#defining federalism for government class

[iiscpr]

ivan/nathaniel collab go crazy

[cliff-montgomery]

The Thorny Problem of Straw Purchases in U.S. Gun Law

by Cliff Montgomery - Feb. 15th, 2024

Yesterday’s mass shooting at a parade intended to celebrate the Kansas City Chiefs’ recent Super Bowl victory over the San Francisco 49s once again reminds us of the need for serious gun laws and gun law reform.

On February 9th, two short reviews on current federal gun laws were released by the Congressional Research Service (CRS). The CRS refers to itself as a “ non-partisan shared staff to congressional committees and Members of Congress.” In short, it prepares concise, easy-to understand reports on matters of the moment to members of the U.S. and their affiliated staff members.

We will cover those two short studies for our readers. Tonight, we look at the report Gun Control: Straw Purchase and Gun Trafficking Provisions in Public Law 117-159, better known as the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

Straw purchases are defined by the study as “illegal firearms transactions in which a person serves as a middleman by posing as the transferee, but is actually acquiring the firearm for another person.”

Below, we offer readers most of the central statements found in the CRS report:

“On June 25, 2022, President Joe Biden signed into law the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA; S. 2938; P.L. 117-159). This law includes the Stop Illegal Trafficking in Firearms Act, provisions of which amend the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA, 18 U.S.C. §§921 et seq.) to more explicitly prohibit straw purchases and illegal gun trafficking. Related provisions expand federal law enforcement investigative authorities.

Federal Firearms Law

“The GCA is the principal statute regulating interstate firearms commerce in the United States. The purpose of the GCA is to assist federal, state, and local law enforcement in ongoing efforts to reduce violent crime.

“Congress constructed the GCA to allow state and local governments to regulate firearms more strictly within their own borders, so long as state law does not conflict with federal law or violate constitutional provisions.

“Hence, one condition of a federal firearms license for gun dealers, which permits the holder to engage in interstate firearms commerce, is that the licensee must comply with both federal and state law.

“Also, under the GCA there are several classes of persons prohibited from shipping, transporting, receiving, or possessing firearms or ammunition (e.g., convicted felons, fugitives, unlawful drug users). It was and remains unlawful under the GCA for any person to transfer knowingly a firearm or ammunition to a prohibited person (18 U.S.C. §922(d)). Violations are punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment.

“The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is the principal agency that administers and enforces the GCA, as well as the 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA, 26 U.S.C. §§5801 et seq.).

“The NFA further regulates certain firearms deemed to be especially dangerous (e.g., machine guns, short-barreled shotguns) by taxing all aspects of the making and transfer of such weapons and requiring their registration with the Attorney General.

Straw Purchase Provision

“Straw purchases are illegal firearms transactions in which a person serves as a middleman by posing as the transferee, but is actually acquiring the firearm for another person.

“As discussed below, straw purchases are unlawful under two existing laws. Prosecutions under those provisions have been characterized by some as mere paperwork violations and, hence, inadequate in terms of deterring unlawful gun trafficking.

“P.L. 117-159 amends the GCA with a new provision, 18 U.S.C. §932, to prohibit any person from knowingly purchasing or conspiring to purchase any firearm for, on behalf of, or at the request or demand of any other persons if the purchaser knows or has reasonable cause to believe that the actual buyer

is a person prohibited from being transferred a firearm under 18 U.S.C. §922(d);

plans to use, carry, possess, or sell (dispose of) the firearm(s) in furtherance of a felony, federal crime of terrorism, or drug trafficking crime; or

plans to sell or otherwise dispose of the firearm(s) to a person who would meet any of the conditions described above.

“Violations are punishable by a fine and up to 15 years’ imprisonment. Violations made by a person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that any firearm involved will be used to commit a felony, federal crime of terrorism, or drug trafficking crime are punishable by a fine and up to 25 years’ imprisonment.

Gun Trafficking Provision

“Gun trafficking entails the movement or diversion of firearms from legal to illegal channels of commerce in violation of the GCA. P.L. 117-159 amends the GCA with a new provision, 18 U.S.C. §933, to prohibit any person from shipping, transporting, causing to be shipped or transported, or otherwise disposing of any firearm to another person with the knowledge or reasonable cause to believe that the transferee’s use, carrying, or possession would constitute a felony.

“It would also prohibit the receipt of such firearm if the transferee knows or has reasonable cause to believe that receiving it would constitute a felony. Attempts and conspiracies to violate these provisions are proscribed as well. Violations are punishable by a fine and up to 15 years’ imprisonment. […]

GCA Interstate Transfer Prohibitions

“The GCA generally prohibits anyone who is not a Federal Firearms Licensee (FFL) from acquiring a firearm from an out-of-state source. [But] Interstate transfers among unlicensed persons may be facilitated through an FFL in the state where the transferee resides. […]

GCA Record-keeping and Straw Purchases

“Under the GCA (18 U.S.C. §926), Congress authorized a decentralized system of record-keeping allowing ATF to trace a firearm’s chain of commerce, from manufacturer or importer to dealer, and to the first retail purchaser of record. FFLs must maintain certain records, including ATF Forms 4473, on transfers to non-FFLs as well as a parallel acquisition/disposition log.

“As part of a firearms transaction, both the FFL and purchaser must truthfully fill out and sign the ATF Form 4473. The FFL must verify the purchaser’s name, date of birth, and other information by examining government-issued identification (e.g., driver’s license). The purchaser attests on Form 4473 that he or she is not a prohibited person and is the actual transferee/buyer. […]

“[However,] straw purchases are not easily detected because they only become apparent when the straw purchase is revealed by a subsequent transfer to a prohibited person.

Other GCA Gun Trafficking Prohibitions

“According to ATF, gun trafficking often entails an unlawful flow of firearms from jurisdictions with less restrictive firearms laws to jurisdictions with more restrictive firearms laws, both domestically and internationally.

“Such unlawful activities can include, but are not limited to, the following:

straw purchasers or straw purchasing rings in violation of the provisions described above;

persons engaging in the business of dealing in firearms without a license in violation of 18 U.S.C. §921(a)(1)(A), punishable by up to 5 years’ imprisonment;

corrupt FFLs dealing off-the-books in an attempt to escape federal regulation in violation of 18 U.S.C. §922(b)(5), punishable by up to 5 years’ imprisonment; and

trafficking in stolen firearms in violation of 18 U.S.C. §922(j), punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment.

“Under current law, offenders could potentially be charged with multiple offenses under both the preexisting GCA provisions such as those discussed above and 18 U.S.C. §§932 and 933.

“Since P.L. 117-159 went into effect on October 31, 2023, 250 defendants have been charged with gun trafficking, including 80 charged with violating the law’s straw purchase provision.

“In January 2024, the National Shooting Sports Foundation—an industry trade group for the firearms industry—noted that the ATF has yet to implement two parts of P.L. 117-159: ‘Firearm Handler Background Checks’ (FHCs) and instant point-of-sale background checks when an FFL buys from a private individual.

“The former would allow FFLs to use the NICS to background check FFL employees and has been in regulatory review since September 26, 2023. The latter would allow FFLs to instantly identify if a weapon is stolen at the point of sale by authorizing importers, manufacturers, and dealers of firearms to access records of stolen firearms in the National Crime Information Center; it has been in the interim final rule stage since May 17, 2023.”

[eponymous-rose]

I found it super useful to do this in a previous year, so here's all the stuff I've got going on for the next three-month quarter. Hope this is interesting to anyone thinking of going the academic route or just curious about what their professor does all day when they're not teaching!

Context: I'm a fifth-year assistant professor (tenure-track) at an R1 public university in a science field.

I'm just teaching the one class this quarter! It's a class I created myself and have taught on four previous occasions, so I have a lot of really great materials available to me. Its enrollment has also quadrupled since the first time I taught it. Womp-womp. Designing and giving lectures 3x/week, creating new assignments 1x/week (carefully ChatGPT-proofed when they're not integrating critical assessments of ChatGPT), writing two take-home midterms, grading all of the above, and, of course, innovating on the course. Trying out some fun new activities to replace the individual projects that have become unwieldy with this number of students. And, inevitably, the scheduled and unscheduled office hours.

I'm primary advisor for a great new grad student, but, in all the federal government's deadline-y wisdom, the grant proposal I was going to use to fund his research fell through. While we scramble to re-submit, the department has given me 9 months of funding, but that also means this student is going up for some highly competitive graduate fellowships to help fill the financial void. Lots of working with him to craft his very first proposal while we talk the undergrad to grad transition, classes, and These Winters Oh You Know (he's from the PNW, he's all set). His actual research is a little on hold for now, but we'll be doing some very cool stuff collaborating with a friend at another university as well as someone at a federal agency that I'm gonna sweet-talk into inviting us down for some in-person work in May. We meet for an hour every week.

As part of that, I'm meeting weekly with my co-PI on that failed proposal to craft a resubmission (we got very positive reviews, just didn't make the funding cutoff). It's a process!

My other active grad student is getting to the end of his PhD already! He just wrapped up two internships this summer and is full of ideas and new directions, which is great, but also: now is the time to find that finish line. He has his last pre-defense exam coming up soon, and my job is to make sure he has a solid story to tell that has a well-defined ending. I'd like to see him publish another paper before finishing as well, and I think he'll have no problems doing so. He's on a federal research grant and also needs to discharge some responsibilities there and make sure he has a transition plan in place for whoever takes over from him. Had a friend at another institution reach out expressing an interest in hiring him for a postdoc, and he's interested, so also going to try to get him a visit down there. We meet for an hour every week!

Said student has also initiated a collaboration with some of his friends from school back in China to do some truly wild stuff, and honestly in this case I'm just along for the ride and to gently steer them back on-course when they start getting a bit in the weeds. We're meeting every second week, and the biggest thing I have to do here is make sure he has open access to a supercomputer to do his thing. It's cool to have reached the stage where my main responsibility is to get out of his way.

Said student also independently reached out to someone with a really cool dataset, and after a meeting carefully smoothing over that e-mail from "blasé demand for free data" to "opportunity to collaborate as a team", we've got a pretty cool project lining up. Might have to wait until after his PhD defense, though.

I have another grad student who took a job elsewhere and really, really wanted to finish his Master's remotely, which is all well and good, but honestly, doing that while trying to start a new job is soul-crushingly difficult. Our department has recently created an option to get a Master's without writing a thesis, so I need to follow up on that and get him this Master's degree.

A former student has reached out about converting his Master's thesis to a journal article, and that'll be a long process, but sure? Maybe? We'll figure it out.

A colleague and I have decided to create a research project for an undergrad who reached out to us looking for opportunities to get more credits. We're still not 100% sure where we're going with this, and a lot will depend on her programming skills, but she's only a sophomore and so we'll ideally have several years to work together on this research. We meet once a week.

Said colleague and I are also working on blending our research groups a bit (mainly because it's awkward to have 3-person "group meetings"), and as part of that we're trying to find a time to have both groups do biweekly coffee-shop meetings where we discuss a cool paper in the field.

I'm participating in a weather forecasting competition that involves writing a forecast 4 days a week, occasionally sending out reminder e-mails, meeting weekly, and probably giving a briefing at some point.

Traveling in October to give an invited seminar at a very big-name university in my field. This has been happening more and more lately (I've now given invited seminars/keynotes in four different countries, to say nothing of the conference talks elsewhere) and I have a pretty solid template for a one-hour talk, but this is a group of people who specialize in my area of research, so I've gotta step up my game there. I'll also be meeting with folks there for a day and will have to figure out what to do with my course while I'm gone.

One other bit of out-of-state travel in October is to attend a meeting of a national group I'm a part of - they've thrown in an early-career workshop, and the whole thing is being paid for, so I'll be there for one extra day learning me a thing. Excited that my grad school officemate will be there!

Final travel this quarter will be during the final exam week, when I go to a giant conference in my field along with my nearly-finished PhD student - we'll both be giving talks there, and since it isn't my usual professional organization hosting it, I get to avoid all of my usual wave of volunteer responsibilities. Phew.

This isn't happening until January, but I was invited to speak at the biggest student conference in my field, and while I can't travel there, they've set up an opportunity for me to do it virtually - I need to get my materials to them by November, I think.

I'm still on the editorial board for three different academic journals, which comes with a fair number of reviews (often "tiebreakers" when the other peer reviewers are in disagreement) every month. Genuinely really enjoy it, because otherwise when the heck am I gonna find time to deep-read any new papers in my field? Also writing reviews for federal funding agency grants now, which is a longer process but also very interesting and helpful.

I'm coordinating the charitable fundraising among the faculty in my department this year - I have a meeting coming up with the head honcho at the university level about what charity drives we'll be doing in the run-up to the holiday season and then I think I just mostly forward e-mails? This is a new position for me.

I'm one of four faculty (plus a grad student) on a new hire search committee for a tenure-track faculty member. It's been interesting thus far, but due to some financial tapdancing going on at the moment, we may delay the hire by a year. Our department typically gets 100+ highly qualified applications for each position (which is wild, we're not huge and have like 21 faculty total), so that's a huge time sink once the ball gets rolling on it. We did put together the ad we were going to send out.

I extended my term on the college's scholarship committee, which generally involves a couple meetings a year of giving out extra money to students. Good stuff, especially since we received a gift at the college level recently that means nearly everyone who applies gets something.

I'm working on a research project I got funded through a small internal grant - it's been weird to have a research project that's just me doing coding and writing. I really need to block out some protected time for that! It's a fun project and I think I budgeted for two publications. We'll see how it turns out!

A while ago, I was approached by a truly giant scientific journal to write a review article about my entire research focus. I brought on three colleagues who had written similar reviews in the past, got our proposal approved, and promptly had multiple freakouts trying to get a full draft written. Recently got most of that draft completed and sent it to the editor, who had AMAZING and detailed feedback. This is the kind of article where we have an art team at our beck and call to create graphics for us. We really want to do this right.

I got pulled into a research thing with a national lab a while ago and keep forgetting about it - my role appears to be mostly done, and now I mostly just occasionally get random e-mails with dire security clearance warnings that amount to "I wrote this whitepaper report, can you confirm I properly represented your contribution?" It would be lovely if a publication came out of this, it's fun work (not military), but who knows.

A colleague and I are waiting to hear back on a really, really cool grant proposal we submitted a couple months ago. We probably still have 6 months before we hear anything, but man, I think about it every day. It would be so neat and the program manager agreed that it was an awesome idea, but of course now we're in the reviewers' hands. We might do some preliminary work in anticipation of possibly having to resubmit next year.

Speaking of grant proposals, I need to at least put a draft together for a new project. As my grad students graduate, I need funding to bring new ones on! This is also the one thing my department chair has suggested is a little weak on my CV: number of grants obtained. It's SUCH a long process, with probably 80-100 hours of work for each grant proposal written. Ugh. It is fun when it's an idea I'm excited about, at least.

I'm on the committees of about a half-dozen grad students (and am anticipating possibly hearing from one more) - my role is mostly to provide very occasional guidance on the overall research project, providing specialized knowledge the student and their primary advisor may not have, and attending all exams. I also have to keep an eye out for and help mediate any issues between the student and their advisor. That can get messy.

We have 3 weekly seminars in the department! They're very interesting and I'm mostly just glad I'm not coordinating one of the seminar series this year.

I've started getting inquiries from potential graduate students. See above re: not knowing if I'll have funding for a new student next year. Why can't we just coordinate our deadlines?

I've started working with a science advisory board for a major organization within my field, which has been interesting so far! As a more junior member, my input isn't being super actively sought yet, so I get to just learn about the processes involved and nod sagely a lot. Thankfully the two-day meeting last week was remote.

I'm on another national committee that's currently working on organizing our next big conference in late 2024. There's always a lot that goes into that (and I don't have a super high opinion of the guy running the group after he posted some crappy stuff about students on social media), but thankfully I've managed to dodge some of the bigger responsibilities.

I'm part of a very cool peer-mentoring group where I chat weekly with scientists in different-but-comparable fields about any and all of the above. It's very nice to have a bit of a place to vent!

Oh yes, and the tenure/promotion-application process kicks off this year. I have a meeting next week with my mentoring committee to see if they feel I'm ready to go up. Here goes nothing...

I think that's mostly it? It's gonna be a busy 3 months. Time to make some lists...

[argyrocratie]

"In the case of car culture, the problems of sprawl and automobile dependency did not inevitably result from the automobile itself, but from the power interests that redesigned society around it. The problem was created by subsidies to monoculture development, freeways systems imposed by eminent domain, and legal prohibitions — like zoning — against mixed-use development.

Before the rise of car culture and car-centered urban design, the norm was the compact, mixed-use city or town where residences were within foot, bicycle, bus or streetcar distance of the downtown district where people worked or shopped. Increased population was accommodated primarily by modular proliferation — e.g. the railroad suburb — rather than outward sprawl.

Absent the imposition of car culture by the federal and local governments and by the local real estate industry, the automobile would have served a useful niche function in cities laid out in the old fashion. Its primary market would have been people like farmers in the areas outside cities, where population concentrations were insufficient to be served by streetcar or rail lines. For periodic trips into town and back, perhaps in a small truck capable of conveying a load of vegetables to the farmers’ market or bringing home groceries and dry goods, a light internal combustion engine or electric motor would have been sufficient. With no need for rapid acceleration on the freeway, there would be no point for heavy engine blocks with six cylinders, and the overall weight of the vehicle could be reduced accordingly. With flat body panels capable of being produced on a cutting table, there would have been no need for Detroit’s two- or three-story stamping presses. The automobile industry would have been an affair of hundreds of local factories.

Hence it is not true that “[p]ast a certain threshold of energy consumption, the transportation industry dictates the configuration of social space.” Rather, the configuration of social space dictates the forms of transportation adopted, which dictates the level of energy consumption.

Illich’s tendency to see the proliferation of managerial bureaucracies and their unwilling clienteles as an expansionary phenomenon in its own right with no need for a causal explanation, rather than a secondary effect of larger class and power interests, is also illustrated in his treatment of squatters.

Both the non-modernized and the post-modern oppose society’s ban on spatial self-assertion, and will have to reckon with the police intervening against the nuisance they create. They will be branded as intruders, illegal occupants, anarchists and nuisances, depending on the circumstance under which they assert their liberty to dwell: as Indians who break in and settle on fallow land in Lima; as favellados in Rio de Janeiro, who return to squat on the hillside from which they have just been driven — after 40 years’ occupancy — by the police; as students who dare to convert ruins in Berlin’s Kreuzberg into their dwelling; as Puerto Ricans who force their way back into the walled-up and burnt buildings of the South Bronx. They will all be removed, not so much because of the damage they do to the owner of the site, or because they threaten the health or peace of their neighbors, but because of the challenge to the social axiom that defines a citizen as a unit in need of a standard garage. [emphasis added] Both the Indian tribe that moves down from the Andes into the suburbs of Lima and the Chicago neighborhood council that unplugs itself from the city housing authority challenge the now-prevalent model of the citizen as homo castrensis, billeted man.

Illich’s framing of this as some inherent expansionary logic or hegemonic drive inherent in the “managerial-professional classes” themselves, and not the outcome of a much larger, long-term process of land privatization and enclosure driven by capitalist class interests, is a major critical failure."

-Kevin Carson, ”The Thought of Ivan Illich: A Libertarian Analysis“

[samueldays]

Racial Gerrymandering

This New York Times Article (archive) can be practice in noticing the thing separately from the name. It doesn't use the word "gerrymandering", but that is what it's calling for.

Most other states would be ashamed of the tongue lashing issued against the government of Alabama on Tuesday by a trio of federal judges, all of whom were clearly furious that the state ignored their order to create a second majority-Black congressional district.

This is court-ordered racial gerrymandering, but I suppose the NYT doesn't want such negatively-loaded terms near their client race.

In doing so, Alabama illustrated how contempt for the law — not to mention for equal representation and basic fairness — is an animating value in whole swaths of America. There are days when it feels as if defiance is defining large parts of the country, as represented by so many politicians who feel comfortable only when they are resisting someone else’s agenda rather than coming up with their own.

The journalist cries out 'basic fairness' as he demands your state be gerrymandered. Journalism delenda est. When the NYT has the reputation of the Daily Mail, I will be happy.

The journo's take on 'equal representation' is race-first quotas, and as for 'law', the Voting Rights Act talks about the right to vote and participate in the political process with an end in mind of electing a representative; the court interpreted "opportunity [...] to elect representatives of their choice" very broadly to demand blacks as a racial collective must get two set-aside districts so they can racially win two elections to get representatives, plural, of their choice to be elected. This has a severe case of Proves Too Much regarding every other protected class minority. Reductio ad absurdum.

An aggravating context, then, is the fact that congressional districts are a finite and small number in a zero-sum game. To be specific, Alabama has seven. Demanding two of those for a specific minority is a hell of a lot.

Demanding any districts be racial set-asides at all is dubious gerrymandering, but from a glance at the census data, Alabama's population does not even divide neatly into racial sevenths to gerrymander with. The state is majority white, between one and two sevenths black, less than one seventh hispanic, less than one seventh 'other'. How do you feel about a court-mandated hispanic-majority district too? 🙄

The census brings me to another issue: the implicit requirements of surveillance state and segregation that are needed to get these black-majority districts.

To make it informationally possible to draw black-majority districts, one needs to know where the blacks live, in great detail, with recent updates. It is not obvious that the state tracking this is a good thing.

And to make it topologically possible to draw black-majority districts, one needs the blacks to clump very tightly together. The more black-majority districts one tries to draw, the more every other district in Alabama must be a whiteland. Again, zero-sum game. (Math below.)

Perhaps you want to argue that this is still worth it! But to argue for the racial gerrymandering you should face the costs and trade-offs. You should have the courage to say "I want segregation, so I can have black-majority districts", because a high degree of segregation is a prerequisite to black-majority districts. Can't draw black-majority districts through a thoroughly integrated population.

The NYT instead decides to go with guilt-by-association to George Wallace, pretending it's a continuous history from a man who wanted segregation to Alabama refusing segregated districts. Piss on journalists.

---

Electoral district math: at seven districts, each one gets 14-15% of the population. (The current districts are all in this range.) Alabama has a 26% black population. To be the majority in two districts, one has to assign at least 8 percentage points of blacks to each. That's 16% in those two, leaving 10% for the other five. Possibly even more lopsided if the black majority districts are to have more margin for error and discrete subdistricts.

Splitting the remaining 10% or less gives an average of two percentage points or less in the remaining five districts. In practice some will cluster unevenly around that average, because Alabama's black population is very unevenly distributed.

Meanwhile, the majority-black districts by necessity have fewer whites than average for the state, so the remaining districts must have more whites than average, in a state that was over two-thirds white to begin with. Moving people around between districts does not change their sum.

The cost of two majority-black districts is that the other five districts will be so white, the whites in one of those districts outnumber the blacks in all five of those districts put together. 5:1 is a lower bound, 10:1 is likely to happen due to nonlinear scaling.

Trivia: with arbitrarily complex boundaries, you could gerrymander Alabama to have a whole 3 majority-black districts with a slim eight-to-seven majority, at the cost of the other 4 districts getting white:black ratios exceeding thirty-to-one.

[cantsayidont]

A common apologia for STAR TREK — particularly TOS, but extending to the newest shows as well — is that it wants or tries to be progressive, but is tripped up by the writers' unconscious biases or the ostensibly more backward social attitudes of its time (whatever time that may be). This argument is somewhat perplexing because STAR TREK has never been what you'd call subtle in expressing its liberal imperialist values, either in 1966–1968 or now.

The core of STAR TREK, which is explained clearly in Roddenberry's pitch and the TOS writer's bible (excerpted at some length in Stephen Whitfield's THE MAKING OF STAR TREK, inter alia), is a hybridization of Horatio Hornblower, the C.S. Forester adventure novels about a heroic British naval officer during the Napoleonic wars, and the American Western, a genre that still dominated a big swath of American TV drama in the period when STAR TREK was conceived. Roddenberry himself had previously written for some of those shows, in particular HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL, and his pitch line for STAR TREK was "WAGON TRAIN to the stars."

To its credit, STAR TREK ended up being about more than just that, but Roddenberry was very clear that at heart, the series was about extending the conquest of the American frontier to the stars. Of the Enterprise and the other ships of its class, Roddenberry said:

In addition to the twelve Starships, there are lesser classes of vessels, capable of operating over much more limited distances. They are involved in commercial ventures, survey work, archaeological expeditions, medical research, and so on. The Starships are the heavy cruisers, the ones which can best defend themselves as they probe farther and farther out, opening new areas … and then the others follow. [Whitfield, 204; emphasis added]

Because TOS avoids saying anything very substantive about civilian life and government outside of Starfleet, we actually know very little about factors may be driving this wave of colonialism. If Earth in the TOS-era is a post-scarcity paradise (which, it should be noted, the original show does not ever actually say), why leave home for a riskier, hardscrabble life on worlds like Rigel XII ("Mudd's Women") or Cestus III ("Arena")? Part of it is plainly capitalist interests: There are explicitly opportunities to strike it rich discovering or exploiting valuable resources (or fleecing those who have or hope to, as Harry Mudd does). The Federation is also keen to cement its political hold on worlds that are near the borders of rival empires; the plot of "The Trouble with Tribbles," for example, hinges on the Federation's determination to colonize Sherman's Planet, which is also claimed by the Klingon Empire.

However, these plot details are to some extent beside the point: The premise of STAR TREK, and of most Westerns, is that the importance and heroic necessity of colonizing and "developing" the frontier, bringing (white) civilization to the "savage" wilderness, is self-evident.

Much of STAR TREK is predicated on concepts of "social evolution," the idea that there are a series of consistently defined hierarchical stages from the primitive to the advanced. TOS often states this quite explicitly, but it has remained a key feature of the STAR TREK premise up to the present. This process of advancement is described as both natural and a matter of moral urgency: Kirk rails against the "stagnation" of less-advanced societies, and on multiple occasions argues that the importance of reversing stagnation (or devolution) justifies violating the Prime Directive with dramatic interventionist action to put a civilization back on what he considers the proper track.

The concepts of social evolution STAR TREK espouses are fundamentally racist — it's a philosophy that rationalizes colonial exploitation (and in the real world even slavery) — and play into the franchise's virulent anti-indigenous attitudes. Indeed, STAR TREK frequently takes an openly contemptuous view of "primitive" peoples, who in TOS are often presented as simpletons, either kindly child-men (e.g., "The Apple") or dangerous savages driven by quasi-animal cunning (as with some of the characters in "A Private Little War"). Probably the ugliest example in TOS is "The Paradise Syndrome, where Kirk loses his memory and falls in with a society of American Indians transported centuries earlier to a distant planet; the story emphasizes that, even deprived of the knowledge and technology of his century, Kirk is still the intellectual superior of the people around him (who of course are played by white actors in redface). However, this a recurring theme throughout STAR TREK: Indigenous species are consistently presented as something less than people unless their stage of advancement approximates that of 20th century Earth (as with the Roman proconsul in "Bread and Circuses," who is one of the very few indigenous "primitives" to be credited with any kind of intellectual sophistication). The application of the Prime Directive (which is wildly inconsistent and honored more in the breach than in the observance) is based not on respect for cultural differences, but on a patronizing desire to "protect" indigenous pre-warp civilizations from ideas that their primitive minds can't yet handle.

STAR TREK pays lip service to the idea of cultural and racial diversity, and the Vulcan slogan (in the third season of TOS) "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations." However, what it most consistently espouses is the importance of ensuring the march of social evolution along orthodox lines and the eventual absorption of other races, cultures, and species into the Federation's (white American liberal) ideas of socioeconomic and technological progress. As Kirk says to Ayelborne in "Errand of Mercy":

KIRK: Gentlemen, I must get you to reconsider. We can be of immense help to you. In addition to military aid, we can send you specialists, technicians. We can show you how to feed a thousand people where one was fed before. We can help you build schools, educate the young in the latest technological and scientific skills. Your public facilities are almost nonexistent. We can help you remake your world, end disease, hunger, hardship. All we ask in return is that you let us help you. Now.

"Errand of Mercy" is notable in that Kirk's condescension toward the Organians proves to be ill-founded: What he and Spock assumed was a stagnant, primitive society is actually a kind of backyard bird feeder maintained by a vastly more advanced species that is trying very hard to be patient as Kirk and the Klingons strut around making pronouncements. At the end of the episode, Kirk admits openly that he's embarrassed at how badly he misread the situation. However, this doesn't ultimately lead him to question his presumptions about social progress; he simply admits that in this specific case, they were misapplied.

The result of "Errand of Mercy," as revealed in the second season of TOS, is a peace treaty between the Federation and Klingons that makes the show's endorsement of colonialism and economic imperialism that much clearer: As we're told in "The Trouble with Tribbles," under this new treaty, if there is a territorial dispute over a newly discovered or colonized world, "one side or the other must prove it can develop the planet most efficiently," with the ostensibly benevolent and freedom-loving Federation and the ostensibly "brutal and aggressive" Klingon Empire vying to determine who will be permitted to exploit that world and its resources. The exact role of the Organians in the framing of this treaty is unclear — they have no need of or interest in Federation-style economic development, and nothing in "Errand of Mercy" suggests that they see much value in it, although the Organians do say they find the prospect of a shooting war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire both morally objectionable and "intensely painful" — but its result is to more firmly establish the Cold War conflict between the Federation and Klingons as the competition of two rival colonial powers for control of valuable territory and resources. Their conflict is a primarily economic one, not really substantively based on what Kor calls the "minor ideological differences" between the two empires, which both Kor and the Organians regard as incidental. (Kirk takes issue with that contention, but as previously noted, Kirk has more than once used the explicit threat of planetary genocide to get what he wants, so Kor probably has a point here!)

Later STAR TREK shows are sometimes more self-conscious about these values, but they seldom actually question them, and there's really only so far that STAR TREK can move these load-bearing narrative elements without becoming something really fundamentally different than it is. Moreover, DISCOVERY, STRANGE NEW WORLDS, and PICARD have seemed committed to doubling down on many of the franchise's more disturbing ideological elements, while attempting to paper over viewer unease with appeals to nostalgia, faux-patriotism, and sentimentality.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

NOV 20, 2023

Yesterday, David Roberts of the energy and politics newsletter Volts noted that a Washington Post article illustrated how right-wing extremism is accomplishing its goal of destroying faith in democracy. Examining how “in a swing Wisconsin county, everyone is tired of politics,” the article revealed how right-wing extremism has sucked up so much media oxygen that people have tuned out, making them unaware that Biden and the Democrats are doing their best to deliver precisely what those in the article claim to want: compromise, access to abortion, affordable health care, and gun safety. 

One person interviewed said, “I can’t really speak to anything [Biden] has done because I’ve tuned it out, like a lot of people have. We’re so tired of the us-against-them politics.” Roberts points out that “both sides” are not extremists, but many Americans have no idea that the Democrats are actually trying to govern, including by reaching across the aisle. Roberts notes that the media focus on the right wing enables the right wing to define our politics. That, in turn, serves the radical right by destroying Americans’ faith in our democratic government. 

Former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele echoed that observation this morning when he wrote, “We need to stop the false equivalency BS between Biden and Trump. Only one acts with the intention to do real harm.”

Indeed, as David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo puts it, “the gathering storm of Trump 2.0 is upon us,” and Trump and his people are telling us exactly what a second Trump term would look like. Yesterday, Trump echoed his “vermin” post of the other day, saying: “2024 is our final battle. With you at my side, we will demolish the Deep State, we will expel the warmongers from our government, we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the Communists, Marxists, and Fascists, we will throw off the sick political class that hates our Country, we will rout the Fake News Media, we will evict Joe Biden from the White House, and we will FINISH THE JOB ONCE AND FOR ALL!”   

Trump’s open swing toward authoritarianism should be disqualifying even for Republicans—can you imagine Ronald Reagan talking this way?—but MAGA Republicans are lining up behind him. Last week the Texas legislature passed a bill to seize immigration authority from the federal government in what is a clear violation of the U.S. Constitution, and yesterday, Texas governor Greg Abbott announced that he was “proud to endorse” Trump for president because of his proposed border policies (which include the deportation of 10 million people).

House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has also endorsed Trump, and on Friday he announced he was ordering the release of more than 40,000 hours of tapes from the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, answering the demands of far-right congress members who insist the tapes will prove there was no such attack despite the conclusion of the House committee investigating the attack that Trump criminally conspired to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and refused to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol. 

Trump loyalist Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) promptly spread a debunked conspiracy theory that one of the attackers shown in the tapes, Kevin Lyons, was actually a law enforcement officer hiding a badge. Lyons—who was not, in fact, a police officer—was carrying a vape and a photo he stole from then–House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office and is now serving a 51-month prison sentence. (Former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) tweeted: “Hey [Mike Lee]—heads up. A nutball conspiracy theorist appears to be posting from your account.”)

Both E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post and Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer noted yesterday that MAGA Republicans have no policies for addressing inflation or relations with China or gun safety; instead, they have coalesced only around the belief that officials in “the administrative state” thwarted Trump in his first term and that a second term will be about revenge on his enemies and smashing American liberalism. 

MIke Davis, one of the men under consideration for attorney general, told a podcast host in September that he would “unleash hell on Washington, D.C.,” getting rid of career politicians, indicting President Joe Biden “and every other scumball, sleazeball Biden,” and helping pardon those found guilty of crimes associated with the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. “We’re gonna deport a lot of people, 10 million people and growing—anchor babies, their parents, their grandparents,” Davis said. “We’re gonna put kids in cages. It’s gonna be glorious. We’re gonna detain a lot of people in the D.C. gulag and Gitmo.”

In the Washington Post, Josh Dawsey talked to former Trump officials who do not believe Trump should be anywhere near the presidency, and yet they either fear for their safety if they oppose him or despair that nothing they say seems to matter. John F. Kelly, Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, told Dawsey that it is beyond his comprehension that Trump has the support he does. 

“I came out and told people the awful things he said about wounded soldiers, and it didn’t have half a day’s bounce. You had his attorney general Bill Barr come out, and not a half a day’s bounce. If anything, his numbers go up. It might even move the needle in the wrong direction. I think we’re in a dangerous zone in our country,” Kelly said.  

Part of the attraction of right-wing figures is they offer easy solutions to the complicated issues of the modern world. Argentina has inflation over 140%, and 40% of its people live in poverty. Yesterday, voters elected as president far-right libertarian Javier Milei, who is known as “El Loco” (The Madman). Milei wants to legalize the sale of organs, denies climate change, and wielded a chainsaw on the campaign trail to show he would cut down the state and “exterminate” inflation. Both Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, two far-right former presidents who launched attacks against their own governments, congratulated him. 

In 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower took on the question of authoritarianism. Robert J. Biggs, a terminally ill World War II veteran, wrote to Eisenhower, asking him to cut through the confusion of the postwar years. “We wait for someone to speak for us and back him completely if the statement is made in truth,” Biggs wrote. Eisenhower responded at length. While unity was imperative in the military, he said, “in a democracy debate is the breath of life. This is to me what Lincoln meant by government ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people.’” 

Dictators, Eisenhower wrote, “make one contribution to their people which leads them to tend to support such systems—freedom from the necessity of informing themselves and making up their own minds concerning these tremendous complex and difficult questions.” 

Once again, liberal democracy is under attack, but it is notable—to me, anyway, as I watch to see how the public conversation is changing—that more and more people are stepping up to defend it. In the New York Times today, legal scholar Cass Sunstein warned that “[o]n the left, some people insist that liberalism is exhausted and dying, and unable to handle the problems posed by entrenched inequalities, corporate power and environmental degradation. On the right, some people think that liberalism is responsible for the collapse of traditional values, rampant criminality, disrespect for authority and widespread immorality.”

Sunstein went on to defend liberalism in a 34-point description, but his first point was the most important: “Liberals believe in six things,” he wrote: “freedom, human rights, pluralism, security, the rule of law and democracy,” including fact-based debate and accountability of elected officials to the people.

Finally, former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, who was a staunch advocate for the health and empowerment of marginalized people—and who embodied the principles Sunstein listed, though that’s not why I’m mentioning her—died yesterday at 96. “Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished,” former President Jimmy Carter said in a statement. 

More to the point, perhaps, considering the Carters’ profound humanity, is that when journalist Katie Couric once asked President Carter whether winning a Nobel Peace Prize or being elected president of the United States was the most exciting thing that ever happened to him, Carter answered: “When Rosalynn said she’d marry me—I think that’s the most exciting thing.”

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[deadpresidents]

Over the years, Ford’s attention to the residents of the Fifth District has bordered on the pastoral. When, early in his Congressional career, a visiting member of the Daughters of the American Revolution fell on a Washington street corner and broke her ankle, no one knew how she was going to get back to Michigan, until Ford offered to drive her there himself. A quarter century later, he still insists that every letter addressed to him receive a personal response, within twenty-four hours if possible. This includes high school debaters researching their topic, candidates for a small business loan and the female traveler who desires an introduction to officials at the U.S. embassy in London so “she won’t be lonely on Thanksgiving Day.” Following a rash of UFO sightings in Southern Michigan, Ford was showered with letters and telegrams demanding a federal investigation. He duly complied, even while acknowledging doubts about “planet people” possessed of the antigravity secret roaming the universe at fifty thousand miles per hour.

Ford’s Capitol Hill office opens at seven a.m., two hours ahead of his colleagues. “We campaign 365 days a year,” he reminds his staff. As a result, scarcely a birthday, wedding, obituary, civic award or graduating class in West Michigan goes unrecognized by the United States Congress. An elderly couple, otherwise unknown to their Congressman, is nevertheless touched to receive anniversary greetings under his signature. Years later, on learning that the wife is in a nursing home, close to death, Ford drops by for a consoling visit. “The strongest weapon in a political campaign is the good credited to you by word of mouth” -- this Ford credo goes a long way toward explaining him and the Congressional mindset he personifies. By stressing individual contacts over ideological mandates, Ford defines leadership in transactional terms, constituent service on a grand scale. His is a vision of government suspicious of visionaries. When asked the secret of his political success, Ford reveals more than he perhaps intends by replying, “I made everyone else’s problems my problems.”

-- Richard Norton Smith, on Gerald Ford’s devotion to his constituents during his nearly quarter-century of service representing Michigan in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Smith’s new book, An Ordinary Man: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford [BOOK | KINDLE], is the definitive biography ever written about President Ford and is available now.

[clonerightsagenda]

I'm sure there's some kind of bureaucratic l reason for it, but can you say why the US insists on calling any form of human settlement a "city", regardless of size? UK person here, from a community of ~6,000 I would describe as a small town. The Missouri "location" of ~245 recently posted wouldn't be deemed a respectable urban area even by the ancient Sumerians. It doesn't even deserve to be called a village. It's a hamlet, a rural nowhere-place. Rant over, please help me understand.

Huh, I never really thought about it, I just use 'city' as a catchall and I think a lot of Americans do as well. Upon receiving this ask I looked it up and:

(5) The term “city” means (A) any unit of general local government which is classified as a municipality by the United States Bureau of the Census or (B) any other unit of general local government which is a town or township and which, in the determination of the Secretary, (i) possesses powers and performs functions comparable to these associated with municipalities, (ii) is closely settled, and (iii) contains within its boundaries no incorporated places as defined by the United States Bureau of the Census which have not entered into cooperation agreements with such town or township to undertake or to assist in the undertaking of essential community development and housing assistance activities. 42 U.S.C. Title 42 CHAPTER 69 (nice) Sec. 5302

So I guess under US law it's all cities, baby. That being said you have sent me down a rabbit hole here and in Missouri apparently unincorporated towns with under 500 inhabitants are legally villages BUT if they have more than 200 inhabitants they can vote to become a "fourth class" city. There are more types of cities than I ever knew and they can evolve like Pokemon. But if I am understanding this all correctly, even if you are legally a village in Missouri under federal law you're still a city. Even if you're a town. And I suppose that legal catchall has made it into our typical parlance. As for the reason why? No clue. Maybe to make writing the laws simpler?

[talisidekick]

*me, getting bored and going over content I haven't touched since Grade 8 Social Studies:*

Feudalism: an economic, political, military, and social system where in one person (Emperor, Empress, King, Queen, or otherwise "the Crown") owned everything, and granted control of land, resources, means of production, and special rights and permissions of regulation (fiefs) to select individuals (referred to as vassals as well as Lord, Lady, Baron, Baroness, or in the case of wider imperialism; king or queen under an emperor or empress) in return for military services, labour management services, or other services and obligations. The peasantry, or common class, was provided access to the provided land with expectation and obligation of provided labour, a cut of the product of labour, and homage as rent for continued tennancy. Market value of goods and services changed based on tithes, taxes, and decisions of lordship.

Capitalism: a political, social, economic, and optionally military system whereby through recognition and limited regulation of a higher ruling body of authority (goverment) of private ownership - land, resources, and the means of production are controlled by a select group of individuals or organizations to generate wealth and profit through private trade via a 'free market' (free market defined as a market whereby value of goods is determined by unrestricted competition between businesses). The common or working class provides labour to private owners in return for profit (wages) at a rate or value determined largely by the private owners via agreement of the worker to purchase ownership of the fruits of their own collective labour, needed basic and occasional superfluous ammenities, or offer up as rent for tennancy in shelter or access to the means to live. Optionally, any individual of the system may offer their labour in service of the governing body or military unless forced by conscription.

Socialism: a political, social, economic, and optionally military system whereby the majority ownership of land, resources, and the means of production are owned by the community and in part regulated by the government or state. Some land, resources, means of production, and the means of distribution may still be privately owned but still remain regulated by the community or governing body. The individual provides labour in service of the community and in turn is assured the basic means to live via a standardized or regulated competitive wage that can optionally be used to purchase private ownership of products (clothing, furnishings, personal items, basic tools and equipment). Market value of goods and services is in part determined by the community and in part determined by competition between businesses. Optionally, any individual of the system may offer their labour in service of the governing body or military unless forced by conscription.

Communism: a political, social, economic, and optionally military system whereby the ownership of land, resources, and the means of production are owned by the community and regulated by the government or state (local and federal). The individual provides labour and is in turn afforded a wage based on their needs that can be optionally used to purchase the private ownership of products or purchase services. Market value is regulated by the state and changes based on distribution network operation cost. Optionally, any individual of the system may offer their labour in service of the governing body or military unless forced by conscription.

*also me:* From my perspective as a poor person, Capitalism and Feudalism really aren't any different economically. The only thing that changed was that Capitalism granted limited self-advocacy for marginally better treatment of the poor via allowing Democracy to replace the Monarchy as a system of absolute governance. Ie, providing the collective majority a voice against the ruling minority. However, that self-advocacy is still largely at the whims of a richer minority of people able to influence the system of governance. If we're looking for a solution to provide better social and economic stability of a nation, that means actually supporting the individuals ability to participate in the greater economy. Which means recognizing that providing the working majority with more political leveraging power is what drives a nation and an economy to success. The method to do that is by providing the individual the wealth necessary to participate in the economic system that shapes and influences the government, to remove the collective poorer majority from the reliance on the rich minority for the means to live and prosper. This means a system like Socialism, where by private ownership is limited away from the land, basic resources, and means of production nation and a people need to prosper would be an ideal next step. The same roadblocks to achieving Socialism are the same roadblocks to achieve Capitalism from Feudalism; the richer ruling minority would suffer a loss in profit percentage and in political control in favour of a more collaborative system of governance and economy. And if disatisfaction at wealth and power disparity is what fuels economic and political change, eventually even Socialism would advance, albeit slowly, to Communism.

I only see that as a good thing. - Lillian📖

Damn, I'm not really a capitalist at heart am I? - Cinder🔥

Nope, we never have been. Just remember, a Capitalist calling Socialism or Socialists "Communism Lite" isn't an incorrect perspective. By that same perspective Capitalism is just "Socialism Lite"; and if the late-stage de-evolution of Capitalism is just a reimagined Feudalism to the poorer class, then so will late-stage de-evolution of Socialism be a reimagined Capitalism to that same poorer class. - Gabby🍵

And the only way forward will be through revolution as it always has been. - Vi💧

[nokingsonlyfooles]

I'm staring to get scared...

I've been scared, but let me unpack this for people who don't understand me as well as my spouse...

Oh. Good. Yay. Right? Justice?

No.

Biden, in a statement, said his actions would help make the "promise of equal justice a reality." ...The pardon also does not apply to those in the U.S. unlawfully at the time of their offense.

Here's the thing: If the law is unfair (and it is) is it fair to say, Well, only #Real Americans deserve to have that unfairness addressed? Is "equal justice" the intent here?

Justice isn't a goddamn bag of Oreos. It is good for you. You don't have to seal up the bag and go, "Ya know, that's enough for right now. Don't want to eat the whole thing in one sitting! Let's save the undocumented immigrants, who are also disproportionately punished based on race and class, for later." No! You're not done yet! You're not allowed to pick out the ones you don't like and call yourself fair and just! And, btw, the unopened bags of Justice have been piling up around here for quite some time. You have a lot more to do.

And, if we're going to look at this in the spirit of bipartisan compromise (between two parties who keep saying the other party is trying to destroy democracy?!?) I'm not comfortable with who has been assigned the consequences of the compromising. Neither are a lot of other people who share my heritage. The US government is looking to legislate more people into illegality even as we speak. I think the decision has been made on who's going under the bus so that "democracy" can continue. It's (among others) the folks fleeing political unrest and violence fomented by the US out of anti-communist paranoia, social scapegoating, and a desire for cheaper fucking bananas.

It is possible to legislate "these people don't belong here" without banging on a podium and screaming about ultranationalism and polluted blood. That's the way we've done it for generations, only Trump started saying the quiet part loud and some folks got nervous.

I'm pretty fucking nervous, too, but for vastly different reasons.

This is a cold equation. This is being pushed through and publicized in the runup to the election. Biden is a friend to American Voters and let's define who those are and who they should be concerned with.

My fiction-based musing on trolley problems and who we're willing to throw under the bus to save someone who matters to us is still unpublished. Probably will be for a couple more months. But it has been on my mind because I'm seeing it play out in real life, again and again and again. We are exhausted from pulling levers and deciding who dies. A lot of us don't even consider it anymore. We accept the premise that politics means somebody has to die, and we pick a victim who bothers us the least. But how are you deciding who bothers you the least? And is that okay? And why do we have to keep doing it?

I will accept that we can't save everyone. The decisions come fast, and the decision-making process is slow. But this thing where we create law-breakers and then shrug and go, "Oh, well. They have less value to society," is some bullshit. And if you didn't notice that before, the messaging of, "It's no longer expedient to do this to marijuana-users, so let's do it to border-crossers - but, shhh, don't report it that way," should hammer that home. It's just another dog whistle for a racialized minority, one that apparently didn't turn out quite enough for the Democrats in 2020.

You don't have to wait for Trump to see politicians taking it out on their enemies while in office. It's just that the professional, civil ones confine their retribution to whoever the American public is willing to throw away. It's not personal. It's political. YOU get to decide who we kill next November! Well, we've already reached an agreement on immigrants, Palestinians, women, and Blacks - but you can raise or lower the volume on their screaming, and decide whether the folks in charge are gleeful or disapproving. And is there anyone else you (the majority of voters) are willing to lose? We're always listening! Just let us know! We may need to kill a few more people in the spirit of bipartisan compromise and we'd like to upset you as little as possible.

I can't accept that this is the cost of doing business anymore. I'm fucking ashamed I accepted it for so long in the first place.

And... And I'm terrified of sitting up here and watching voters mechanically make choices between ever larger groups of potential victims as the only options on the ballot conspire to rack up the price.

[landwriter]

I'm not Canadian but now I wanna know which Canadian province is bilingual... Since you say Quebec isn't bilingual (I assume it's monolingual French?) I'm gonna guess Manitoba might be ? I know Winnipeg at least has a sizeable French speaking population

That would be New Brunswick!

Anon, this unintentionally absolutely got me going about Canadian national identity and myth-making as a 'multicultural' society, so I am going to go ahead and put the rest of this under the cut for people who would like their language trivia without that.

French settlement of the region is evident in the Mí'kmaq word for cow, Wenjti'am, which translates to 'French moose', from Frenchman/person wenuj and moose tia'm. (Other neat facts: caribou also originates from Mí'kmaq, and means 'snow shoveler' because of how they use their antlers to push aside the snow and get at greens. Mí'kmaq itself is a plural noun that means 'my friends'.)

In almost every part of Canada, there are pockets of Francophone community, but out east in Maritime Canada there is specifically l'Acadie, a distinct linguistic and ethnic group descended from French colonists who settled in that particular region of Nouvelle France. These are the same folk whose subsequent violent displacement by the British resulted, among other things, in recruitment and resettlement to the Spanish colony of Luisiana, and in turn who contributed to the formation of Cajun culture. I've linked the wiki on Acadians above because I can't speak much beyond that but it's worth a read. That part of Canadian colonial history is, unsurprisingly, not heavily taught in English speaking schools out west. What little I've learned has come from French classes. New Brunswick has the highest population of Acadians in Canada outside of Quebec.

Acadians, their history, and New Brunswick being a bilingual province make a good opportunity to note an important distinction between Canada and the United States when it comes to how ethnic, cultural, and linguistic plurality has been historically received/perceived in the two colonial societies. While the U.S. is a 'melting pot' (implying the expectation of assimilation and the dissolution of previous identity in favour of a common mean), Canada very much nationally and internationally advances a brand of multiculturalism free of assimilation and based on coexistence that has been termed a 'mosaic' since the early 20th century. If this sounds silly, it's because it is. But it's important to understand how it's a huge part of our national identity.

In 1965, John Porter published a massively influential sociological study and named it instead a 'vertical mosaic', that is, one with uneven access to power, and everyone nodded along very enthusiastically, including our government, who in 1971 announced an official policy of bilingualism (federally!) and multiculturalism, which more or less meant the government would, in law, policy, and practice, respect the diverse society of myriad religions, languages, and cultures, etc, in Canada.

It took another 25 years after 1971 to close the last residential school, but nevermind that. It's in our laws, dontcha know. No assimilation here!

I truly cannot think easily of another nation that has so successfully began a project of defining ourselves by multiculturalism and tolerance, and created a goody-two-shoes international brand of pacifism and politeness, while actively engaging in genocide. (This is not a take, this is a fact.)

There are other powerful Canadian myths too, in our art and our literature. The famous and beautiful landscapes that the Group of Seven painted in the 20th century, striking out to create a true 'Canadian' art movement (and succeeding), depict an empty and untouched wilderness. But the land wasn't empty. It never has been. Yet these landscapes told Canadians grasping for national identity then, told the world: this is Canadian art. Wilderness. Terra nullius. Our unmastered land in description and justification.

This is one of the reasons why, in academia, I was so interested in the building of national identity, especially as a young project, a relative project, and the knock-on effects of those definitions. The power of the national story. The ways we tell it. It's also why I am, overall, absolutely obsessed with narrative and myth and storytelling. It's not a hokey thing to say they have real power. Laws and legislation are only the bones of a country. Stories of itself are its flesh.

Anyways, instead of Group of Seven, I'd rather you all were introduced to Kent Monkman: (1) (2) (3) - full gallery

[kp777]

By Asher Lehrer-Small

The Guardian

May 1, 2023

The defining experience of Jordan Zamora-Garcia’s high school career – a hands-on group project in civics class that spurred a new city ordinance in his Austin suburb – would now violate Texas law.

Since Texas lawmakers in 2021 passed a ban on lessons teaching that any one group is “inherently racist, sexist or oppressive”, a little-noticed provision of that legislation has triggered a massive fallout for civics education across the state.

Tucked into page 8 is a stipulation outlawing all assignments involving “direct communication” between students and their federal, state or local officials – short-circuiting the training young Texans receive to participate in democracy itself.

Zamora-Garcia’s 2017 project to add student advisers to the city council, and others like it involving research and meetings with elected representatives, would stand in direct violation.

Since 2021, 18 states have passed laws restricting teachings on race and gender. But Texas is the only one nationwide to suppress students’ interactions with elected officials in class projects, according to researchers at the free expression advocacy group Pen America.

Practically overnight, a growing movement to engage Texas students in real-world civics lessons evaporated. Teachers canceled time-honored assignments, districts reversed expansion plans with a celebrated civics education provider and a bill promoting student civics projects that received bipartisan support in 2019 was suddenly dead in the water.

“By the time we got to 2021, civics was the latest weapon in the culture wars,” state representative James Talarico, sponsor of that now defunct bill, said.

Texas does require high schoolers to take a semester of government and a semester of economics, and is one of 38 states nationwide that mandates at least a semester of civics. But students told the 74 the courses typically rely on book learning and memorization, without hands-on lessons in civic participation.

“Students are now banned from advocating for something like a stop sign in front of their school,” Talarico said.

Civics in retreat

The sections of the 2021 law limiting civic engagement pull directly from model legislation authored by the conservative scholar Stanley Kurtz, whose extensive writings seek to link an approach called “action civics” – what he calls “woke civics” – with leftist activism.

Kurtz argues the practice is a form of political “indoctrination” under the “deceptively soothing” heading of “civics”, a cause long celebrated on both the right andthe left.

The action civics model was popularized by the nonprofit Generation Citizen and is used in more than a thousand classrooms across at least eight states. It teaches students about government by having them pick a local issue, research it and present their findings to officials.

The central philosophy is that “students learn civics best by doing civics”, Generation Citizen policy director Andrew Wilkes said.

Generation Citizen’s method has been studied by several academic researchers who found participants experienced boosted civic knowledge and improvements in related academic areas like history and English.

Kurtz, however, contends the projects “tilt overwhelmingly to the left”.

“Political protest and lobbying ought to be done by students outside of school hours, independently of any class projects or grades,” he said in an email to the 74.

Civics experts, however, argued otherwise.

Representative Steve Toth and Senator Bryan Hughes, the GOP lawmakers who sponsored the 2021 Texas classroom censorship legislation, did not respond to requests for comment.

The 74 reviewed more than three dozen action civics projects in Texas from before the 2021 legislation and found that the vast majority dealt with hyperlocal, nonpartisan issues.

Students most often took up causes like bullying, youth vaping, movie nights in the park or bringing back student newspapers. A handful in Austin and nearby Elgin could be considered progressive, including projects dealing with gun control or school admissions prioritizing diversity, topics educators said students selected based on their own interests.

Under the 2021 law, student participants in all of those projects now must avoid contact with elected officials. The restrictions have resulted in initiatives more contained to schools themselves like advocacy for less-crowded hallways or longer lunch periods, educators said.

It’s an effort to “tamp down the next generation of leaders”, said Armando Orduña, the Houston executive director of Latinos for Education.

Though some project-based civics lessons in Texas continue with a paired-down scope, others have disappeared altogether.

One school district north of Dallas decided “out of an abundance of caution” to reverse years of precedent and stop offering course credit to students involved in a well-regarded national civic engagement program, the Texas Tribune first reported.

And Generation Citizen, too, has seen its footprint in Texas dwindle.

After a 2017 launch in the state, the organization underwent several years of steady growth, with more than a half-dozen districts using its programming or curricula.

Austin schools expanded their contract with the nonprofit to $58,000, according to records the 74 obtained from the district through a freedom of information request. And Dallas said it wanted to bring Generation Citizen programming to every high schooler in its 153,000-student district, former regional director Meredith Stefos Norris said.

Then came the 2021 legislative session and “everything got turned upside down”, said Megan Brandon, Generation Citizen’s current Texas program director. It thwarted their organization’s efforts and districts backed out of partnerships.

The organization now primarily works with just three Texas districts, including an updated contract with Austin schools for $3,000 – a tiny sliver of the sum from a few years prior.

Brandon, a former social studies teacher herself, grieves for the youth in her state. Her students in Bastrop outside Austin, most of whom did not have parents who attended college, never had access to civic engagement opportunities before her class, she said.

“Students in Texas need civics more than students in many other states,” she said. “It feels like we’re going backwards in time.”

‘It made me feel important’

Zamora-Garcia, Brandon’s former student whose youth representation quest changed a city ordinance, said the experience, now inaccessible to Texas students, had a profound impact on his academic career.

Mabel Zhu, who took the same class two years later, said the experience was “life-changing”, igniting her passion for civic engagement for years to come.

After the class, she began working with local nonprofits and served as the youth adviser on the Bastrop city council. She collaborated with the Cultural Arts Board to put up a mural that will define her city’s downtown space for years to come. A waving flag on the painting proclaims: “The future is ours!”

“Without [the class], I wouldn’t have been able to make such an impact within my community,” Zhu said.

But now, Tufts’s Kawashima-Ginsberg says, the new law may result in a generation of Texans growing up with a stunted sense of citizenship.

“It’s going to really damage their idea of what democracy is,” she said.

This report was first published by the 74, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news site covering education in America

[voskhozhdeniye]

Fascism, which has always been with us, is again ascendant. The far-right politician Giorgia Meloni won enough votes in a coalition with two other far-right parties, to become Italy’s first female prime minister on Sunday.

Meloni got her start in politics as a 15-year-old activist for the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement, founded after the World War II by supporters of Benito Mussolini. She calls EU bureaucrats agents of “nihilistic global elites driven by international finance.” She peddles the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory that non-white immigrants are being permitted to enter Western nations as part of a plot to undermine or “replace” the political power and culture of white people.

She has called on the Italian navy to turn back boats with immigrants, which the far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini did in 2018. Her Fratelli d’Italia, Brothers of Italy, party is a close ally of Hungary’s President, Viktor Orban. A European Parliament resolution recently declared that Hungary can no longer be defined as a democracy.

Meloni and Orban are not alone. Sweden Democrats, which took over 20 percent of the vote in Sweden’s general election last week to become the country’s second largest political party, was formed in 1988 from a neo-Nazi group called B.S.S., or Keep Sweden Swedish. It has deep fascist roots. Of the party’s 30 founders, 18 had Nazi affiliations, including several who served in the Waffen SS, according to Tony Gustaffson a historian and former Sweden Democrat member.

France’s Marine Le Pen took over 41 percent of the vote in April against Emmanuel Macron. In Spain, the hard-right Vox party is the third largest party in Spain’s Parliament. The far-right German AfD or Alternative for Germany partytook over 12 percent in federal elections in 2017, making it the third largest party, though it lost a couple percentage points in the 2021 elections.  

The U.S. has its own version of fascism embodied in a Republican party that coalesces in cult-like fashion around Donald Trump, embraces the magical thinking, misogyny, homophobia and white supremacy of the Christian Right and actively subverts the election process.

Economic collapse was indispensable to the Nazis’ rise to power. In the 1928 elections in Germany, the Nazi party received less than 3 percent of the vote. Then came the global financial crash of 1929. By early 1932, 40 percent of the German insured workforce, six million people, were unemployed. That same year, the Nazis became the largest political party in the German parliament.

The Weimar government, tone deaf and hostage to the big industrialists, prioritized paying bank loans and austerity rather than feeding and employing a desperate population. It foolishly imposed severe restrictions on who was eligible for unemployment insurance. Millions of Germans went hungry. Desperation and rage rippled through the population.

Mass rallies, led by a collection of buffoonish Nazis in brown uniforms who would have felt at home at Mar-a-Lago, denounced Jews, Communists, intellectuals, artists and the ruling class, as internal enemies. Hate was their main currency. It sold well. 

The evisceration of democratic procedures and institutions, however, preceded the Nazis’ ascension to power in 1933. The Reichstag, the German Parliament, was as dysfunctional as the U.S. Congress.

The reconfiguration of society under neoliberalism to exclusively benefit the billionaire class, the slashing and privatization of public services, including schools, hospitals and utilities, along with deindustrialization, the profligate pouring of state funds and resources into the war industry, at the expense of the nation’s infrastructure and social services, and the building of the world’s largest prison system and militarization of police, have predictable results.

At the heart of the problem is a loss of faith in traditional forms of government and democratic solutions. Fascism in the 1930s succeeded, as Peter Drucker observed, not because people believed its conspiracy theories and lies but in spite of the fact that they saw through them.

Fascism thrived in the face of “a hostile press, a hostile radio, a hostile cinema, a hostile church, and a hostile government which untiringly pointed out the Nazi lies, the Nazi inconsistency, the unattainability of their promises, and the dangers and folly of their course.” He added, “nobody would have been a Nazi if rational belief in the Nazi promises had been a prerequisite.”

As in the past, these new fascist parties cater to emotional yearnings. They give vent to the feelings of abandonment, worthlessness, despair and alienation. They promise unattainable miracles. They too peddle bizarre conspiracy theories including QAnon. But most of all, they promise vengeance against a ruling class that betrayed the nation.

[nicklloydnow]

“In 1926, the havoc wreaked by rail strikes led to the federal government passing the Railway Labor Act to give itself the power to impose labor settlements on the rail industry. The Biden administration used this authority to broker a tentative labor agreement that would ensure a 24 percent pay increase by 2024, annual $1,000 bonuses and a freeze on rising health care costs. But workers would be permitted only one paid personal day and no paid sick leave. Of 12 unions voting on the deal, four of them — representing 56 percent of union membership in the industry — refused to ratify it. Biden signed the legislation into law on Friday.

The railroad barons refuse to permit sick days because they have stripped the railroads down to skeleton crews in a process known as precision scheduled railroading, or PSR. In essence, no spare labor is available, which is why the reduced labor force is subjected to such punishingly short periods of time off and onerous working conditions.

Class struggle defines human history. We are dominated by a seemingly omnipotent corporate elite. Hostile to our most basic rights, this elite is disemboweling the nation; destroying basic institutions that foster the common good, including public schools, the postal service and health care; and is incapable of reforming itself. The only weapon left to thwart this ongoing pillage is the strike. Workers have the collective power to slash profits and cripple industry, which is why the ruling class has gone to such lengths to defang unions and outlaw strikes. A rail freight strike, it is estimated, would cost the U.S. economy $2 billion a day, with daily losses increasing the longer a strike continued.

The few unions that remain — only 10.7 percent of the workforce is unionized — have been largely domesticated, demoted into obsequious junior partners in the capitalist system. As of January 2022, private-sector unionization stood at its lowest point since the passage of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. And yet, 48 percent of U.S. workers say they would like to belong to a union.

(…)

“We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are,” Wendell Berry wrote. “Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all — by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians — be participating in its destruction? Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so, and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us. How do we submit? By not being radical enough. Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing.”

All the advances we made in the early 20th century through union strikes, government regulation, the New Deal, a fair tax code, the courts, an alternative press and mass movements have been reversed. The oligarchs are turning American workers — as they did in the 19th century steel and textile factories — into serfs, kept in check by onerous anti-union laws, militarized police, the world’s largest prison system, an electoral system dominated by corporate money and the most pervasive security and surveillance apparatus in human history.

The rich, throughout history, have subjugated and re-subjugated the populations they control. And the public, throughout history, has awakened to the class war waged by the oligarchs and plutocrats and revolted. Let us hope that defying Congress, freight railroad workers carry out a strike. A strike will at least expose the fangs of the ruling class, the courts, law enforcement and the National Guard, much as they did during labor unrest in the 20th century, and broadcast a very public message about whose interests they serve. Besides, a strike might work. Nothing else will.”

“The conditions faced by workers in the retail, retail support and logistics industries are harsh and often punishing during the holidays, as they are expected to work long shifts, extra hours and face expectations of fast turnaround. Public facing retail workers are also at risk of abuse and even assault from customers, who find themselves frustrated when problems with supply chains and understaffing lead to less-than-optimal customer service.

In addition, most workers do not have adequate pay. And all this, while many workers in non-unionized sectors lack a voice at work and may be paid as little as $7.25 an hour, the federal minimum wage. While large employers like Amazon set a $15 minimum wage that pressured other employers to raise their wages, many retail workers in the U.S. still make less than $15/hour, including the majority of big box and discount retail workers, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute. These low wages continue despite the difficulties that employers face in recruiting and retaining workers in our tight labor market.

(…)

Workers face challenges to creating a more humane system during the holidays, but they are not solely victims. In fact, workers continue to fight back through organizing, job actions, coalitions with community groups and work with unions.

The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) has worked to strengthen the bargaining position of workers in the broader retail industry through various organizing projects. This includes the international day of action, Make Amazon Pay, during which workers in Amazon warehouses all over the world engaged in actions ranging from walkouts to protests. Eighty unions in 32 countries (including many European countries where workers have better protections) participated in actions targeting Amazon. Workers organized another dozen actions in the United States, including protests in front of Jeff Bezos’s penthouse in New York City, and a picket line at the Bessemer, Alabama, facility.

In addition, RWDSU continues to work with community groups and workers centers to improve the lives of warehouse and other non-unionized workers, through efforts such as New York State’s Warehouse Workers Protection Act, which passed the state legislature in June 2022. This historic legislation would create baseline workplace protections and safety standards for all larger warehouse employers. As Chelsea Connor, director of communications from RWDSU told Truthout, “RWDSU has a long history of working to protect non-unionized workers. We have been working and we continue to work with community groups to improve the conditions for all workers.”

(…)

While Teamsters and other unionized workers enjoy protections under their contracts, this has not necessarily trickled through the industry. UPS drivers, who are Teamsters members, have gained many protections for themselves over the years, including the right to opt out of forced overtime. Unionized workers can freely speak up at work, push back against speed ups, and voice concerns about health and safety. But this is not the case across the industry. As Rand Wilson, a longtime organizer with TDU, told Truthout, “Workers with pretty identical conditions at an Amazon facility, without a union contract … they do what they are told or they can get fired.””

“Outside the south entrance of the hospital, nurses held a press conference, speaking out against their employer after their paid-leave benefits for bereavement, jury duty, and military service were terminated.

(…)

According to a Maine State Nurses Association release, no other employees at the hospital lost these benefits. A spokesperson for Maine Medical Center confirmed no changes to paid time off, including leaves, were made for employees not covered by the union's collective bargaining agreement.

(…)

Many speakers at the event said the decision to terminate their benefits was "illegal" as it related to labor laws.

(…)

This news comes as the capacity at Maine Medical Center is almost full. One factor is a lack of beds at long-term care facilities in Maine, meaning patients stay at the hospital waiting for a bed. The hospital spokesperson said there are about 70 patients waiting for discharge to a long-term facility on any given day.”

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Work Among the Unemployed Youth!” Young Worker.  June 15th, 1931. Page 3. ---- By N. Freed ---- Work among the unemployed cannot be overestimated. The Unemployed situation in Canada has taken on a real mass character. We can expect a much worse situation this coming winter as employment is continually on the decline. Unemployment is the cause of the whole working class today. We cannot carry on work among the employed workers in the shop unless we win the confidence of the unemployed workers - both are very closely linked up. Any underestimation of this work is just as dangerous and wrong as the underestimation of the work among the employed workers. This work has not been given the fullest consideration by our league as a whole. There was no national program worked out for this field of activity, as a result each district carried on work of its own. About a year ago or so our approach to the work among the unemployed wrong was entirely wrong. We issued general slogans such as $25,00 for married men, $18.00 for single men young workers. This of course could not bring us any results. It was only when we started to develop our demands on a more concrete basis, such as meal tickets, bed tickets etc. that we were successful in many cases to rally and win the confidence of the workers. Then we had the task of linking this up with the major demands such as non-contributory state unemployment insurance campaign. In this district because of the fact that this was realized at the beginning of last winter we can record some very good achievements. The unemployed workers in Winnipeg fully realize that it was as a result of the leadership given by the party and league that they have received some "relief." 

The methods of "relief” on the part of the boss class in their division of single and married men makes it rather difficult to define the actual demands of the young workers as in the category of single men there are both young and adult workers. The amount of relief they receive and the provisions under which they receive it are identical. Because of this situation it makes it also difficult on the organizational field. You could not organize youth sections in the employed association, you would have to organize single men and married men. This of course is not advisable. This does not necessarily mean that there are no specific youth demands amongst the unemployed youth. There are for instance discrimination against young workers. If their fathers are receiving relief or they have dependents they are denied any kind of relief. Particularly is this true among the unemployed girls, The girls are forced to accept house work and farm work just for their meals and if they refuse this they are cut off entirely and given no relief.

It is very difficult to organize the unemployed girls particularly as they don't hang out in the slave markets, soup kitchens and very few of them go to the employment agencies.

Those girls that we did succeed in drawing into our ranks because of lack of attention and also be cause of the uninteresting meeting dropped out. This proves to us that we have to find more attractive means to keep young workers in our unemployed associations, such as sports, etc. The to get best way to keep unemployed workers both the youth and adult work unemployed associations The by proving to them that this organization is fighting for their immediate demands. In Winnipeg, for instance there are about 3,000 unemployed workers in this association. A great number of them are young workers. This is because the unemployed association is continually taking up the grievances of the unemployed with the city authorities. There is a special grievance apartment set up for this purpose.

The Relief assigned by the governments Federal, Provincial and Municipal was to be direct relief, but the authorities found that it was more profitable for them to create relief jobs of all kinds. Most of them being of a non-productive character under the pretense that direct relief would spoil the moral of the people.

Unemployed workers are being entirely forced to work several days a week for this so-called "relief". At the present time the number of days of work have been increased while the relief has been cut down to a minimum. The single men are being forced into soup kitchens and flop house The married men's allowances have been cut. The task of the unemployed organization is that of carrying on a struggle against the soup kitchens and also to develop strikes on these relief jobs.

The coming National convention of the league has one of its tasks to work out a concrete program of demands for the Unemployed Youth to nationalize the work, to find suitable forms of work in order to keep the unemployed young work in our organizations. This question has got to be given very close consideration. It is necessary to make a study of the number of unemployed youth in Canada. Today we find that about 50 per cent of the working youth in Canada are unemployed and a great number are part time. This field of work is a very fruitful field for our league and party and much more consideration must be given to this question.

N. FREED

“Activities Among the Young Miners,” Young Worker. June 15th, 1931. --- By J. Tr ---- The activities of the YCL among the young miners was not stressed much at the unit meetings of the Lethbridge Sub-district. When circulars in this respect were sent out by the DEC the comrades took the matter up followed by very little discussion or no discussion at all and passed up with the feeling that there wa not much more to be done. It has even been proven where members took very lule part in Trade Union meetings. There was not much done in get- contacts with young miners.

We find that under the present conditions it is very easy to get contacts through talking with individuals about their everyday grievances. We have tried to get contacts by holding socials but little was accomplished, due to the fact. that the young miners took no interest in these socials. Just lately we have found out that much better results be gotten through having all members trying individual contacts with their miner friends.