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I for one at looking forward to the release of that gender-flipped Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.

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I’m coming around to the view that this is, in fact, The Greatest Witch Hunt of All Time. The other witch hunts sucked. But between the revelation of actual, serious wrongdoing and the slow restoration of democratic norms, this one is great.

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There appears to be some disagreement regarding whether Ukraine sank the Moskva with missiles or, as Russia claims, the ship simply fucked itself as directed.

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But her emails!

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The Matt Gaetz Saga

It is a well known fact that Matt Gaetz is the worst. But it turns that "The Absolute Worst" comes in many flavors--and Gaetz has them all.

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So 60% of registered voters having cast ballots in advance is incredible. And 4,345,427 votes is a lot of early votes in a state that had 4,624,564 total votes counted in 2016.

In 2016 the total voter turnout was 69% of registered voters.

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On Colorblindness

There is a too common belief that "colorblindness" or "I don't see race" is an adequate response to racial injustice. There are a few problems with this. Most obviously, statements like "I'm colorblind" or "I don't see race" are not true.

Second, claiming not to see race is willfully blinding yourself ot one of the most pressing moral issues we face. In pertinent example, black Americans are 4.7x as likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than white Americans. In order to intelligently assess why really bad things like this happen, you need to be able to see and talk about race. And you need accurate data to work with. If your "race neutral" system is producing racial inequality, "colorblindness" doesn't give you the tools you need to fix it.

Third, it's dismissive. You tell me you are literally, factually starving, I don't respond, "I don't feel hunger. I just eat when I need to eat." That woudl be inflammatory. It's implies that 1) because your problem is not my problem, the problem is really your perception, and 2) my callousness to your problem is actually a virtue.

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This sleazy Supreme Court double-dealing is the last gasp of a corrupt Republican leadership, numb to its own hypocrisy. The last gasp of a billionaire-fueled party that’s undemocratically over-represented and desperately clinging to power in order to impose its extremist agenda.

Elizabeth Warren (via azspot)

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A personal example of systemic racism

Here's a personal example of how systemic racism leads to systemic inequality. While the pandemic has sucked, it hasn't caused me an acute health risk or financial hardship for me. I have a job that will let me work remotely and no imminent risk of layoff. But the jobs where employees have that level of stability and employers make that level of accommodation usually require extensive educational credentials. There are a few spots leading to this where I, as a white person, had advantages that a person of color might not have had. I'll highlight three common ones. First, I remember a time in high school or early college where a few friends of and I were setting up a LAN party (because we were that cool). This involved carrying A LOT of computer equipment into and out of the house. Think full tower desktops and CRT monitors. And this was all happening around 10 pm. We were all wearing black because there were a lot of emotions back then. The police came. And at least one of those friends decided that this was a great opportunity to talk back to the cops. The cops could have reacted differently--but they listened to our explanation. And it all turned out fine. No one was shot. No one was arrested. No one ended up with a record of police involvement that might complicate law school or bar admissions later. 1

Second, I got into college based on the strength of a high school transcript that reflected advanced classes and an unusually rigorous schedule. For the first three years of high school, the counselors sat me down and suggested that maybe the schedule was too aggressive and I should scale it back a bit. (They'd given up by year four.) I said I could handle it. The counselor then backed my play and I got the schedule I wanted.

For the third thing, I need to go back a couple of generations. My paternal grandparents bought a house on the western side of Des Moines, Iowa. Des Moines, like most cities, was redlined. (Redlining is a thing people know about, right?) Banks offered loans in their predominantely white area with a relatively low down payment. In contrast, another part of town, where the same maps strictly curtailed lending in "The South Bottoms" described as having "mixed laboring class with some colors." In other words, they were able to purchase a house with an affordable down payment because of their race and the predominant race of the neighborhood they were buying in. Because of this, when my grandparents passed, around the time I was thinking about colleges, they left behind a house with a lifetime of accumulated equity.

A few observations. First, these are not exceptional stories. A police officer made the right call. A guidance counselor extended the benefit of the doubt. A family bought a house. I chose three, but there are hundreds of others. Second, none of these are dark family secrets. They are examples where I had an advantage that others did not have. It does not diminish me or require defensiveness to acknowledge it. (Willful ignorance about these advantages, on the other hand, would be a problem). Third, fixing the problems that tend to cause these problems would not have cost me anything.

A fourth observation before I cut myself off because Wall of Text. Some folks have got to be thinking, "But what about the times race works the other way?" Or maybe, "You can't assume the police or guidance counselor would have reacted differently if you weren't white." For now, let's acknowledge the objection--but also acknowledge that the next step (which I'll write on later) is looking at how all the various factors interplay with each other to lead to the grossly uneven results we see.

It's true that we weren't doing anything illegal. Even being a smartass to the cops is legal. But suppose the cops had decided that this was more likely teenagers doing nefarious things rather than teenagers doing legal teenager things. Suddenly there's a claim of a refusal to comply with a legal directive, an arrest, and maybe a charge of resisting arrest. Then the option is to fight the charge in court or to plead to something minor and have few immediate consequences ... and a criminal record. ↩︎

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On Trump’s Taxes

The Trump Organization responded that the New York Times article is "fake news," which means they don't like it. It then claimed "Over the past decade the President has paid tens of millions of dollars in personal taxes to the federal government." This apparently includes the most recent tax years. "Personal taxes" includes a lot of payroll taxes and taxes other than income tax.

Let's do some quick math on that. Trump claimed his net worth was about $10 BILLION--which means that whatever the truth is it isn't $10 BILLION. Forbes puts it at $2.5 BILLION.

I'm just going to keep capitalizing BILLION to remind everybody that a BILLION is a thousand times more than a million. If you accumulated a million dollars a year since the time of the Norman Conquest, you would still not have a BILLION dollars.

If you have a $2.5 BILLION and put it in a basic index fund for the past decade, you should expect $250 million per year in profits. This is not "financial genius" level money management It's the type of money management you get if your financial adviser is a dart board and you are bad at darts

In 2012, Trump lambasted Obama for "only" paying an effective tax rate of 20.5%. One year's income taxes on $250 million in income is $50 million. A decade's taxes on $50 million would be $500 million.

If Trump paid "tens of millions of dollars" in taxes over a decades, it should be a scandal. He should have paid hundreds of millions over that decade.

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Another analogy on education about white supremacy

Servicing your car when the check engine light comes on does not imply that you hate the car. Whether you love your car or you're just stuck with it, when that light comes on it's a good idea to try to learn what is wrong and try to fix the issue. Nobody is happy when the light comes on--but the light is there to alert you that something is wrong and could get more wrong if you ignore it. The light is not the problem.

Sub-analogy: Sure, you can put electrical tape over the light and keep driving. Maybe something is so wrong with the car that it can't be fixed. Or maybe you're in sufficiently desperate situation that you can't get it fixed and don't want a reminder that things are getting worse. Or maybe you're just going to drive the car into the ground because you care more about your convenience than the car's well-being. That last one is a bad look.

Robust anti-racism training presents a serious challenges to the myth that the organizing narrative of the United States centers on opportunity. Covering up warning signs doesn't fix problems.

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Systemic racism really isn’t complicated or controversial

I've spent much of the last six months or so working on a Racial Justice Fellowship with The Shriver Center. Because the federal government now forbids training on systemic racism, I have this treasure trove of now forbidden knowledge and secrets the Republicans are scared you might learn. As somebody who is pretty good at following the rules, this is the furthest I've gotten to venture into forbidden anything. So for anybody who was reading for the baby bunny pictures, I am sorry, it's going to be All Forbidden Knowledge All The Time for a bit here.

So we have a complicated economic and social system that produces (inter alia) 1) a lot of garbage that gets into the ocean, and 2) vastly disparate outcomes along racial lines. Both of these evils have internalized components, interpersonal components, institutional components, and systemic components.

As part of this system, you are individually responsible for some amount of pollution. Even if you don't literally shove straws into sea turtles or wrap shorebirds in those plastic soda rings. You contribute to the waste stream which leads to various ills. Fortunately, with a bit of care and education, you can reduce the amount you contribute to the waste stream. Also we can work together to take bigger steps that have a greater impact than our individual efforts can have. If we're confused about the best way to handle it, we can listen to experts. This is like second grade stuff.

Systemic racism works in a strikingly similar manner. We're all parts of a complicated system--and through individual or collective efforts we can change that. This should be second grade stuff, but for some reason they don't want you to talk about it. Why is there a set of people who are scared of this basic knowledge? Is it a) they are profiting from the current system and don't want to change it, b) they view the mere discussion as a threat to their consolidated power?, c) they cannot emotionally process reality on a second grade level? or d) they are pandering to people who consider racially disparate outcomes a good thing?

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The Trump administration has issued an executive order attempting to limit training related to systemic racism. So. Critical Race Theory is now officially something THE GOVERNMENT DOES NOT WANT YOU TO KNOW. So who wants some FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE? Here's a report from the Federal Reserve on net worth by race. So. Why is the median net worth of White families ten times higher than the median net worth of Black families? A) Maybe it is a coincidence? B) There are reasons for things and it is important to understand them. C) I cannot handle the truth because I am a grownup baby.

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“The threat of increasing the size of the court to 13 might be enough to discourage Republicans from their dirty tricks. But if they do it anyway, and the November election produces a Democratic win in the White House and a Democratic majority in the Senate, Congress would be totally justified in increasing the size of the court.”

— Democrats have a weapon to thwart a rapid Ginsburg replacement

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Okay how did I not understand this situation until Steve Bannon was arrested on a boat?

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I want to make sure that nobody is missing what Trump is doing he calls out for "Law and Order" and then threatens domestic military military action to enforce the law.

We're in the midst of mass protests over police killing (again) a black man and, more generally, structures that perpetuate racial inequality. Everybody knows what the big, day time protests are about. And everybody understands that the more destructive night time stuff is happening in the context of these daytime protests (even if the who, what, and why is more complicated than the marches).

Side note: the insidious mechanics of white supremacy mean that our brains are conditioned to think "law and order" when we see civil disobedience by black activists but not when we see, say, white activists occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. In a time that valued subtletly, I would have a lot to say on the moral implications and obligations created by our own internal biases. But this post is not about the delicate and difficult work of purging awful patterns.

This post is also not about anybody for whom a call to restore "law and order" does not have an immediate and overt racial implication. It is normal not to know the history and context of every phrase.

But there are three groups of people who have a clear and immediate understanding of what a call to "law and order" means. First, most people currently protesting the death of George Floyd and unaccountable and abusivd policing know exactly where that phrase came from. Second, overt white supremacists understand the racial implications of the phrase. Third, anybody who has advisers or speech writers and is in the process of preparing a statement on race-connected unrest in which that phrase will feature prominently. The phrase doesn't just fly under the radar in that context.

So. When Trump says, "I am your President of Law and Order" he knows exactly what he is doing and who he is talking to. When he uses a phrase, in a prepared speech, like, "Viciously attacked by dangerous thugs," he knows the history he is speaking out of. When he is talking about protests centered on racial inequality--but doesn't once mention racial inequality, the omission is intentional.

And when he threatens to domestically "deploy the united states military and quickly solve the problem" in states that don't double-down on aggressive policing, he know--and we should all know--who the threat is directed against. And immediately after making these comments Trump clears a group of peaceful protesters, he has made it very clear who the target is.

Trump is threatening to deploy the U.S. military against its own people. And he has signaled, unambiguously, that he's willing to do this instead of confronting the problem of police brutality.

I'm not fully sure what the full implications of any of this are. But if the President of the United States deploys the military against our communities rather than discuss have a discussion about racially disparate policies? It's a dire enough situation that some opportunistic looting feels morally irrelevant.