November 8, 2021

Cheese it, Comrades! They're onto us! (RW Galaxy Brain explosion)

CODE BUNGUS! The cardinal flies at noon. Fly, all is discovered. The fried egg has broken windows.

They have figured out our cunning plot:

They figured it out! And it only took them eleven months... Damn, they're sharp!

The Central Committee is in an Emergency Strategy Session in the Lombard Street Dominos' basement as I write this.

Stay tuned, Comrades....

earnestly,
Commissar Bright

October 21, 2021

A Primer on Getting Your "Respectful Questions" Answered

Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, I was for a short time the only white student on a dorm floor otherwise occupied by black students. (Being it was 'back then' we were also all female. And there were curfews and rules and shit today's students would think totally archaic... but I digress.) I had never had much contact with black people, but I tried to be both respectful and friendly, which basically involved smiling a lot, saying 'hello' in the dorm halls and when I met a dorm mate elsewhere on campus, etc. I never made any close friends but most of my dorm mates reciprocated the respectful friendliness.

Until one day when I was startled by the appearance of a dorm mate with an AMAZING hairdo. Up until then she'd had a shaped and trimmed "natural" and occasionally slicked it or did short braids in tiers for special occasions. But that day she showed up in the common room with a swear-to-god foot-high cone of amazingly-twisted braids atop her head, with sparkly ornaments inserted and it just looked incredibly COOL and before I could stop myself I said "Melly, how did you DO that?"

And then blushed bright red.

And, as was a perfectly natural response, she gave me the side eye. I waited for a slapdown, but she decided to be nice, instead, and smiled, and told me about 'extensions' and how long it took to work up an elaborate 'do like that, and the night out she and her friends had planned at a very elegant place.

And that was my first experience with getting a "respectful" (well, amazed and impulsive) question answered.

Later, I tried again with someone at a place where I worked, who gave me much of the following wisdom:

1. You may think it's "respectful" because a) you really want to know, and b) you don't think you have any bias/bigotry against the 'different' person. That doesn't make it respectful, though. Unless you have an immediate, practical reason to know about something (like, you're in charge of arranging refreshments and do they need a dietary accommodation, or you're setting up seating for a presentation, and do they need an accessibility option, etc.) it's just your curiosity and your assumption that they should be able and willing to satisfy it is pretty disrespectful, actually.

2. You might have very good intentions about wanting your curiosity satisfied, like your workplace is becoming more diverse and you want to know how to be respectful, etc. That still doesn't make it your (black/trans/Jewish/blind/etc) co-worker's responsibility to enlighten you.

So how DO you get your "Respecftul Question" answered?

Fortunately, there are members of just about any different-from-you group you can imagine who have shared their experience of living in a world where they are considered different. They have shared that experience in writing (books, articles, blogs). They have shared it on video or film. And there are lots of them.

So do your own damn' homework. Start reading, watching, educating yourself. Be prepared to find out that (holy moly!) not all people who are different-from-you in a particular way have the same experiences or the same opinions about it. There's no one answer to some questions, especially the tricky, complicated ones.

And for the most practical stuff - like that 'how do I respect work colleagues different-from-me' thing, there are likely (there SHOULD be, anyway) a set of resources your Human Resources colleague(s) can point you to, to address issues like why vacations schedules might differ, why a 'no head covering indoors' rule has been changed, etc., and how you can/should accommodate that in the workplace setting.

You might find, if you take your "respectful curiosity" seriously and start actually seeking out those different-from-you voices in print, on video, etc., and reading them and thinking about them, that not only are all members of a different-from-you group not going to have the same experiences and opinions, they may have a very wide array. In some cases, their experience/opinion might superficially resemble your own, especially if you are yourself 'different' from the predominant culture. That doesn't make y'all besties or friends or necessarily fellow-travelers, but it might help you understand in a more personal way.

And hopefully, you'll stop seeing each member of that particular different-from-you group as a generic representative of the group, and see them instead as a person with a unique history, set of experiences, cultural background, etc., that may be shaped by being of that group, but is transcended by their essential humanity, which is the same as your humanity.

At that point, it may no longer be necessary for you to have your "respectful curiosity" gratified, because there are many more important things about interacting as a human being with other human beings who have an experience of discrimination, oppression, and bigotry to deal with on a day-to-day basis.

Who knows, you might even be moved to start thinking about the unconscious biases you have absorbed and whether they're part of your operational 'normal', and how you can be aware of them, and work against them to be less biased.

We can all hope, right?

helpfully,
Bright

October 1, 2021

America's Fundamental Dichotomy

In a nutshell, America has ground to a halt as a nation, as a culture, as a meta-community, because we no longer believe we can have nice things.

Like roads.

Like jobs.

Like education.

And so on, ad infinitum.

And we cannot get past the "we can't have nice things" because there is a fundamental dichotomy between Americans who believe we can't have nice things because racism, and Americans who believe we can't have nice things because of skeery brown folk.

I realized this today when I was talking to a young friend who has had some severe health problems lately, involving several neurosurgeries and some difficult treatments and rehab. Fortunately for her she lives in a blue state that expanded Medicaid, and she was explaining to me a difficulty she's dealing with in trying to balance the work she CAN do (which is mostly 'home help' jobs of various types) with retaining access to her necessary medical care - she can't make too much money or they will kick her off.

That's a different rant, though. What went through my mind was my own history on public assistance, for various periods in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when my daughter was a toddler and her 'other Mom' was struggling with addiction.

Look, public assistance has never been regarded well in America, for a whole raft of reasons most of which make very little rational sense. But back when I was on it, there was a qualitative difference to the processes involved.

Yes, they were bureaucratic and some of them were excessive, redundant, and silly.

Yes, there were periodic verifications needed to ensure you continued to qualify for the assistance.

Yes, there were "case workers" and other public employees whose job was to "help" you do things that would reduce or eliminate your need for public assistance, and some of them were dicks.

But... here's the deal: Back then, although there was a certain stigma to pulling out your "food stamps" at the grocery store, and it wasn't exactly something you wanted to tell everyone about, there was a lot less of the "you must be a waste of oxygen just for being on public assistance" mindset that has gotten baked into every process connected with administering public assistance programs in the intervening decades.

Yanno why?

ONE thing, and I was there when it happened:

Ronald Reagan decided to turn public assistance into a racist dogwhistle to gin up the GOP base, with his toxic burble about "Welfare Queens in Cadillacs". HE was the one who decided that "on public assistance", "brown-skinned" and "lazy slackers cheating the system" should become inextricably linked in the (white) mind.

Nevermind the documented fact that the solid majority of all people receiving all kinds of public assistance was then, and has been ever since, WHITE.

The conflation of "public assistance/brown-skinned/lazy cheater" has become not just a toxic mindworm in the white psyche, but a justification for turning all kinds of public assistance processes into humiliating, punitive, pecksniffery focused entirely on delivering the minimum possible benefit for the shortest possible time, regardless of how counter-productive that may be.

And that white majority of public assistance recipients? Do they rise up in righteous wrath and say "WTF, America, we are your neighbors and human beings with lives and potential who need help and will use it well?"

Nah.

They say "It wouldn't be such a pain in the ass if it weren't for all those lazy brown-skinned people trying to cheat the system." (And the number of them saying this while trying to cheat the system themselves is painfully ironic, too.)

These are the Americans who believe "we can't have nice things because of brown-skinned people."

And they will never, never, NEVER compromise with the rest of us who know damn' well that the reason we can't have nice things is because racism.

And we won't compromise with them, because. well... duh.

So we just have to try and keep them from perpetuating their toxic delusions into younger generations, and die off, I guess.

At some point, there will be a sufficient majority of us who understand that we can't have nice things because racism, to start actually doing something to change all the baked-in racism in every economic, political, social, and cultural process in America.

I hope my grandson's kids are around to see that.

wistfully,
Bright

September 5, 2021

So this is going to sound harsh...

...and I really don't mean it harshly. BUT...

If you want to NOT GET SHOT AND KILLED and/or not have your family members living with you shot and killed, or your kids in school shot and killed...

MOVE TO A STATE WITH MORE RESTRICTIVE GUN LAWS.

If you are a woman and want to maintain control of choices that affect your bodily health and well-being...

MOVE TO A STATE THAT HAS SOME PROTECTION FOR WOMENS RIGHTS.

Yes, I know it's not easy to just pick up and move yourself, a family, etc.

But there is a labor shortage almost everywhere. You may have a better chance of finding a job, moving now, for one thing. Yes, housing is more expensive in a lot of places, but what really matters?

Think back to the people who left Germany in the 1930s. They gave up everything... and saved their lives, and in many cases, they managed to rebuild their prosperity and ensure a better future for their children, by "leaving home" when it was becoming clear that "home" no longer cared about their well-being, their rights, or their lives.

I'm not sure there are any other good choices right now.

pessimistically,
Bright

September 3, 2021

Should we interrupt them?

Nothing unifies a group composed of people with many backgrounds and varying experiences and points of view as effectively as a big, fat, menacing wall to push against.

Whatever minor differences they may have are subsumed in the consensus that the wall MUST come down.

You will see this in action in Afghanistan as without the wall of U.S. occupation to push against, the Taliban will begin splintering and forming factions and fighting among themselves, trying to grab the biggest share of any boodle available, push their specific agenda the hardest, work out vengeance on their particular enemies the fastest, etc. Take it to the bank. It may take weeks or months, but within a year or two we will see information about this Taliban faction versus that Taliban faction and the suffering that chaos continues to inflict on the Afghan people.

For decades, here in the United States, the wealthy and powerful have used the GOP and its cadre of useful idiots to push back against a looming wall of inevitable progress and change that will dilute their hold on power and limit their capacity to loot the economy. By painting the wall with layers of white supremacist, nativist, homophobic, misogynist and other fears, they've unified their useful idiots and kept them all pushing in the necessary direction to distract and dismay and delay change.

Now, at last, they have overreached themselves. Now they are becoming the wall.

The GOP, especially the Austin Taliban, is working diligently to ensure that the House will remain in Democratic hands after the 2022 election, shrewdly assisted by Speaker Pelosi who doesn't miss an opportunity to focus the outrage and demonstrate a tangible response.

They're doing their best to ensure an outright majority for Democrats in the Senate, which is looking likelier by the day.

And now the Supreme Court is publicly destroying the credibility of its own institutional structure.

If they keep going at this rate, when the dust clears in mid-November 2022, we could have:

a) A House majority
b) A Senate majority; and
c) Increasing support for Supreme Court reform.

So, should we interrupt them?

Might be a better use of our resources to spotlight that wall they're building, and make an electoral strategy of it.

speculatively,
Bright

August 29, 2021

What I learned about freedom, individual liberty, and personal choice at a VERY YOUNG AGE.

And I wonder... are we not teaching this anymore?

I learned the difference between "freedom is doing whatever I want and not having any criticism or consequences for what I do", and "freedom is me being able to do whatever I am willing to take responsibility for."

I learned that individual liberty wasn't possible without a whole community of people looking after one another and being willing to keep each other safe, even if it meant sacrificing personal preferences and pleasures for the well-being of all of us.

I learned that personal choices made with all the attention on "I want" and no attention to "what this might do to other people" weren't responsible and adult, they were narcissistic and childish. And often outright harmful.

Hell, I learned this stuff in THIRD GRADE. From the damn' NUNS, of all people. (Guess I listened after all, Sister St. Nicholas.... who knew?)

I learned it from my Mom who made sure I understood that if I was given the freedom to have a pet, *I* was the one responsible for cleaning up the poop, making sure it was fed on time, etc.

I learned it from my stepfather who enforced the rule about "you have access to the car keys IF you return the car with a full tank."

And I learned that the Constitution has not a single clause, paragraph, article, or amendment, guaranteeing my unrestricted right to be a selfish asshole.

So if I want to use the rights that ARE enshrined in the Constitution, to BE a selfish asshole, I can expect to face, at best, some serious (and likely justified) criticism, and at worst, prosecution and even prison for the harm my selfish assholery inflicts on others.

I won't say I'm never a selfish asshole. I'm a human being; it goes with the DNA to some extent. But I'm also a mostly-adult who understands that my rights and liberties have responsibilities that go with them. And consequences.

I'm not fond of rules for rules' sake. I come from a long line of oppositional people and outright rebels. But I learned from those very people that some rules are necessary, and we need to pick our fights. If you are certain a rule is doing harm, make your carefully considered choice to break it, try to get it repealed or changed. But don't expect to escape the consequences in the process.

And DON'T say "damn the consequences" if you know those consequences will fall on others who had no choice about being exposed to that harm.

When did other people stop learning this? From their teachers, parents, employers, friends....? When did "freedom" get divorced from "responsibility?" When did "liberty" build a Fortress of Solitude where no one else need be considered? When did "personal choice" acquire a "no criticism or consequences" guarantee?

bewilderedly,
Bright

August 28, 2021

I'd like to see two new national holidays.

We can trade Columbus Day for one of them.

One is a day of mourning/remembrance/commemoration for those who were lynched, burned, otherwise assassinated because they did not suffer from a melanin deficiency.

The other is a day of mourning/rememberance/commemoration for those who died in lonely pain, were killed, or committed suicide because they were victims of homophobia.

I am not sure these wounds can heal without this, and these wounds affect all of us. Especially those who believe such deaths were justified or unworthy of commemoration.

sadly,
Bright

August 18, 2021

Understanding Joe Biden (the big picture)

Here is the first and most important thing to keep in mind about Biden and his goals, strategies, and tactics:

He's fully aware he might not be alive for the 2024 election. Or if he is alive, he might not be fit enough, in his own estimation, to serve another term.

Here is the second and almost equally important thing to keep in mind:

He has NO fucks left to give in political terms. Everything about what he initiates, supports, promotes, etc., is based not on politics, but on governance. And for someone whose only governance experience is 8 years as Vice President, he has a better grasp of how governance works than many multi-term state governors and past Presidents. He THINKS in governance terms.

That doesn't mean he ignores politics altogether - where politics has an impact on the success or failure of important governance goals, he will bring an awesome reservoir of practical experience and political nous into play.

But politics - including Democratic Party politics - will never define any of his goals, initiatives, etc. They are ALL squarely rooted in restoring the capability and competence of governance to serve the American people.

This combination of factors makes him the prepotent and preeminent threat to Putin and the GOP.

It takes away a huge arsenal of normally-powerful leverage points against him in the political process. It is not possible to threaten him with not being re-elected - he has faced the reality that he may not even be running in 2024. It is not possible to threaten him with purely political factors such as "optics" and "downticket success" and other Party wheelhouse concerns unrelated to what Democrats do when they are in power.

He has only the most minimal concern for keeping the Democratic Party in power or expanding its power in terms of electoral success, per se, because:

1. He understands the timelines and workings of the biennial electoral process, as well as the timelines and the "spin factors" of his own actions and accomplishments. He also has a healthy awareness of the limits of what planned action can accomplish, and a healthy respect for the unknown factors and what hasn't happened yet and isn't on anyone's horizon.

2. He knows a lot more about how campaigns and elections work, how the Party process is underway, what the strategies are, etc., than any media pundit, GOPpie analyst, or 95% of Democratic high-level political strategists. He has confidence in how it's working so far, and he's leaving it to those who have done a pretty damn' good job already.

3. He knows that ultimately, if he has to be a scapegoat to ensure the completion and continuance of his governance agenda through future Democratic political victories, he can and will do that, with gusto and style.

He has had an up-close-and-personal view of the attempted destruction of America's government, and the ongoing subversion of our Constitution. He was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1973, so he also had a front-row seat to American government at its most functional: Assuring the highest possible standard of living for the greatest number of American citizens, recouping costly military errors at great sacrifice and rebuilding a functional military, rooting out corruption and criminality at the highest possible levels including the White House itself, and holding the foreign intelligence community accountable for its worst excesses and enacting checks against repeated domestic interventions.

Those were all truly spectacular accomplishments of American government. Add in the establishment of the EPA and several major initiatives to improve working conditions for Americans, etc., in spite of the sabotage by Big Finance and Fossil Fuels in the form of economic manipulation that produced runaway inflation. Had Carter been re-elected in 1980, Biden would have had a front-row seat to ongoing efforts to curb American reliance on foreign oil and fossil fuels, to continue checking the attempts of Big Finance to slip all forms of control, to continue protecting the American consumer from exploitation and impoverishment, and a whole lot more.

Instead, after 1980, Biden had a front-row seat to the sabotage and outright demolition of government's capability to serve it's non-oligarch citizenry. He had that front-row seat for THIRTY YEARS of increasing kakistocracy.

Then he had an advanced laboratory workshop in "How attempts to fix the problems can be derailed and/or sabotaged" for eight years more.

Then he had four years to watch the climactic collapse of America's role as a leader in the world and the blatant smash-and-grab raid on what remained of government.

Add this into the calculations:

He's already experienced the worst things, personally and politically, that can happen to anyone. Multiple times. And survived them. And recovered to become even stronger and more focused on public service.

He has a three-year clock running, to accomplish the maximum possible rescue, rehabilitation, and improvement of American government. Not in any big, splashy, public-relations way, but AT THE ROOTS. In the agencies, in the rule books, in the standards, in literally THOUSANDS of places that regularly fly under the radar of political and public perception - but he knows them all.

So, yeah, public excoration over the inevitable chaos ensuing from cleaning up after others' mistakes?

He has no more fucks to give about that. He'll do it again, as needed.

Buckle up, Vlad.

Buckle up, Mitch.

analytically,
Bright

August 15, 2021

Too boring to report? U.S. Journalism in free fall...

Let's start with the simple "what happened":

Senior (REALLY SENIOR - as in, 'endowed with power to discuss and approve policy-level actions based on the Administration's overall foreign policy agenda, including the Vice President', not just 'part of the traveling State Dept. and Security Agencies medicine show making an appearance for photo ops') American officials met with REALLY SENIOR (as in, 'including the head of state') Mexican officials to discuss bilateral cooperation on a number of topics.

When did it happen? This past Tuesday and Wednesday.

What were some of the results? Quoting from the White House readout:

Mexican coverage of the meetings was cautiously positive and noted that President Biden will be invited to visit Mexico in September.

AP, Reuters, and WaPo each published a brief recap of the White House readout with no analysis or commentary and very little expansion on the WH release. Props to Reuters for adding deets from the official phone call (Tuesday) transcript on the numbers of vaccine doses being supplied to Mexico by the U.S. government.

And that's it.

Several local papers published the AP and Reuters versions, but I couldn't find any of them went to the trouble of identifying WHICH aspects of economic, security or health collaboration are important and why, or any details of how these meetings might have advanced the Administration's goals in those areas. None of them provided any detail on the "Root Causes Strategy" referred to.

No backgrounders on the participants, no solicitation of direct quotes or additional questions answered by State Dept or security agency spokespeeps, as far as I can tell there were no questions on the topic at either the 8/11 or 8/12 press briefings, although the readout was available on the 11th.

No analysis of the immensely important strategic relationship between America and Mexico, or the recent history of how attempts to solve problems affecting both have succeeded or failed and why that might be. No color pieces exploring specifics of how U.S./Mexico diplomacy has had real-world, day-to-day impact in Americans' lives. (And it has - big time. And will continue to do so.)

No commentary on how the current approaches compare to other potential strategies, or what they might signal in terms of other aspects of the Administration's agenda for the relationship. Nothing about what it might mean in financial and/or security commitments, what key elements of cooperation might prove to be most challenging and why, etc.

Nothing at all, really.

And yet, in terms of this Administration doing important foreign policy things that are going to have a real effect on Americans' future, it is WAY, WAY more important than the details of our final days as a military force in Afghanistan.

But... it's not clickbait. It's not full of potential short-term controversy over ephemeral details. It doesn't allow semi-informed professional bloviators to opine endlessly on what are essentially pointless differences in framing, ideology, etc.

I am increasingly concerned that we are losing any grip at all on competent journalism in America, to a badly-structured and shrinking web of oligarchic "news" corporate profiteers run by beancounters obsessed with clicks, ad revenue, and next quarter's financial statements.

There is a reason that a free press was so highly regarded by the designers of our system of government, and why it has been called "the fourth pillar of democracy."

And it is not dying, not at all. Instead, it is morphing into a toxic, venal, bloated machine lurching through the public perception on a smash-and-grab raid, using fear and sensation and cheap effects to extract maximum cash for minimum quality of information.

disgustedly,
Bright

August 11, 2021

I hate myself for thinking this...

...but everyday I read something(s) that brings the thought back:

"Maybe if enough stupid people die, we won't have to go through this for another generation or two. Assuming we survive."

I feel like a bad person for thinking this. But it just keeps muscling into my consciousness.

exhaustedly,
Bright