Journal of the Plague Years

May 28, 2019

 

The news media is replete with stories that read more like game theory, reporting on the competing views of the dangers or rewards of impeaching Trump, with precious little emphasis on the growing list of underlying actions that would justify impeachment.  Everything is reported through the lense of risk assessment, although the only risk being assessed is the political one to the Democrats.  This framing renders the very real harm actual Americans are suffering due to this administration’s actions virtually invisible.  It ignores the ongoing damage that having a President who obstructs justice on a daily basis and refuses to recognize Congress as a co-equal branch of government does to our Constitutional system of government.  It ignores the political damage that such reporting inflicts on Democrats, by depicting them as hapless and timid in the face of lawlessness.

The press focuses narrowly on process questions and the Democratic Caucus’ ambivalence, to the exclusion of substantive reporting on any actual legislative agenda.  The general public could be forgiven for having no idea that the Democratic House majority has passed bills addressing such major issues as voting rights, climate change and the gender pay gap, (Source:  “Trump’s narrative is nonsense.  So why is the media buying it?” by Catherine Rampell, The Washington Post, 5/27/19).  Journalists’ obsession with the “Democrats in disarray” narrative misinforms the public and normalizes the spread of increasingly lawless and authoritarian behavior. Continue reading “Consider the source”

May 24, 2019

    Yesterday, the Trump Justice Department brought an 18 count indictment against Julian Assange, charging him under the Espionage Act for his publication of secret and classified information that Chelsea Manning provided to him in 2009 and 2010, (Source: U.S. v. Assange, Crim. No. 1:18-cr-111(CMH), E.D. Va., 5/23/19).  This superseding indictment sent a chill through the spine of journalists and First Amendment advocates everywhere, as it represented the first time that the act has been used to prosecute the recipient, rather than the source, of information, (Source: “Assange Indicted Under Espionage Act, Raising First Amendment Issues,” by Charlie Savage, The New York Times, 5/23/19).

    The superseding indictment had nothing to do with Assange’s role in hacking the DNC servers during the 2016 election, or with any alleged cooperation with the Russian interference in our election.  This prosecution seeks to punish Assange for his role in encouraging Chelsea Manning to provide him with, and then disclosing, scores of government documents that were classified at the SECRET level, defined as information whose “unauthorized disclosure reasonably could be expected to cause serious damage to national security,” (Source: U.S.v. Assange, p.16, par.45).  The government highlights Assange’s reckless disregard for the fact that his unredacted disclosure of the leaked information posed “a grave and imminent risk to human life,” (Source: U.S. v. Assange, pp. 11-12). Given the fact that these charges are being brought ten years after the fact, it is hard to credit concern for human life, hardly the hallmark of this administration, as the animating rationale behind this indictment. Continue reading “Hard cases make bad law”

May 21, 2019

Friday, May 17th was the 65th anniversary of the momentous Brown v. Board of Education decision.  Brown was a landmark, not just because it outlawed segregated schools, but because it declared “separate but equal,” the doctrinal foundation of Jim Crow, an unconstitutional violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.  Much has been written about the enduring resistance to that ruling.  It is a sad fact of life that American schools are more segregated in 2019 than since before Brown (Source:  “65 Years after Brown v. Board of Education, segregation is getting worse,” by P.R. Lockhart, Vox.com, 5/10/19).  We lament the fact that NYC schools are the most segregated in the nation and that there is zero political will to change that.

It is true that these facts are legitimately discouraging.  It is horrifying to watch the Republicans from Trump down to try to return this country to a pre-Brown era of a rigidly enforced segregation. We cannot allow those stark realities to paralyze us with fear, such that we squander the very real power that those of us who attended integrated schools in the twenty year window between the Brown decision and the Supreme Court’s 1974 Milliken v. Bradley decision, which sharply curtailed the ability to integrate public schools, still have. Continue reading “Pay it forward”

May 18, 2019

     Every day brings news of yet another state passing a retrograde abortion ban; seeking to outdo one another in cruelty and control over women.  We point out the glaring hypocrisy of laws purporting to protect lives in states with the worst infant mortality rates in the nation.  We point out the inconsistency of banning abortion, yet leaving embryos in fertility clinics unregulated, only to be told by an Alabama legislator, “The egg in the lab doesn’t apply.  It’s not in a woman.”  We should know by now that it is futile to try to appeal to their logic or empathy.  To the contrary, the proponents of these laws are leaning in to the dire consequences that will result.  They are apathetic, at best, about the increased infant and maternal mortality that women of color will suffer as a result.  They eagerly anticipate a future where they can control white women by controlling their fertility. Continue reading “The Trojan Horse”

May 15, 2019

 

On a daily basis, the news has us all cycling between alternate feelings of rage and dread.  Around the country, puritanical zealots are locked in a competition to brand every woman in America like Hester Prynne.  Not content with punishing women for daring to assert sexual agency, the Alabama legislature passed a bill yesterday that would make all women the powerless victims of depraved and criminal men.  The Alabama bill, which contained no exception for rape or incest, was stunning in its cruelty (Source:  “Alabama Lawmakers Vote to Effectively Ban Abortion in the State,” by Timothy Williams and Alan Blinder, The New York Times, 5/14/19).  With this spate of legislation, anti-abortion extremists seem closer than ever to their long sought goal, to tee up a challenge that would give the newly ultra-conservative Supreme Court the chance to overturn Roe v. Wade. Although women have always known that this was the endgame, the abject ignorance of actual biology and naked contempt for women displayed by these anti-abortion militants still feels like a punch to the gut. Continue reading “The “right to life””

May 12, 2019

     Mother’s Day was originally conceived in the early 20th Century by Anna Jarvis, as a way of honoring the hard work and activism of her own mother, Anna Reeves Jarvis.  Reeves Jarvis founded “Mother’s Day Work Clubs to combat poor health and sanitation in her community,” (Source: “Trending: The Mother of Mother’s Day,” by Erin Allen, Library of Congress Blog, blogs.loc.gov, 5/8/16).  When Reeves Jarvis died in 1905, her daughter began a campaign for a national holiday to recognize the selfless sacrifice of mothers everywhere.  President Woodrow Wilson signed a declaration establishing Mother’s Day as a national holiday in 1914. By the time of her death, Jarvis had come to loathe the crass commercialism of the holiday and was actively protesting how far the day strayed from her original intent.  One wonders what Jarvis would make of the way mothers, and the children they love, are treated in our country today.

     Consider the events of this past week alone.  On Tuesday, Governor Brian Kemp signed a bill making Georgia the fourth state this year to enact the so-called “heartbeat bill,” which bans abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detectable.  This law effectively prohibits abortions at six weeks, before many women even know that they are pregnant, rather than twenty weeks. The only exceptions in the law are for rape or incest, if a police report has been filed, (Source:  “Georgia Governor Signs ‘Fetal Heartbeat’ Abortion Ban,” by Patricia Mazzei and Alan Blinder, The New York Times, 5/7/19). Continue reading “Mother’s Day”

May 8, 2019

 

Even by the standard set by last two years, the last forty-eight hours have tested the strength of our commitment to our democracy or even our sense of shared humanity.  The events of the last two days should shake even the most complacent of us out of our torpor.  Yesterday, mere days after the shooting at UNC Charlotte that left two students dead, we learned of another shooting at a Denver, Colorado high school that left one student dead and eight others injured, (Source:  “1 student dead after shooting at Denver school,” by Susan Svrluga, Perry Stein and Nick Anderson, The Washington Post, 5/7/19).

The muted reaction to this latest incident shows how inured we have become to murderous violence in our schools.  Since the Parkland mass shooting 15 months ago, a school shooting has occurred once every twelve days, on average.  There have been 115 mass shootings in 2019 alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive.  The frequency of mass shootings is such that we treat them like annoying background noise, part and parcel of the cycle of man-made destruction that we are too obtuse and too violent to stop.  Not satisfied with merely condemning one million plant and animal species to extinction, we seem hellbent on destroying ourselves. Continue reading “At risk of extinction”

May 5, 2019

    May is a season of commencements. In May, we mark the rite of passage known as Decision Day, when thousands of high school seniors proclaim which college or university they have chosen as the place to embark on the first leg of their fledgling journey into adulthood.  It is also the season of college commencements, when thousands of hopeful young people don identical polyester robes and mortar boards to mark the successful completion of a degree, eager to embark on their next chapter; young adults launched into jobs or graduate programs.
       Graduation speakers exhort them to dream big, to change the world, to pursue passion rather than wealth, blithely oblivious to the nature of the world that we are bequeathing them. Many students enter adulthood burdened by crushing debt loads at 22.  Forty four million people owe a collective $1.5 trillion in student loan debt. The average graduate of the class of 2016 has an average of $37,000 in student loan debt, (Source: “Student Loan Debt Statistics in 2018: A $1.5 Trillion Dollar Crisis,” by Zack Friedman, Forbes.com, 6/13/18), and we foolishly wonder why they aren’t settling down, or even making time for sex.  In addition, nearly half of undergraduates at public colleges and universities are grappling with food insecurity, (Source:  “Tuition or Dinner? Nearly Half of College Students Surveyed in a New Report Are Going Hungry,” by Kaya Laterman, The New York Times, 5/2/19). Continue reading “Commencement Season”

April 27, 2019

     After weeks of vacillating, Joe Biden finally entered the presidential race early Thursday morning.  No doubt he was tempted by the spate of polls consistently showing him to be the front runner among twenty Democratic candidates.  Biden’s announcement video was a gauzy montage of American exceptionalism’s greatest hits, featuring footage of the Statue of Liberty,  Martin Luther King giving his “I Have A Dream” speech, and women marching for the right to vote. The video then cut to footage of the torch wielding Nazis in Charlottesville, before Biden solemnly intoned that we were in a battle for the soul of this nation.  Biden’s emotionally manipulative and oversimplified pitch cast the election as a Manichean struggle between good and evil.  

    The truth is decidedly more complex, as Biden proved within 24 hours of his entry into the race.  We learned that he had telephoned Anita Hill to seek absolution for his role during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.  Biden called Hill a few weeks before his announcement to express “regret for what she had endured,” a curiously passive construction considering that Biden was the Chair of the Senate Judiciary at the time, (Source:  “Joe Biden Expresses Regret to Anita Hill, but She Says ‘I’m Sorry’ Is Not Enough,” by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Carl Hulse, The New York Times, 4/25/19).  The next day on “The View,” Biden was no better,despite Joy Behar’s prompting that he needed to offer her “a straightforward apology.” Continue reading “Back to “normal?””

April 24, 2019

 

In the six days since the public release of the Mueller Report, the Democrats have been furiously calculating how best to respond to its revelations.  Among the Presidential candidates, only Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro and Kamala Harris have expressly called for impeachment, while Bernie Sanders has urged caution.  House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said that “going forward on impeachment is not worthwhile at this point,” preferring to rely on an election some 18 months hence, (Source: “Senior Democrat Steny Hoyer:  Impeachment of Donald Trump ‘not worthwhile’ at this point,” by Maureen Groppe, Eliza Collins and Christal Hayes, USAToday.com, 4/18/19).  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been trying to tamp down her Caucus’ push for impeachment, “arguing…that Democrats can hold Trump accountable through aggressive investigations,” (Source:  “‘We’re not there yet:’  Pelosi pushes back on impeachment as more Democrats call for proceedings,” by Rachael Bade, The Washington Post, 4/23/19). Continue reading “Asymmetrical warfare”