluctance to approve a large housing project and why other Bay Area cities ought not to be pointing fingers. Second, Alyssa Walker asks why the conversation around urban neighborhoods and gentrification is driven by white men.


• In other news, Harper's Magazine published excerpts from the jury selection transcripts for the trial of evil pharmaceutical bro and all-around asshole Martin Shkreli, and they are a thing of beauty. I have no idea how the lawyers waded through all that to get a jury of 12 mostly-impartial members, but I salute them. (Shkreli was found guilty on several counts of securities fraud unrelated to the price-gouging issue.)

• Osita Nwanevu wrote this long and excellent article about the history of US democratic primaries, with a thesis that (contrary to the narrative that BernieBros and others have been trying to push) racial and social issues have been keeping white working class voters away from progressive candidates since 1972. Not coincidentally, this was the first presidential election after the GOP adopted the "Southern strategy", Richard Nixon's plan to attract racist white Democrats alienated by the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Nwanevu is a little too quick to throw around the word "neo-liberal", but otherwise this is a fascinating look at history and trends.


• It's easy to dismiss the various Twitter-tempests-in-a-teacup as distractions from "real" issues, but let's consider that Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski are accusing the President of the United States of blackmail, and that's not a small thing.


• Not politics exactly, but a hot topic in tech lately is allegations of inappropriate behavior of venture capitalists toward women who are asking them for funding. This Guardian article uses one particular case as a jumping off point to talk about the problems with sexism and misogyny in the tech world. I also found this Facebook post to be a thoughtful response.


• Speaking of Silicon Valley and its sometimes-toxic culture, this video from Fusion does a good job of why the resignation of Uber's ultra-bro CEO, Travis Kalanick, will not solve all the company's problems.


• In voter suppression news, I was cheered to see so many states pushing back on or flat refusing the administration's request for voter data. And this hasn't been a particularly partisan response either -- only 17 states have Democratic Secretaries of State, but as of the most recent count, at least 44 states are refusing to cooperate, either wholly or in part. When the governor of Mississippi told Trump to "jump in the Gulf of Mexico", I figured that was pretty much the ballgame. Maybe there's some hope for the republic after all.


• "I Don't Know How to Explain Why You Should Care About Other People" is an article that sums up a lot of my feelings right now, and a lot of other people's too, if the number of times I've seen it shared on social media in the last couple of weeks is any indication.

• RealPressSecBot is a Twitter Bot that puts the president's tweets into traditional presidential statement form. A nice way to highlight how ridiculous and awful and not-normal this all is.


• Paste Magazine has an in-depth look at how Trump's communications team uses SEO (search engine optimization) to game Google results and ensure that fake and misleading news take over the top results. If you're already familiar with SEO and how it works, there won't be much new here, but if not it's an eye-opener. I'm not 100% convinced by the author's conclusion that the Democrats need to fight fire with fire, but we need to at least be aware of the tactic. When read with my librarian hat on, what this article really does is make the case for stepping up our information literacy education. Teaching people to think critically about the stories they see on the internet, how to tell reliable from unreliable sources, and look for cues toward author biases (and to be wary of information that upholds your own biases!) is so important in today's world, but it's not enough of a priority for too many educators. It contributes a lot to our increasing polarization, too.


• The Weather Channel is not playing around with the Paris Accord. Although the site has since moved on to breaking news, on the day that Trump announced the pending withdrawal of the US from this important international agreement, every story on the front page of the site was about the havoc wreaked by global climate change.


• One of the better news stories in recent weeks is Hillary Clinton's re-entry into public life. Naturally, there's been a lot of moaning and handwringing about she should just shut up and go away -- but not until after she takes total and personal responsibility for her loss and perhaps puts on a hairshirt or two. Gee, people are demanding that a woman apologize, shut up, and sit down? That's never happened before. Anyway, I've seen a number of good stories about the problems with this phenomenon. First, Ezra Klein talks about the rush to blame Clinton and Clinton alone for her loss, and why this is both simplistic and dangerous. Second, The Week goes into the history of past presidential losers and what they did in the immediate aftermath of the election (hint: it wasn't sit down, shut up, and go away, and it certainly wasn't take sole and total blame for not winning).


• FiveThirtyEight reports on the decreased African-American voter turnout in 2016 as compared to 2008 and 2012. As the tweet where I saw this study first mentioned pointed out, some of this is down to voter suppression, but they also wondered: where are all the thinkpieces about improving turnout in this demographic? (As opposed to the cottage industry that's sprung up around "winning back" the white working class.) Where, indeed.


• And also according to FiveThirtyEight, Democrats can take back the House in 2018 without enticing a single Trump voter to switch sides -- the margin among independents and third-party voters is more than enough to flip the seats the party needs. So it doesn't even matter, and it's time to start turning our focus back to the real base.


• So we all had a little fun with the Twitter typo that took the world by storm. Sure, we all knew that Trump meant to type "coverage", then presumably got distracted before he could correct and delete it. It wasn't exactly earth-shattering in comparison to many of the other things he's done. But it was fun to engage creatively with a meme that was ultimately harmless, as an antidote to the high stakes that we have to engage with every day. Laughter can be cathartic. And it's not like we forget about the serious things that are still going on. A few links:
  
  • BoredPanda collects some of the best memes and Twitter responses here.
  
  
  • Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch explains why covfefe looks so strange to English speakers and why we have no consensus on how to pronounce it.
  
  
  • Merriam-Webster gives up.
  
  
  • And then Sean Spicer tried to pretend that it was something intentional, because of course he did. I don't really feel sorry for Spicey because I'm sure he took that job willingly, but I have to imagine this isn't quite how he pictured his life.


• Although Rob Quist didn't win the special House election in Montana, he came within single digits, and this article explains why that's a good sign for Democrats going forward. Sure, it would be great to pull off an upset, and yes, it's a bit frustrating that the Democrats are putting all their eggs in the Georgia 6th basket, rather than fighting harder in races like this one and in Kansas that have turned out to be surprisingly close. But a good trend is a good trend, and winning a seat here and there is much less important than building momentum for the midterms next year. So take heart, friends. The lines are still all moving in the right direction.


• Also, it's not all moral victories and closing margins: on May 23rd, statehouse seats in New Hampshire and New York flipped Democratic, and in New York it was a district that Trump won by twenty-three points.


• I don't want to talk about the Kathy Griffin business in any detail (she probably went too far, her first apology was appropriate, but she should've left it at that; there are many ways to feel about the photo itself and I'm not going to say any of them are wrong), but I did want to share this article about the hypocrisy of conservatives getting up in arms about this when they winked, nodded, and laughed at equally-if-not-more horrific images of Barack Obama for eight years. It's the circular firing squad of the Left in action again, and I grow weary of it.


• Here's a good piece from Slate on the problem with "I don't see color" etc. as a way to deal with race, gender, or other marginalized groups in hiring.


• Finally, in something that is almost certainly just a coincidence and not a sign from God or whatever, a giant sinkhole recently opened up in front of Mar-a-Lago. It couldn't happen to a nicer bit of pavement.

• Lest we think the Democrats are perfect, in the last couple of weeks I feel like they've been ramping up their chase of the Great White Male vote, with everyone from Bernie Sanders (of course) to Nancy Pelosi (oh hell no) stating that lack of support for abortion rights ought not to be a disqualifying factor for Democrats to support a candidate for office. *rubs forehead* Look, I get that being loud and proud pro-choice isn't going to fly in every single district or community, and people can have whatever personal beliefs they want. But when it comes down to votes and proposing legislation, Democrats had better not get all wishy-washy. Single-issue anti-abortion voters left the Democratic party a generation ago; trying to lure them back is only going to alienate the current party base, which is women and people of color, particularly women of color. As I suggested above, I don't really expect anything better from Bernie right now, but from Nancy Pelosi it's like a knife in the heart. At least Tom Perez got with the program, recently stating that reproductive rights are a non-negotiable issue for the DNC (note, annoying auto-play Bernie video at that link) -- but only after a lot of pressure, mostly from women.


• Speaking of annoying auto-play Bernie, he has been everywhere lately, and I am tired of it. This article does a good job of summing up why.


• It took awhile, but United Airlines finally made what feels to me like an adequate response to the incident in April when a passenger was forcibly removed from an airplane. New policies announced include changes to their rules for when flights can be overbooked, and last-minute changes to move crew, greater employee discretion in offering incentives, and an absolute ban on removing someone who has been seated on a plane unless there's a clear security issue. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better, as long as they follow through. (I still hope the guy sues for all he can get, though.)


• Another day, another Trump appointee who wants to destroy the agency they've been tapped to run: Teresa Manning, who has been nominated to run the Department of Health and Human Services office that manages family planning, believes that contraception doesn't work. Perfect.


• The House Oversight Committee finally started doing its job and is investigating Michael Flynn for real. In a statement released on April 25th, Jason Chaffetz said, "I see no data to support the notion that Gen. Flynn complied with the law." So-- that means he broke the law, then? As in, committed a crime? How about that.


• Probably the stupidest "controversy" of the past few weeks is the handwringing over Barack and Michelle Obama getting paid to make speeches now that they are private citizens. Let me repeat that: as influential as they might be, they are PRIVATE CITIZENS. They don't hold public office, and Barack never will again (and I'd be surprised if Michelle went that route), so why the fuss? Oh right, because money is dirty, unless it's going to white dudes, in which case it's fine.


• One recent bright spot was Bill O'Reilly losing his Fox News gig, due to advertiser pressure over the sexual harassment allegations that have dogged him for years. But I'd be surprised if that were be the end of it, and in fact Sean Hannity is facing new allegations already. Vox has a good video on Fox's culture of sexism that goes way beyond just O'Reilly and Roger Ailes.


• Also good news: Morgantown, WV, recently swept a progressive city council into office. I also recommend this follow-up article on how they did it.


• Here's a report on automatic voter registration in Oregon and how it dramatically increased turnout. A model for more states to follow.


• The media has often tried to paint Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, as a moderating influence on the president, and this urge has only ramped up with the recent release of Ivanka's new book. Don't fall for it.

• A presidential appointee to an EPA leadership position is stepping down because staffers won't play along with his climate change denial agenda. "They’re here for a cause," he said. A cause, like, say, protecting the environment? WHO KNEW.


• The New York Times and The Washington Post Are at War, and Everyone Is Winning: when two major news organizations are trying to out-do each other in their investigating efforts, there can be no losers (except maybe the Republican administration).


• I could share a lot of links about the Day Without Women, the strike scheduled to coincide with International Women's Day last week, but I already wrote a whole post about it, so I will limit myself to this New Yorker piece, The Women's Strike and the Messy Space of Change.


• Ever wonder why the big news always seems to break at night? The Atlantic has a good explainer; the short version is that newspaper publishing deadlines are at night, we're just now getting the stories as soon as they're filed, rather than having to wait for the next morning to read them.


• Some professors at NYU staged a gender-swapped version of the three Clinton-Trump presidential debates, and did not get the reactions they were expecting from the audience. There's a clip from the rehearsal, which is fascinating to watch. I'd be really curious to see the whole thing.

• 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 sophiebiblio says, we shouldn't shame people for having different priorities.



• Trump voters- This is OUTRAGEOUS. You MUST boycott Facebook and Twitter forever, starting immediately!! https://t.co/liR3JxN4nk

  — Molly Knight (@molly_knight) February 6, 2017

  
  If only. If only...

• A quick rundown of the attempt of Congressional Republicans to defang House ethics rules and the almost immediate reversal. The two main takeaways: public outcry sometimes works, but we have to keep watching them like hawks.


• I found this Tweetstorm on this history of reconstruction from arthur_effect (Arthur Chu) to be both informative and thought-provoking, in terms of what might happen next in this national backlash to progress on civil rights issues.


• Another on the "Third Reconstruction," from Rev. William Barber, the leader of North Carolina's Moral Monday movement. Moral Monday is an excellent model for liberal resistance, and I hope more of us can adopt it.


• Very good takedown of the idea that Hillary Clinton lost "working Americans". It largely boils down to the media's limited definitions of "working" and "Americans" (i.e. white men in very specific kinds of jobs).


• From Brookings, a blueprint for what path the media should follow to cover the incoming administration.

• Here's a pretty fascinating look at how different state boundaries would have affected the Electoral College results. Based on such things as commute patterns, phone call patterns, states of equal population, etc. A good reminder of how arbitrary the Electoral College is as a way of deciding anything.


• The always-excellent Jamelle Bouie writes about Jesse Jackson's presidential campaigns and how they might serve as a blueprint for Democrats to strengthen their economic message without sacrificing social justice issues.


• Good piece on what it really means to empathize with conservatives, and what that means for moving forward.


• This article on fake news and media credibility is a little harder on the mainstream media than I would be, but it's a thought-provoking perspective nonetheless.


• Speaking of fake news, here's an interview with the creator of a browser plug-in that detects and flags dubious sources, called (appropriately) BS Detector. I haven't tried it yet myself, but I'm curious. Could be a valuable tool if it works, although I worry that the people who most need it are the least likely to install it.