The Jon Swift 2022 Roundup is All Present and Correct.

 

The blogosphere's faithful host of this year-end treat, Batocchio, has once again collected an engaging selection of blog posts from the year that was, as chosen by the blog authors themselves. It never fails to remind us of the value of the diverse voices of small blogs and the reason why we do the thing we do: because we can use our unique and sometimes specialized perspectives to cast a light on certain corners of our daily events and explain what we are seeing in a way mainstream journalism generally doesn't. 

Anyway, it's always a treat--like a sampler of candies you just have to bite into not knowing exactly what to expect but knowing they will be good. I never read through these posts without thinking about what a great community the left blogosphere is, and what a cool thing it is to get such a neat recap of its highlights. 

Go--treat yourself. It can take a few days to go through. But it is one of the most worthwhile internet traditions, and I'm happy one of my posts is a part of it. 

I Do Not Understand the Point of This

 

"A group of 30 House liberals is urging President Biden to dramatically shift his strategy on the Ukraine war and pursue direct negotiations with Russia, the first time prominent members of his own party have pushed him to change his approach to Ukraine."https://t.co/jswa9SZgXf

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) October 24, 2022

More or less in line with my feelings previously expressed, I just don't see where direct negotiations with Russia right now have any value when they aren't exactly radiating goodwill and honest dealings, and when Ukraine is the party that is currently facing an existential threat. Is it to signify to those on the left that hold the view that peace is always an option (bugger the facts on the ground) that these 30 folks are definitely going to point out that war is bad and talking is better?

But Biden's State Department is in touch with Russia. And I think a ceasefire might actually do more to help Russia get their shit together than help Ukraine (especially given that it's only likely to be honored on one side--and guess which?). And it looks like a "Democrats in disarray" moment in the regular political narrative. 

Pointing to things like the disruption the war is causing to food shipments to the global south is acting like the responsibility for that is not Russia. They are disrupting that. Stopping them, fighting them, is an attempt to get that control out of their murderous hands. They already have expressed their intentions in that regard. What they are doing now is their version of what will be. Talking them down with humanitarian ideals is dumb when they do not share them. 

So, when I see this:

“We are under no illusions regarding the difficulties involved in engaging Russia given its outrageous and illegal invasion of Ukraine,” the Democrats’ letter states. “If there is a way to end the war while preserving a free and independent Ukraine, it is America’s responsibility to pursue every diplomatic avenue to support such a solution that is acceptable to the people of Ukraine.”

The letter was signed by some of the best-known and most outspoken liberal Democrats in Congress, including Reps. Jamie Raskin (Md.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Cori Bush (Mo.), Ro Khanna (Calif.) and Ilhan Omar (Minn.).

I'm cringing.  What is it for? What does it do? Is it a political statement for anyone at all? Is it a diplomatic statement for anyone at all? Whose bright idea, and what is the wattage on their bulb? Because do not say you are under no illusions and then post a delusionary hope. Do not call out the leadership of your party over some shit that is not happening. America's responsibility is the support of democracy--and not peace. That limpness isn't awake (I won't talk about "wokeness") and aware of the threat of totalitarian power, and if you give that quarter anywhere, you are not looking at the global right-ward trends* that made Brexit, Trump and Meloni happen, and could give us Le Pen in France, etc. 

This is not a public comment forum. This is international policy. This is almost as dumb as the 47 jackasses who signed an open letter to Iran over the JCPOA. I cannot believe Democrats are stupid enough to follow that example at this time and I see them trying to cover up their dirt right now. 

Good heavens, what were they thinking in the first place? It served no purpose at all but to make us wonder what the fuck they are doing and I am saddened to see people I thought highly of in that number. 

UPDATE: I realize this part is ignoring the slaughter of Ukrainians for political reasons elsewhere and is insensitive as fuck. Also--you don't fight authoritarians or fascism everywhere by allowing it anywhere. And you do have to fight it everywhere. And that means you call it what it is whether in local elections (the easy setting) or wherever in the world (war--the harder option), and you don't talk peace before you understand whether peace is even possible. 

MTG and Entropy

 

The funny thing with the recent Tweet I want to highlight from perpetually aggrieved Rep. MTG is that she right off the bat starts with the most obviously offensive thing that liberals actually don't defend. She writes:

"If you are defending pedophile priests and those that protect them, groomer teachers & Disney LGBTQ propaganda, Drag Queen story time, saying it's not Satan convincing women to abort their unplanned child, and that children can be mutilated to change their gender, you're wrong."

While I'm in favor of freedom of religion, I've long deplored the Catholic Church's cover-up of pedophilia in the clergy and would not ever defend it, and many people would tend to agree with that--particularly former Catholics and people who define themselves as atheist, agnostic or "none of the above" religiously. If anything, the Church's protection of perhaps 2-5% of clergy in those hopes of preserving its worldly reputation and self-defense against outside criticism has displayed the rot of an organization closed to debate. 

Where she goes from there is a peculiarly tightening circle of pronouncements of less certainty--groomer teachers? Sure, I think teachers like Mary Kay Letourneau or Pamela Joan Rogers or Debra Lefave are deeply troubling, but it seems to me that this is not exactly what Greene is referring to. She appears to be considering simply being LGBTQ-affirming with being a groomer, and with being Disney "propaganda".  

The common understandings of words like "groomer" and "propaganda" have negative connotations and she is employing those negative connotations to distort the impression of the actual things many teachers (like a teacher recently censured for putting up rainbow stickers in her classroom) might do without any malicious or nefarious intent or what Disney had done (mildly support LGBT people).

To put it bluntly, she's trying to make people agree with her wildly false interpretations of the world. And no, Marge--I know a lie when I see one. Sorry. 

She also throws in Drag Queen story time which is a thing that amuses me--wearing women's clothing isn't a problem when I (cis-gender female) do it, but suddenly becomes a problem when men do it? So weird! And yet, I imagine there's considerable overlap between the people who would consider a man wearing women's clothing wrong and who would definitely ask a woman "What were you wearing?" if she were sexually assaulted, so I guess there's that. But there's nothing really disturbing about reading by a drag performer in a well-attended public setting vs what quite normally-attired, heteronormative persons have gotten up to when quite out of sight.

Maybe her real problem is people being exposed to books in the first place. There is a GOP war against schools and libraries, after all. 

The Satan part is entirely "creation by Marge" in that she recently said women were consorting with Satan in hopes of entrapping a man with their foul ensnarements and chemical conjurings...which is some wild Malleus Maleficarum throwback which I find fairly extraordinarily on-the-nose. And last of all, her comments regarding surgery or mutilation don't display that she understands anything about the subject at all. 

But of course, people who disagree with her POV, however uninformed it might be, are the ones who are wrong. This is how a person ends up spouting weird things about Jewish space lasers--a closed system choking on its own decay. It's a fascinating thing to see so concisely within one Tweet the range from epistemic closure to entropy rapidly increasing in a thick skull.

They've Got To Be Carefully Taught

 

When I was a kid, we got taught about the Golden Rule, and it was a pretty good rule as they go: Do unto Others as you would have them do unto You. You don't hit other kids or call them names or pick on them for being different or any of that, because if that happened to you, you would feel bad. You had to stop and think--is this how I would want to be treated? Would I want to be picked on for being different? Would I want to be teased if I was clumsy, or talked slow, or was fat or didn't have nice clothes? 

It was simple, and direct. It was about respecting others and the basis for good citizenship in the classroom and anywhere else. It wasn't new-fangled jargon, but time-tested and ancient religion-approved. 

Did I learn this concept found in scripture in a church--no. Your blogger never wandered into a formal religious setting before the age of ten or eleven. I learned it in public school, in kindergarten. Was I indoctrinated at the tender age of five to some startling multicultural program (I mean, my school was desegregated and I understood after this simple precept how racism was wrong because obviously--how would I want to be treated?) I still absorbed a lot of my culture's dumbfuck attitudes and I'm going to be sorting out the headtrip that whiteness is for a while, yet. I wouldn't say I was indoctrinated. 

Surely, not everyone who was in the same kindergarten class as me has come to my POV. We are individuals, not blank slates. We're not human Silly Putty pulling up cartoons from the Sunday funnies.

So, In Other Words, a Trump Rally?

Tourists say they thought the “Straight Pride Parade” in Boston was a Trump rally #WCVB pic.twitter.com/n3YdXjK9sG

— John Atwater (@AtwaterWCVB) August 31, 2019

It's no real big shock to see a big-ass Trump float urging people to vote for Cheeto Christ and "Build the Wall", because GASP! this freak show was really not about being straight, because people who are okay with their straight selves don't really need to take anything away from people who are currently, this minute, here in the US, still being told they can be discriminated against because somebody's God doesn't like them. That's not a pride parade, assholes, that's an end zone dance over people's lives, and yes, we did get to see some of that choreography during this hatenanny.

But, by and large, this was a not-so-friendly, mostly white supremacist thing, as the organizer of a similar (also sparsely attended) event in Modesto basically gave away in Freudian fashion, accidently calling it a "totally peaceful racist group." And so it was with the Boston event, thus, the appearance of chuds dressed as "Honkler" :

It's That Time of Year Again--Jon Swift 2018 Roundup Time!

In one of the finest traditions of the internet, Batocchio has again solicited the best posts in the estimation of our blogosphere, and once again, a lovely crop has been cultivated for your reading pleasure, in the spirit of the gone, but not forgotten champion of small blogs, Al Weisel/Jon Swift (page defunct now, but the internet never truly forgets). Head on over for a recap of the year, to engage with the work of bloggers you have not read before or whom you haven't read for a bit or just to revisit the work of the writers you already enjoy in light of what they found to be their best this time around. It is always a year-end treat.

I'm also going to give props to Batocchio's latest, and his own submission to the roundup--it's a good history of where conservatism has gone, and the problems with addressing it. It's just comprehensive first-class work. 

Whether to Bury or Praise

There is something fortuitous in the historical placement of George Bush in wherever he happened to be in the course of his long life. He was fortunate in being born privileged, he was fortunate in surviving a brutal war. He was fortunate in politics, after a fashion. He married the love of his life, and one of his sons followed him in the White House. As lives go, it wasn't half bad. He was surrounded with admiration and love at the end of his life, and that's nothing to scoff at. We could all hope to do so well. 

He also benefited by being neither so wretched as Nixon or crass as Trump, and the halo of his dedication was in part burnished by the haplessness of his son's time in office, and the bar of doing politics had dropped to where service and decency, just by being part of one's make-up, were all that needed to be present to gloss over really harsh truths. But his record was mixed, and a pretty damn comprehensive blog post of the not-great bits was served by Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns, & Money, so I'd say check that out for the stuff already said, and better than I would have, by him. 

As for me, I still simmer over 1988. This was the first presidential election I paid attention to, occurring after Iran-Contra, and in some way, my innocent soul thought Republicans should have been over, for at least this round. How in the world does a country accept Bush was "out of the loop" as a former head of CIA, and not think his principal job in taking office in the White House was to tidy up loose ends? I was all of sixteen and livid at the "pledge of Allegiance" nonsense and the entire crock of referring to Dukakis as an "ACLU card-carrying liberal" as if sticking up for the Bill of Rights was something to sneer at. Stupid wedge issue content (and maybe not the most competent campaign waged by Dukakis and Bentsen) dictated a win, and a pardon for several folks who participated in that debacle of literally extralegally arming a country that we considered a supporter of terrorism, to also extralegally support a faction in a war that wasn't any of our business. And cite the reason for these pardons as "patriotism". 

I still to this damn day don't know what American principles or interests were served by this thing. As with Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon, it sits poorly with me as a violation of the concept that no one should be above the law. 

And the nomination of Clarence Thomas, whatever we think of his qualifications today or his sexual harassment concerns, was a slap in the face of civil rights legend Thurgood Marshall, whose seat he filled. As if this bland patrician looked on this black conservative, and gave no fucks for the vast difference in viewpoint but saw a certain blatant commonality, and rolled with it. 

I do not know the family or personally, any friends of George Bush. I knew I was slipping as a blogger when I tried to silver-lining the life of his beloved spouse. The War on Drugs,  and whatever crap example he set that made George W. Bush and Jeb Bush the politicians they were,  his poor response to the AIDS crisis, his feints to hardcore conservatism to try and obviate the claim he was a "wimp" which in some ways proved it--all stay in my memory as things that were part and parcel of his legacy, that should not be forgotten. 

And yet, in retrospect, he could have been so much worse. And he wrote lovely notes, and his family doesn't all suck, and his friendship with Clinton and Obama....? 

He was human, and we are all a mixed lot, and have redeeming features. He did his thing for charity, and I will allow I consider some of what people say about Carlyle Group and the defense industry and drawing arrows here and there from Halliburton/Dressher to the exploits in Iraq seems a bit paranoid. I can't dispute that the end of the Cold War would have been something difficult for any president to navigate. 

His family will bury him, and they can praise him as well. As well as can any of his loved ones. I am not in that circle, and I will tell the truth if I please. His civility was admirable. But we should not hurry to polish the reputations of those who have died when their legacies are still ongoing. And the stupid political postures of 1988 still resound in 2018. I can't shrug that off, or forget that Roger Ailes, who made Fox News, was one of his campaign advisors back in the day, and of course, the episode of peak Les Atwater--the Willie Horton ad. 

I am dry-eyed and unromantic about his legacy. We are here in it. And my Trump obit will definitely be even worse, come the day. I wish peace of mind to his surviving loved ones. (But not without clear memories.)

UPDATE: And just one other damn thing--he was for Brett Kavanaugh, and fuck him and his son and Brett Kavanaugh. But not the all the way, because none of them deserve the satisfaction. 

Trump's Seven Words

The Trump administration reportedly wants 7 words and phrases banned from some official documents at the @CDCgov https://t.co/lMA4FhQuhl pic.twitter.com/x8MNoNs1DV

— Business Insider (@businessinsider) December 16, 2017

In 2017, I miss George Carlin because he was cynical and sharp and would have told you he foresaw all this present-day bullshit, because there's a club, and honeys, you were never in it. But I will say I do not like the Trump Administration deciding that there are seven words that the CDC should consider forbidden.

Forbidden words? Huh. I guess Winston Smith could probably explain part of why, but let me do my bit:

"Vulnerable". This word implies persons in a precarious situation and in need. The Trump state does not seem to want to recognize human problems or needs as anything they prefer to address. People can be vulnerable to crime, food scarcity, lack of jobs, discrimination, inequalities in the deliverance of promised goods and services from the state, such as education, health services and housing. Not understanding these people as "vulnerable" is an attempt to make us not sympathize with these--the least among us. My catechism an age ago said that whatever you do to these you do to the Lord. Trump will dangle Johnson Amendment bullcrap in front of evangelicals, but he will never pretend he cares for "the least of us". Our vulnerable asses need to sack up.

"Entitlement": An entitlement is a paid benefit for one's investment, and denying that entitlements are a thing is denying that since FDR and LBJ, we have been paying for benefits we surely should have access to. Social Security and Medicare are things working people pay for all the time. We are "entitled" to those benefits.

"Diversity" : I grew up in Philadelphia, which is a very diverse major US city. I have always known people who were racial minorities, and had friends who were. I feel like there is a benefit in understanding that people have different backgrounds and experiences, and trying to learn from them, is innately beneficial and ignoring diversity is a kind of tunnel vision.

"Transgender" : Talk about trying to "disappear people"--not using a reference to a class of people is a form of erasure. Trans people will continue to exist because of their identity, but "on paper", the Trump Administration prefers not to talk about these folks. This marginalizing quality is sheer bigotry and ugliness in action. Thinking about a caution to avoid using the term "transgender" reminds me that there is a transgender ban proposed by the Trump Administration, aimed at hounding out trans service members even though there is nothing to indicate that trans people are poor soldiers or sailors or air personnel. It is the height of stupidity to think avoiding a word will make an entire class of people disappear.

"Fetus": The pro-life contingent is probably behind the desire to see the word "fetus" get elbowed out in favor of terms like "unborn child". While denying a word like "transgender" is aimed at denying a class of people their identity, the banning of the term "fetus" seems bent on discovering ways not to erase, but to invent, a class of not yet people into persons. A 20 week gestational human fetus is not treated as a person in the sense of having opinions and making choices about outcomes.

And this is how is should be, because fetuses have no human experience, memories, etc, and are only provisionally human in the sense that someone wants to make a person of them, someday. And if one physically hosting them does not?

"Evidence-based" : I feel like back-handing evidence, which is the basis of science, is a definite indicator of bad will--these SOBS have no intention to recognize scientific data that matters. They will roll back regulations without any study as to the outward harm done. They think looking too strongly at outcomes is a kind of bias (because they know their own ideas never work.)

"Science-based": Again, facts seem to have a liberal bias, so maybe qualitative or quantitative values for looking at the world seem liberal-biased, because they show that hard facts aren't changed by messaging or bribes.

This isn't Art, and Not a Good Point

I guess, arguendo, different people will have different ideas about what constitutes "art". Art is something like porn was for Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart: You know it when you see it. This is a definition that doesn't satisfy, and as every good internetizen knows: YMMV. (For what it's worth, if you just put the search words "porn" and "potter" in a search engine now, you will be confronted with pages of Harry Potter porn links. Some of them might conceivably be at least a little artistic, porn and art not being mutually exclusive.) But I think the standard where an image of the red-headed comedian holding aloft a fake-blood-covered Donald Trump mask in an imitation of a beheading falls a bit short of art, and seems a bit more like political porn.

There is a stuffiness about discussing "redeeming social value". Art isn't always redemptive--it can sometimes be cynical and stark as all hell. But points have to be given on the basis of whether a piece effectively conveys what was intended--and I can't say that this does. The "Trump" imagined by Kathy Griffin's pose is, perhaps, a gorgon:

Or a dragon or a giant or a lamia or any other sort of beast that can be beheaded in a legend without our considering that entity as human, but fully monstrous. In a profession where targets are "roasted", audiences are "killed", and failing acts "bomb", this over-the-top symbolism might make sense: It was comedy that killed the beast. (After the tagline of most renditions of King Kong--substituting "comedy" for "beauty".  Contra Keats, what is beautiful is not always true, but comedy usually works because of a kernel of truth. Truth, reality, is the anti-matter to a lying regime. But it only works if the joke doesn't need to be bloody explained.)

We don't live in such times where we are dealing with mythological creatures in a way where an audience accepts legend as our referent. Donald Trump is, whatever his faults, a human man, and the worst thing we can say about his policies is that they are centered in dehumanizing others: criminalizing immigrants, privileging some religions over others, encouraging punch-down violence. Where, then, is the sense in dehumanizing him, and making violence a matter of smirking exultation?

It was misguided, and not supported by most liberals, and Griffin herself has now apologized. As a bad bit of art that should be and was rubbished, that should be that. And yet we now have a counter-example to whatever violent image fuckery we on the left mean to decry-- "But Kathy Griffin". This is absurd, and completely expected.

It should not take the sting out of factual claims about what is happening on the right, however. The gorgon's head was never meant to shock us liberals, you know. Attention-sponge and thirsty-comedian Kathy Griffin was pushing RW buttons. And I would be afraid to wade in into her social media mentions right now, because that woman is probably getting cause to call the authorities--and that? Is as well worth talking about as her satire-misfire. I believe she intended no threat (does anyone seriously think even a D-list celeb is going to be a fence-jumper?) and is probably just being nearly Ted Nugent-levels of shit-talking stupid.

But if you come to "But Kathy Griffin" at me, I will "but BLM" forever. Or "but queer-bashing" forever. Or "but Portland" forever.  Because a ham-fisted visual message isn't the same thing as actual physical violence, any more than eating a menu is just as good as eating a sandwich. And while Griffin's message was botched, she wasn't actually trying to get anyone killed.

"Nevertheless, she persisted."

It strikes me as fairly interesting that an obscure US Senate rule was used to shush MA Senator Elizabeth Warren as she was about to read into the Senate discussion on Sen. Jeff Sessions' confirmation to US AG a letter from Martin Luther King Jr's widow, Coretta Scott King, which had been written to encourage against a Federal judgeship for Sessions many years ago. Sen. McConnell indicated that this letter was being used by Senator Warren to impugn a fellow Senator.

I guess we have a kind of difference of opinion about what it means to impugn a person's character. For example, an epithet might be delivered that unfairly labels a person's activity. Or, one could just be straight-up describing the actual activity that a person engaged in, with the hope that the hearers decide for themselves what that conduct reveals. I think the reference to the letter is in keeping with the latter description of Warren's words, and that she should not have actually been told to hush up and sit down.

Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, to his credit, picked right up where she left off. 

The Senate Dems are at a distinct disadvantage in trying to deny the placement of Trump's cabinet picks. Tuesday, Trump's choice for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, was confirmed by Vice President Mike Pence acting as Senate tie-breaker. This occurred after unprecedented citizen feedback against her confirmation (Sen. Toomey might think PA residents aren't going to remember this six years out but, I dunno. We might.) But despite President Trump's somewhat disingenuous whining about how long it's taking for his cabinet to be complete (Obama had it worse--of course!) he is liable to get all his picks confirmed in pretty good time, despite how awful they are, because the GOP doesn't mind letting them in--

But to be quite realistic? How in the world does anyone not realize that what the Democratic base wants from our representatives is a fight? I want people like Senator Warren to persist their hearts out. I want the GOP in congress to look like hypocrites backing up scoundrels every damn day, and I want them called out by Democrats for it.

Every damn day.

So, thanks, Senate Dems, for persevering and persisting. I hope we enlarge your ranks the next election. Thanks for sticking up for civil rights and opposing an AG candidate that would not support them adequately.  It means a lot.

There Was a Cruz/Sanders Debate on ACA--Meh

I know this is a weird post, because I'm freely admitting I didn't tune into the debate and wasn't interested, but I just want to weigh in on why--

I don't really understand the purpose of two people debating the ACA when one person is a staunch conservative against the principle of government-funded health care, and the other a socialist who believes that the government should go further. Instead of being a policy debate about the strict merits of the ACA as policy by two sitting US Senators, it feels like the debate would come to center on political philosophy and we would then just see two people talking past one another.  The fight over policies that ensure universal healthcare is only useful when we have two sides that view universal healthcare as an admirable and worthy goal.

But I don't think we do have that.  The current Republican argument about health care doesn't relate to actual people having coverage, but to a more vague "people having access" to coverage. But to use a simile, this "access" is like placing health insurance on a very high shelf out of the reach of many people, providing not even a footstool, and calling it "accessible" because it isn't under lock and key.

(It is, in this way, not much better than "school choice", where by choices, we mean several nice things you can't afford for your kids, some things in reach that are problematic, and the most widely available option not being really as good as it ought to be. Which isn't as great a choice, I would think, than everyone working to have one really great option that is inclusive and effective for every learner.)

I doubt this sort of thing actually changes minds, so much as serves as a pro-Bernie or pro-Ted thing depending upon the audience. A more meaningful thing should be a matter for all of congress.

2016 Year in Review-Nah!

There is seriously a part of me that feels my ass got dropped in the wrong timeline. (Maybe the darkest timeline.) In the world I thought I was living in: Trump got put up by the RNC as a joke-ass candidate to clown Hillary Clinton and was supposed to lose while costing her many valuable "face" coupons redeemable wherever GOP fucks are served. Thereby allowing a Clinton presidency, wherein the GOP gave exactly zero fucks and was adversarial as hell--a universe I totally was ready for. But this is not the universe I lived in.

(The runner-up universe I was ready for had Bernie Sanders putting a boot in Jeb's ass, FWIW.)

But it just so happens that in former years I have been able to pull my year together with some kind of style. My 2015 Year in Review was absurdly detailed. My 2014 was short but sweet. My 2013 made some kind of sense.

This year didn't make any kind of sense. But I think the overarching theme of my blog was "OMG we have a serious capable human versus a catastrophe!"

And then the catastrophe won. So much for prognostications.

I didn't blog as much about the environment in 2016 as in previous years, but with a Trump admin I figure I'm bound to. Also the class war. I feel like there will be more opportunities to write "class war" posts.

Maybe next year I will have a blog that lends itself better to recapping. But I now understand you just can't tell what any year will necessarily entail. And while I wish us all peace and prosperity in the coming year, I no longer know this is the thing we'll get.

* Substantially altered from original posting. Trimmed and cleaned up--too much champagne.

Tom Hayden Passed

It strikes me as weird that part of my mind always located him in the 1960's. even though I wasn't born then and he went on to do other stuff. Anyway, Tom Hayden was a social justice warrior before that was even a thing, and helped construct what later left activism became. The good, useful kind. Not the dudebro bullshit.  The Port Huron statement still rings a tone to this day. He would have been with her.  I admire his questing and questioning activism. He believed in the ability of peaceful protest to make a difference, and he did make a difference. He lives on wherever people get sold on following their conscience and doing their part. I don't know but that he might have been amused at headlines reading "Jane Fonda's Former Husband Died" as he also understood feminism.

He worked for people. That's the best takeaway. He cared about them. He got what mattered to people. He thought incredibly deeply about it.  And he wanted to do right by them.

What else can anyone do? Let this be his sigil: "If we appear to seek the unattainable, it has been said, then let it be known that we do so to avoid the unimaginable." Which I think suffers to express the concept of "getting it" as the whole thing can be "got". Humans strive not from our feeling of security, but because of our deep knowledge that shit can get worse. But out of that negativity arises visionaries. He was one.

So this is pretty obnoxious--

People getting pissed at Senator Warren because she hasn't endorsed Sanders or Clinton yet is just nonsense. Take this piece at Salon:

Elizabeth Warren could have been the biggest political story of 2016. Well, at least, the biggest story other than Donald Trump. Right now, she could have been coasting toward a Super Tuesday landslide and locking up the Democratic nomination. It doesn’t take a wild imagination to picture it.

Instead, Warren is nowhere to be found, unless you’re a Democratic donor on the receiving end of DNC email blasts signed by the Massachusetts senator. Raising money like this — or lending her name to these emails — might be her biggest contribution to the Democrats in the 2016 cycle. And unfortunately, that’s why Super Tuesday is likely to seal the nomination for Hillary Clinton tonight.

Wow. Why wasn't she told earlier she was throwing away her chance to shape the 2016 race by making an endorsement in February since clearly the author doesn't think she can figure out when and who to endorse--if she means to endorse at all--for her own damn self?

But there's something so casually entitled about this from The Hill piece that it sets my teeth on edge:

A glance at Warren’s social media shows that she is inundated by Sanders backers, who are offering a combination of pleas and recriminations over her choice not to endorse so far.

One recent post on her Facebook page about paid family leave had more than 1,000 comments, and nearly all were about her not endorsing Sanders.

“Coward,” said one critic with a Sanders logo for an avatar.

Even if I kind of suspect that there might be trolls representing themselves as Sanders supporters to just start shit, I'm just going to make an educated guess from what I'm seeing on Twitter that there really are people who feel like Sen. Warren owes the progressive movement her endorsement. Didn't progressives work hard to get her elected senator?

Well, she wasn't plucked fresh from a pumpkin patch with dew in her hair, but actually had valuable credentials that earned her the support of progressives, so maybe she doesn't owe anyone anything but the work she is actually doing. And if she's helping raise money that will affect down-ticket competitions, she's already making an impact on the 2016 race, because while the presidency is big--it isn't everything. We could use more than a few good Democrats in Congress.

This struck me at about the same nerve Madeline Albright's weird "special place in hell for women who don't help each other" comment did. You know, I'm not sure what circle of hell a person goes to for not supporting, say, Carly Fiorina, but I think I'd risk it.

Really--Elizabeth Warren's endorsement is hers to make for who and when she decides to. Chill out.

Justin Trudeau Seems Alright.

It's a damn shame, but I have no grasp whatsoever regarding Canadian politics. I had the general impression that Stephen Harper was just this side of "stomp a baby seal to make friends and influence people" level of evil, and in the general sense he was horrific for energy and the environment.

But the sad truth of the matter is, all I know about Justin Trudeau is he's the son of Pierre Trudeau and basically my age and also terrifically good-looking. He really is. Fine, actually. Also unlikely to be baby-seal-beating evil. Which may actually sum up my political "need to know".