This is not Normal

 

How do you confront a man who has done a lot of damage in a very short period of time, and promises to get up in front of the American people and lie about everything? Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D., NM) chose to hold a simple sign: "This is not normal."  (It was snatched from her by Republican Rep. Lance Gooden.)

What the folks who attended or tuned into this speech beheld was a long rally speech--not really like a State of the Union speech at all. Trump called out the head of DOGE, Elon Musk (who isn't supposed to BE the head of DOGE, allegedly, for some sort of legal reason). He dwelled on the ideas of immigrant crime and trans people in sports for some reason. (Divisiveness. Feeding the bigotry beast.)

There will obviously need to be heroic fact-checking. This is a speech where Trump blamed Biden for the economy that he has actually contracted, threatening higher prices and a recession. Economists were not predicting a recession with Biden's policies--only with what Trump has been doing so far. 

But we aren't new to this game. Trump lies. Trump blames other people. Trump comes up with proposals that might just be a puppet show in a madhouse. We are in a trade war with our North American neighbors. Trump has openly sided with Russia in the Russo-Ukrainian war. 

This is, in fact, not normal. A ketamine-fueled megalomaniac with poor sleep habits is Peter-Panning his crazy ass through our government with his Lost Boys, looking to move fast and break stuff--not really understanding what he's breaking, just hoping to get the contracts to fix whatever it is. Daddy Ourbucks rose for a little applause during the speech. 

One could almost wonder why he didn't give speech himself. Shy? 

Pods Won't Save America, Probably

 

I'm really sympathetic to the idea that there might have been some quality of "screwed" baked into the Harris campaign when she took over in July, and I was optimistic that the actual policy record of the Biden Administration vs. the actual history of.... uh whatever TrumpWorld is, would dawn on people as being a no-brainer. 

The reason I believed that is because I'm a hardcore Democratic Party schmuck. I've had a party preference since I was 18. The party of Rush Limbaugh and Phyllis Schlafly vs. the party of ::waves hands in the direction of not entire shithead bigots::? 

You've got to be kidding me. 

But here's what I noticed--I truly think that everyone who was going to cross over from the GOP to vote on principle for Harris because Trump was a horrowshow--appeared in a digital ad online some time during the campaign and there wasn't a a goddamn other one. It was great to be appreciative to former Rep. Liz Cheney--but the reason her party did her the way they did is because they could. 

If someone was comfy in the party of Limbaugh and Schlafly, it would take a lot to embrace the actual mess that is the actual Democratic Party., our political figures (Not AOC! Not San Fransisco liberal Nancy Pelosi!), and find themselves on the same side as our base. (You know: welfare queens, flaming homos, childless cat ladies, the Black Panthers and dope-smoking commies--don't look at me like that--you know I love you. But some conservatives were raised to HATE YOUR ASS AND MINE.).

Mad Hatters, Cinnabar and B-Movies

 

Ten Bears' recent post just released a flood of information-associations for me, and in typical aneurotypical fashion, I'm treating you all to an infodump. I share because I love. 

There's good reason to think mercury could be a cause of endemic psychological dysfunction--methyl mercury was the sad story behind the character of the "Mad Hatter" in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Mercury poisoning can cause depression, anxiety, insomnia, chronic pain and personality changes, and there's good reason to believe that people turn to substance abuse to self-medicate. It would not surprise me that low level organic mercury poisoning could result in a pattern of alcoholism and other substance use. After all, we know very well that there is a link between lead exposure and criminal activity and substance abuse. And we know that as exposure to lead has gone down, so has crime. 

I think I first became aware that mercury was a problem because of cinnabar--I collect jewelry and the idea that certain jewelry could be mildly toxic fascinated me. It also reminded me of the deadliness of lead used in ancient cosmetics--and it bothered me that mercury poisoning is associated with fish because I eat rather a lot of it--tinned fish is a protein go-to when you work long hours and don't have a lot of time for cooking. And I adore sushi. 

Cops Killed Jesus

 

In addition to Easter Sunday it is also the 125th Anniversary of Paul Robeson's birth. So in honor of the man who once said, “Artists are the gatekeepers of truth," here's a message from an Asheville, NC graffiti artist. pic.twitter.com/A8YMxYYbyX

— Daryle Lamont Jenkins (@DLamontJenkins) April 9, 2023

I've been saying for some time that the things no Christian should be about are blasphemy laws and the death penalty. The trumped-up charge against Jesus of Nazareth was that he played at being king of the Jews, which was an office that could only be bestowed by Rome. He claimed a moral right to the children of Israel that he politically could not claim. But he wasn't saying he was the King of the Jews, only his presence as a preacher against the princes of this world existed as a problem for them. 

His sentence was death, and before his death was carried out, he suffered police brutality in the form of a crown of thorns. In custody, he was mocked and stripped naked. His judge, Pilate, didn't seem to think he was guilty, but "washed his hands and sealed his fate". Because someone had to be made an example of. 

Call me, the atheist, a Holy Saturday Christian, because I see the Christ in the downtrodden and persecuted, in the wronged and derailed, in the fucked up and failed people around me. I don't know that the fallen rise, but I want to believe we can all get lifted by understanding one another and helping ourselves up from failure bit by bit. I have no proof for my faith, I just think it would be great. 

Where Does It Go From Here?

 

Ingraham: It starts with Marijuana but where does it go from there pic.twitter.com/uSMfpNvANM

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 7, 2022

I really love when conservatives try to wrap their heads around the concept of limited government like WTF? People will just be responsible...for THEMSELVES? Apparently. What stops the government from legalizing shooting heroin into your eyeballs? Putting rainbow fentanyl in your socks and calling it the Devil's pedicure? If we don't treat potheads like criminals, how will the drunks know they are better substance users? Where the hell does it go from here? Anarchy? Bloodsports? The PURGE! AAAARGHHHH!

Or, follow the math on this, people doing a drug not more harmful than liquor, which is already legal, get to have it and use it responsibly, and are only fucked up with the system when they violate the law high on their little friend. It seems equitable to me. 

But our conservative friends have a problem with the concept of equity. We just saw this with a court case regarding folks who wanted to cancel President Biden's college debt forgiveness because it would really benefit Black people. This is shades of a case that our newest Justice, Ketanji Brown-Jackson, entirely revealed the lie at, regarding whether reparative justice is still justice. (It is, for all the necessary reason to having an equitable society is, and equity is not a dirty word. We all have that nasty euphemism: skin in the game.) 

And Forgive Us Our Debts

 

In another BFD kind of day, President Biden announced the forgiveness of student loan debt up to $10K for borrowers with incomes up to $125,000 ($250,00 if filing jointly) and up to $20K for Pell Grant recipients. This is going to help so many people--

The White House said that 43 million student loan borrowers will benefit and that as many as 20 million borrowers will have their full remaining student loan balances wiped out.

That will be very significant for those households. Due to debt obligations, people have put off on home-ownership, starting their families, and more. Adjustments to the payments owed will also give people whose debt has not thoroughly been retired welcome breathing space. It may not be what they hoped for, but it is a change in the right direction.

Of course, people have to complain. I'm not going to focus on the more left-based criticism that the debt forgiveness should have gone further because I'm in agreement with it--I am a Gen X kid whose working class to middle class family was able to manage my education, and I acknowledge my privilege. My degree was invaluable to me, though, and I encourage people to get a good education because the broader your horizons, the better your damn time here on this earth. I got a BA in English Lit., which is one of the most humanities of the humanities degrees. It means I am proficient in my mother tongue and can discuss works people have been reading for pleasure for a long time. 

What if the Worst Case Was Real?

 

On Monday evening, Fox News host Jesse Watters suggested on his show that the case of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who was forced to travel to Indiana to get an abortion after she was raped was fabricated.

On Wednesday, that girl’s alleged rapist was arrested. https://t.co/ptdToY5L4Z

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) July 13, 2022

Jesse Watters is proof that FOX News basically vets their on-screen talent for major personality disorders and if they haven't any, dismisses them. He is following in the footsteps of mentor Bill O'Reilly, whose litany of "George Tiller, baby killer" led to the murder of a church-going man who assisted pregnant people in terminating pregnancies that for many reasons they could not complete. And while fact-checkers don't hold O'Reilly responsible, on my word, I will. He gave a name. He tried to rile up people against him on purpose. He put a target on a person, and even if the dots can't be directly connected, it's not hard to see what he was doing.

Watters and the AG of Indiana are now wanting to go after the doctor. Let me just say this: do you all not get that being pregnant is time sensitive, while a rape conviction takes all the time in the damn world?  That a 10 year old presenting with pregnancy is obviously raped whether we have a suspect or not, and a 10-year old is not the best advocate for herself? That a ten year old child, of all people, cannot wait until we have an accused and convicted rapist, and that is why no pregnant person should have to submit themselves to the entirety of the criminal justice system before they can get their immediate physical condition administered to? 

Justice and the Bittersweet Exhalation

 

Three white men, Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael and William Bryan, were convicted by a Georgia jury for murdering Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who ran through their neighborhood. All three face a federal trial next year on hate-crime charges https://t.co/Sz19nnLTFM pic.twitter.com/umFrpBm2Cm

— Reuters (@Reuters) November 25, 2021

It shouldn't be so hard to expect that people who murdered a young man on video (and were so certain of the situation that one of them leaked the video of the slaying with the idea that it would resolve public opinion) would be convicted of the deed, but we don't live in the most logical of times (and never have!), and not even video of some slayings has been enough to condemn certain malefactors for one of the most heinous of crimes--because it is the most irrevocable--the taking of a life.

And yet, the system almost failed. It almost failed in many places and with several different people.  It took work to even bring charges. It shouldn't have been so in doubt that the Arbery family would get justice for their son. 

What I know is, while the judge and the prosecution in this case were excellent (and I look to the Rittenhouse case as I say that), the defense seemed disturbingly wed to the notion that the victim was the one on trial and that calling attention to the racial issue would somehow be beneficial to them. (Although it should have been clear that it was a factor--one that will be discussed in the federal case.) 

It should have been obvious that Ahmaud Arbery should not have had his life taken from him, but one of the comments the defense made me suck in such a gasp--that shamelessness about the dead man's toenails. The disrespect and denigration of a person in death as if acknowledging that, not anything Arbery did, but his appearance alone, could have warranted his death. 

That gasp--that inhalation at the realization that on some level, this expectation of bigotry was considered not an unfortunate bug of society but a feature to be relied on, was something I hadn't fully exhaled until the verdict was read out. How many others were holding their breath? How many others have held their breaths like this for an exhalation of justice that never came? How many times did it feel unsafe to breathe in freedom, or breathe out that fear and misgiving that a Black life mattered? 

The system isn't perfect but it's correctable. I am not big on faith, but I will believe in that. We just have to keep correcting as we go along. 

Labor Day: Is It A Crime?

 

The $7.25 minimum wage can’t pay all the bills in any state https://t.co/wTk5JHdYNQ

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) September 7, 2021

We talk sometimes about "working for a living", so I just want to interject that working doesn't always provide a living. It provides the barebones of existing, maybe feeding oneself and ones' kids, inadequately, going into soul-disrupting debt at times, relying on various kinds of assistance at others.

Farewell, Justice

Ruth Bader Ginsburg later in life acquired the nickname "Notorious RBG" (which had to be explained to her as being a take-off on the deceased rapper, Christopher Wallace, AKA Biggie Smalls or Notorious B.I.G.) because she was gangster in her dissents. In her dissent to Shelby vs. Holder, she lit up the premise of the decision, rephrasing MLK Jr.'s comment that the arc of the universe was long but inclined towards justice with the addendum that there must be a steadfast commitment to do the bending. In other words, it inclined towards justice because good people worked to do that. And had to keep doing that work. (And she was right, and that decision was wrong.)

Ruth Bader Ginsburg did that work. When she was one of the very few female law students at Harvard in the 1950's, the Dean asked her what she was doing there, taking a man's place. That same man, Erwin Griswold, later described her work on gender equality by comparing her to Thurgood Marshall. She was a champion of equal protection under the law.

Her business was justice: even when dealing, as she did for decades, with the disease of cancer that took her mother from her when she was still young, and her husband after many years. She kept her spirit and her drive to do the right thing up to the end.

I don't care to blog right now about her replacement, because there are some people who in reality are not replaceable. She supported the rights of people whose marginalization made their rights subject to being disappeared. Her belief in equality under the law for everyone made her a champion for the disabled and for minorities, for women and LGBT people. She stood in the gap for folks to keep the idea of equality alive. She wanted the feet of government off the necks of people living their lives.  Her career and her life need to speak for themselves, without the spotlight of electoral politics for the moment coloring her magnificent career.

She was a person so deserving of the title "Justice". May her memory be a blessing.

Labor Day, Essentially

So, as a person who was determined to be essential back in March and worked with only three unpaid days off in more or less same as normal straits and the spouse of a person who was also made essential as a grocery worker who worked for a short while far more than his usual allotment, and the relative of someone who as a nurse contracted COVID on the job and thankfully, all were young and healthy! Let's just say this Labor Day, my thoughts are with all workers who had to keep up with the COVID times, whether you got shafted entirely, had your hours reduced, or found yourself working in dangerous conditions and had to function above and beyond.

There's a kind of bias to the idea of "essential worker"--someone's paying us for our labor, so it must be worth something, whatever it is. And we are worth more than what we do for a living, even if we need work to keep our very lives together, because our jobs constitute something less than the entirety of what we are capable of.  And for those who lost jobs due to the public situation of COVID-19 spread--whose industries were harmed because of the necessary public-facing nature of those industries, nothing about the value of the work you do has changed, only the demand.

Things economically have gone awry in the US in part because of a failure to appreciate that the citizen worker is both the source and consumer of value. I'm not saying I know exactly what to do about that, but I resent when elected leaders talk about jobs in glee about gaining back half of what was precipitously lost in a short while over bad public management of a pandemic there should have been planning for, and with no acknowledgement of the lives that have been lost due to poor planning and privileging the economy over those lives.

They also need to be judged based on the products of their labors. Some may need to be made redundant.

No Holiday in Cambodia

"Ocasio-Cortez already receives a high number of death threats; by allowing this PAC to air an ad that links her to genocidal violence in Cambodia, ABC grants undeserved legitimacy to ideas that make her a target."https://t.co/fUWquQjDKc

— Democratic Coalition (@TheDemCoalition) September 13, 2019

This is probably deeply ill-advised of me to notice, but I'm a Gen-X blogger who realized a long time ago that I'm not really presidential material (even if the fitness of the current resident makes even me and my tattoos feel a little like, what the hell? Y not?) so let me just say--wow, but by the visibly melting frame of the yet-living Hank Kissinger, are we really going to go through whether the left-liberalism calling itself democratic socialism is kinda Khmer Rougey and not take notice of the entire right-wing foreign policy failure at influencing positive change with respects to....

Why, no. No we are not doing that. Or at least, you go ahead and do that history dissertation if you've a mind, but:  This is actually just my usual warning that conservative rhetoric is inflammatory and that inflammatory rhetoric is really the thing we should worry about regarding genocide, not mere issues of domestic economy. Because conservatives have been doing this thing with inflammatory and violent rhetoric. And sometimes it results in bad things.

The Enemy is Inside the Border

The Coast Guard lieutenant the FBI arrested yesterday & accused of being a domestic terrorist wrote a letter to a prominent white supremacist, Harold Covington, about the idea of a “white homeland” — and the idea to use “focused violence” to create it. https://t.co/sFhiBmLqSd

— Hatewatch (@Hatewatch) February 21, 2019

Apropos of the preceding post, there nonetheless really are extraordinary haters in the world, and Christopher Hasson is an exceptional example. For someone to be part of the "Anders Breivik had a point" crew, one would have to imagine an extraordinary level of hate. This is "Thanos was on to something, but that's just a start" kind of evil. This--"dreaming of a way to kill every last person on earth" sounds so very nihilistic, but when it comes to his list of "first up against the wall" folks, he's talking about Don Lemon and Beto O'Rourke. Basically, he's talking about people some absurd pompous right wing dictator might call "enemies of the people".

But this guy isn't some lone weirdo. He was talking about a "civil war" if Trump was impeached, and here we go: Fox News commenter on Laura Ingraham's show Joe DiGenova said there should be a civil war if Trump's impeached.

Huh. Where do the crazies get their crazy ideas?

Trump wants us to believe that we have a national crisis waiting outside the US border. The crisis looks like it's right here, and he and his biggest fans are part of it.

The Strange Case of Mr. Smollett

Regardless of whether you believe actor Jussie Smollett paid two men to stage a hate crime attack on him, the question on many people's minds is why he -- or anyone -- would lie about such a thing https://t.co/ujAR99aGgL pic.twitter.com/PBoP0PyIBn

— CNN (@CNN) February 22, 2019

There's something about the Jussie Smollett situation that pretty much scrapes every nerve, and even now, I find myself trying to understand why a person who is in a good position as an artist, is talented and well-liked, and who has a solid reputation for trying to do good, would engage in such a pathetic, time and emotion-wasting lie. There is a lot of real hate out there, for people of color and LGBTQ folks. There has been no shortage of examples of people who have experienced hate and violence. For someone to perpetrate a false alarm with the intention of just garnering sympathy to make himself more marketable or valuable in a salary dispute is so extraordinarily selfish it literally beggars my capacity to consider that such a nakedly selfish motive could be all there is to the story.

If anyone, anyone at all, considers the rights of victims of hate crimes or other deeply personal violence, it has to be understood that false accusations harm real victims. The biggest barrier to justice is the fear of reporting due to being disbelieved, or being accused of trying to ruin someone else's life or reputation. It places a terrible stigma on a person already injured by encouraging other people to consider "what if this terrible thing never happened?" Maybe the world isn't so terrible that people can randomly be assaulted for any reason. Maybe the victim is the problem. We can see this easily with circumstances of domestic violence or rape. Victims sometimes opt not to come forward because their reputations will be damaged, or they will face other societal or economic penalties for trying to receive justice. With hate crimes, this can also have other levels of blowback, if one suspects that law enforcement are not sympathetic to their race or orientation or gender expression. There is a risk of further oppression.

For Jussie Smollett to wave away the entirety of what the revelation of his imposture would mean to real victims, his counting on his identity to earn his sympathy, and the supposition that he would never be found out, shows an enormous ignorance or tunnel-vision about social and criminal justice. The idea that he staged this for solely monetary reasons, when the reality of his salary is already just nonsensically rich to regular folks, is as unsympathetic to consider--in much the way the plight of an actual victim of hate would seem sympathetic.

And yet--the perpetrated story of Jussie Smollett is his story, and it was told to family, friends, co-workers, fans, and the world. The love and sympathy and outpouring of affection he received, and the harshness with which people would condemn violence against people due to racism or homophobia are still good motives, even if what he did to elicit them was a lie. It is still right to stand by marginalized people because of real harms they experience, and it is still right to listen to the stories of victims because most really are true. It is still right to condemn hate and seek justice, and although Smollett's story called out MAGA hat wearing fake perps, I want one thing to be pretty clear:

The fake details were not a smear against all Trump-supporters. This was Smollett's version of verisimilitude. He was working with the reputation MAGA hat wearing people (like Cesar Sayoc) already had, in rather the same way Susan Smith blamed the death of her boys on a carjacking by black men.  He wasn't trying to make a political statement--his shit was very personal.

And what remains to be considered is whether some other issue (outside leverage or mental instability) encouraged what Smollett seems to have done. There may be a reason besides the extremely selfish for what he has done. But although the details were political, I don't see this as solely a political case. The people he hurt most were POC and LGBTQ people whose stories are now going to be met with "but Jussie". It was certainly not "MAGA country" people.

Stacey Abrams Made My Evening

Stacey Abrams in Democratic response to #SOTU: "Even as I am very disappointed by the president's approach to our problems, I still don't want him to fail. But we need him to tell the truth." https://t.co/eOKGnWx6l2 pic.twitter.com/aS5UwJIvjj

— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 6, 2019

Watching the SOTU is kind of a perfunctory thing for me because, well, I do this thing on the internet where I talk about politics stuff. But I don't think I've ever had the experience of feeling like a SOTU response actually merited more of my time--usually, these are deeply awkward at best! Sometimes they seem like just a litany of negativity aimed at the current POTUS and don't so much respond to what the POTUS said, as state "I'm agin' him!"  They can go long, the speaker has the unenviable spotlight of following the actual President, and the venue, lighting, etc. all seem so less-imbued with dignity and all that. And they are so often remembered for their awkwardness! Rubio's water-grab and Jindal's walk and Kennedy's Chapstick.  Ernst's bread bags--although in retrospect that anecdote was not as corny as it could have been.

But I think what Abrams did exceptionally well was keep her message short, relatable, on point and pleasant.  (Here's a transcript and fact check via Politico--my reference to refresh my memory, but not my entire source for what I think about her speech.)

I was worried with her upfront personal anecdote about her parents that she was about to launch into a basic stump speech that made the response more about her than about US--the United States, and how and what we are doing. But what she was laying out was a vision of shared responsibility to be good to one another because we can afford to be generous and kind when we know someone is there for you. When you know someone has your back also, you will stick up for the other. When you know the government will protect your rights and safeguard you when you need it--you can excel.

She was critical of the shutdown, because it did not reflect our values, but she did not let her criticism overwhelm the bigger message of responsible government and civic participation. Her speech was a call for elected representatives of the people to be honest and do what was right, not just what was ideologically correct. She was able to use her personal narratives to illustrate what ordinary Americans are facing all of the time, regarding the cost of health care, for example. Or even ballot access for legitimate voters.

She spoke up also for the rights and value of immigrants and for the necessity of access to health care options for everyone. She addressed climate change.  Her expression of the value of civil rights was brief but said everything.

I don't really have anything to say about Trump's speech, because it had nothing to say to me. She spoke to me. She demonstrated she understood the issues, she was positive and hopeful and smiled. And I will state for the record, she is a million times more graceful about being robbed than I am about her being robbed, and I don't even live in her state.

Here's what gives me hope--the same thing that Trump acknowledged to get the biggest applause of his own speech--the women politicians who are making history and bending this arc of justice.

I don't want every politician I love to run for President, but I totally think she belongs in the US Senate because this is a stateswoman and natural leader. I just want every good thing to come her way because her speech lifted me.

Blasphemies,Heresies and Profanities

Newly-sworn congressional freshmen Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have already  caused a little concern amongst those of the concerned-person class with some gasp! genuine thoughts about the tasks the new Congress should see to. I'm not especially concerned, myself--I appreciate seeing them dive into their new positions with enthusiasm.

The most "tsk-ed" about was Rep. Tlaib's comment about what her entrée into the House of Representatives meant to her (and her constituents, and her young son):

Among them has been the Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who had some strong words for the president. Speaking at an event shortly after being sworn in, Tlaib, the first Palestinian American elected to Congress, recalled a conversation she had after she won.

She said: “And when your son looks at you and says, ‘Mama, look, you won. Bullies don’t win,’ and I said, ‘Baby, they don’t’ – because we’re gonna go in there and we’re going to impeach the motherfucker.”

Tlaib had been clear about her intentions in impeaching Trump throughout her campaign. She tweeted in March: “Why am I running? Because this is about electing the jury to impeach (POTUS) and I will make a heck of juror.”

One might say her language was indecorous. But that's the only complaint I guess I understand. I don't think her choice of the word "motherfucker" is anywhere near so troubling as the President's continued condition of being one. Her expression of desire to impeach the president had been a subject both of her campaign and one she has explained quite well in a published opinion piece. The position of impeaching this particular president isn't a purely political one--if the issue is looking for reasons to impeach him, I would say we are actually spoiled for choice. It would probably be more apt to say that the determination with which Trump has been defended despite his various transgressions by members of the GOP is a political decision on their part which merely looks cynical now, and could prove disastrous for them later. The saying of this truthful thing though, was treated by some persons on both sides of the aisle as a bit of a blasphemy.

I'm pretty much unbothered by either her scatology or ideology here. I am more worried by the erosion of norms that Trump's behaviors have manifestly resulted in, than the clear, unpretentious language, used by the incoming representative.

In another mini-furor, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez caused some consternation by….dancing? Ha! Ok, well, that, too, but she also made a suggestion that the millionaires and billionaires could stand to pay a higher marginal tax rate of about 60-70% to actually fund our government properly.  This would be in line with previous historical tax rates, and can actually be backed up with solid economic figurin'.

Stan Lee Lived 95 Great Years--Excelsior!

Just so you know, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and Jack Kirby, basically showed Kid Me how to be a human with stories about people whose humanity was challenged because of just a little difference in their DNA. I never was religious in the regular sense, but in a way, superheroes were my church, because through stories about facing adversity and deciding because of it to do the right thing, I understood what character was. Knowing things like "With great power comes great responsibility" was not for me a commonplace thing to know but never use, but a standard to be applied to lawmakers and other people in power--were they using their great power responsibly?

I learned from my comic books that you could take your situation, whatever it was, and just try to do something good with it. I am not physically strong or superpowered, but I have words, just like my real-life heroes who wrote great comics, and I try to use words to do some good, because this is what I've got.

I loved the X-Men, because the idea that puberty makes you different and suddenly you are ripe with all kinds of potential and strangeness and are in conflict with the world as it is and can do something about it all makes the only kind of sense I ever understood. I used to wonder with a kid's mind if powers like these X-Men mutants existed (I longed to be different in a more identifiable and powerful way than being kind of queer and smart), but realized later on that words and stories and beliefs did have power, and could move worlds.

This framing of my reality is grounded in diversity and social justice because of a world Stan Lee helped build. I used to love seeing his cameos in Avenger-related films because he was having such a great time being a part of this compelling and noble universe he made.

I loved the world he helped make and always will, and this is a kind of immortality. He used his comics to promote his values, and this made his stories compelling and real.

Stan Lee, you were excelsior! to the greatest degree. And will be missed.

Here We Go Again

I am entirely amazed at the resourcefulness of one Hillary Rodham Clinton, who based on all the medical experts who were paying close attention back in 2016, wasn't even still supposed to be alive right now, what with all the Parkinson's and brain damage and what not, that she is still out here fiendishly stealing elections for other people in 2018 (like she, um, did not do in 2016 for herownself). Or so Rudy Giuliani, one-time presidential hopeful, and current Trump lawyer, wants us to imagine. 

The unvarnished story appears to be that Rick Scott, current governor and possible future senator of the great state of Florida, would very much like to see a manager because somebody is still counting these votes and he might not stay ahead. He has a little problem with this Florida law that triggers an automatic recount if the margin is...

Ah, fuck me, I have been here before. If we're older than 18, we all the hell have. It's the long national nightmare again, isn't it? Where, for some reason, Florida's election law says all the votes should be recounted, but there's a special, invisible ink "dibs" where GOPers think maybe this shouldn't always be true if electing a Republican is at stake, right?

Because there will be a popular revolt, where "popular" means a rent-a riot of GOP stalwarts from out of town will swoop in to stop the counting of the actual Floridians' votes. In other words, a kind of mob. (I thought those were supposed to be the worst, though, right? Ask Ann Coulter, or Derek Hunter, or some orange peel-wrapped rancid bacon sculpture like Donald Trump.)

Or maybe, just saying, instead of being the kind of guys that Scott and Giuliani are actually being, Florida could just, I don't know, follow the actual election rules as they were written and see what shakes out in the game as it is supposed to be played? Especially when it's a likely recount for US Senate, Governor, and players to be named later? Instead of being the kind of drama that goes all the way to SCOTUS, which was always kind of stupid. But now, it would be even more stupid, because Justice Bro Keggernaugh. 

This isn't even addressing the extra-special crispy fried fuckery that is whatever is going on in Georgia (Jesus be a legitimate and fair run off with all the machines present and working) and probably Arizona, where Democrat Kyrsten Sinema is now up because of the mail-in ballots, and now the GOP in AZ doesn't want to count all of those. 

Which is not to say not all Arizona Republicans get it:

@AZGOP I am one of those mail in ballots. I was under the impression my vote was always counted.

— Cindy McCain (@cindymccain) November 8, 2018

(I respect this lady.)

We have dealt with voter suppression, from purging of the voter rolls to voter ID laws that can't really address an in-person voter fraud problem that doesn't actually exist, to try and rustle up the people to just know that they have a voice. I have so much respect for the way some of these challenged but still rising stars worked their asses off to try and increase the map of who we think of as "likely voters". But. This sort of thing, right here, the actual clear message the GOP as a freaking institution, puts out that they are not interested in actual "one person, one vote" where any of those people might be demographically likely Democratic voters, is an outright admission that they don't really love small "d" democracy or perceive that what they are doing is extremely divisive because it means they want, not to debate people who differ, but to erase their vote--their ballot-voice. 

How do you negotiate with a polite grin for your existence as a political power, when the other side will aim for your teeth?

Strap in. This arc of justice is not too rusty yet to get moved. 

Your Optics Aren't True From Every Angle

Because I try to understand things that seem wrong to me as if they were puzzles to which I'm missing pieces, I wanted to understand a phenomena that mystified me: folks who sympathized with Brett Kavanaugh. One of my cousins (a fundamentalist, I guess) posted to Facebook something that disturbed me about how clearly, Democrats were accepting money from somebody to destroy this great guy personally because....evil. Clearly, to my fundie cousin, liberals are just evil enough to destroy a guy because internet video of a half minute of one Democrat passing another something that they allege is an envelope of cash. Or maybe it looks like a note. And if it was an envelope of cash, why would it be flush in the middle of some C-Span televised shit?

Right.

I don't do politics on Facebook. I'm on the verge of deleting my profile for all the bullshit. But I do have this blog--and for what it is worth, I know the exact white women who might even have a #MeToo story to tell, and are not even privileged, and never will be, and still and all sympathize, not with Dr. Ford, but with the poor, put-upon, beleaguered, President of these United States and the Majority Leader in the Senate and of course, this pro-life dude, with a family and going to church and all that.

It is difficult for me to actually see what they see when they look at Brett Kavanaugh. I see a dude who came off during his response to Dr. Ford's testimony like a guy who had a bad reaction to being named second runner-up in a Bill O'Reilly look-alike contest. He was partisan, and aggressively so. He doubled down on the persona that brought his privileged ass to the very hearing he was at--the anti-left wing culture warrior who tried it with the Clintons. He called the Clintons out by name in his opening statement as if and because it was effective partisan rhetoric, but it in fact had not one thing to do with who he was before Clinton was elected. And his response suggested to me the state of mind he had when he was a jackass teenage son: it was still who he was today--only now bigger and meaner.

Christine Ford nee Blasey isn't a culture warrior--she doesn't come across as political (like I sure as hell do) and she is educated, intentionally, to understand her own mind and its trauma. It deeply affected me that she served as her own expert witness, mentioning how she knows and retains the things that imprinted on her own brain. Kavanaugh unquestionably is a culture warrior. He has been described as a Republican Forest Gump.  He has George W. Bush hanging up the brush he uses to paint the war dead to stump for his Senate votes. Blasey-Ford's family is extremely reticent to speak out. I sympathized with her because I paid attention to the record of Kavanuagh's many petty mistruths: his lie about the drinking age when he was carousing, because it was illegal for those under 21 when Brett was still 17 (a thing he should have known), the commonly-known definitions of terms used in his yearbook (devil's triangle and boofing) which are unsatisfactorily responded to, and the ridiculous "Renata Alumnius" lie, about a girl multiple schoolfriends of his and himself were alleging they basically "scored" with.

To me, a public school kid who seldom drank before HS graduation, who never would have dreamed of Ivy League regardless of whatever scholarship I could have gotten for all the reasons, and who has seriously seen more penises than I ever asked to before I graduated college, yeah I believe Christine. I believe Deborah Ramirez. I believe Julie Swetnick, because this culture has been documented.

But I guess I can also maybe understand why some women don't want this to be true and won't believe it. I know they are wrong (and I have no trouble saying it, but it means nothing in the broader sense of how it politically impacts anything) and they also have no use for those bitches who slandered Trump, also, too. They think these bitches are snitches, and snitches get stitches.  They are exactly out of all fucks for anyone who interferes with the utopia of RW Valhalla.

 Not all misbelievers are heaven-hoping Endtimers, tho'. I think some are just hacks. Or probably relatives of Brett Kavanaugh because here is a picture:

that sets aside the partisan filter for a minute.

There is a picture shared amongst the Left of gape-mouthed Caucasian sisters surrounding an angry Brett. But the picture shows his sympathizers, not detractors. They are allies to him, and their consternation is because he is upset, not because they disagree with the reasons he is upset.

It is probably not true that this debacle has mobilized all the women to vote--it isn't recognized universally as a debacle of a SCOTUS choice and not all women will feel like they need to vote for people who will curtail Trump's crappy SCOTUS and other Federal bench choices.

I wish it were so. But I am resigned it is not. Which is why I encourage all liberals to by all means vote for Dems who will try to block RW bench extremists. But keep in mind, there is another side. There are people who think nothing like you do. They like this kind of partisan signifying. And they are why you always need to vote strategically.

Mary Winston Jackson Elementary School has a Great Ring to It

The community of Salt Lake City made a pretty good choice to rename one of their elementary schools, formerly named for President Andrew Jackson, who was a white supremacist whose story meant pain for indigenous people and the descendants of bond slavery alike, to represent a hero of the space age, Mary Winston Jackson, whose contribution to science speaks of the value of education and the value of the development of all minds. 

Choosing which history we respect is a reflection of our values. This is a great choice.