Journal of the Plague Years

February 5th, 2019

 

Tonight the Prevaricator-in-Chief will ascend to the podium in our august Capitol and unleash a steady stream of lies.  We know this because he has been documented making 6420 false claims in 649 days.  We know this because previews of the speech have indicated that Trump will stress unity and bi-partisanship, claiming that “together we can break decades of political stalemate,” (Source:  “Trump to offer ‘aspirational,’ ‘visionary’ path in State of the Union address,” by David Nakamura and Josh Dawsey, The Washington Post, 2/1/19).

That would be risible if it were not our own American tragedy.  Trump cannot credibly call for unity when he has taken every opportunity to sow division among Americans since he began his campaign by demonizing Mexican immigrants as drug dealers, criminals and rapists.  Throughout his tenure, he has pursued policies that single out people of color and LGBTQ Americans for particular harm, whether by attempting to end Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of people from Haiti,  El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Nepal and Sudan; refusing to provide protection for Dreamers or banning transgender troops from serving in the military.

Similarly, Trump’s calls for bipartisanship fall flat.  He has mocked Democratic legislators, delighting in tagging them with derisive nicknames like “Crying” Chuck Schumer or Adam Schi[tt].  Trump has repeatedly insulted Maxine Waters’ intelligence.  All that has changed is that Democrats control the House and are not shy about flexing their muscle.  Trump’s calls for comity are a “Hail Mary” pass designed to peel off a few centrist Democrats.  Trump should have learned from the shutdown fiasco that it won’t work. Continue reading “The State of our union 2019”

February 3, 2019

      On Friday, a picture surfaced from Governor Ralph Northam’s medical school yearbook depicting two people side by side —one in blackface and the other in a full Klan uniform, including the hood.  The yearbook is not from 1954 or 1964, but 1984, when Ralph Northam was a 25 year old fledgling doctor, (Source: “Virginia Governor defies national uproar,” by Laura Vozzella and Gregory S. Schneider, The Washington Post, 2/2/19).  Northam’s reaction has been to play the befuddled country doctor, first apologizing, then denying he was in the photograph (the “Shaggy” defense), and then admitting he wore blackface on another occasion, in a dance contest where he impersonated Michael Jackson.

    This would be comical, if the implications weren’t so grave.  There is simply no excuse for an adult man in the 1980s thinking that dressing up in blackface and klan robes was harmless fun.  Despite his denials, the presence of that picture on Northam’s yearbook page is a chilling window into, at the very least, what he thought of Black people as he was about to enter the medical profession. From James Marion Sims,  the “father of modern gynecology,” who experimented on enslaved women without anesthesia, to the infamous Tuskegee experiment, in which doctors employed by the federal government withheld treatment from Black male patients with syphilis and lied to them for forty years (!), to the “immortal” Henrietta Lacks, source of the famous  HeLa cells which were harvested without the knowledge or consent of Lacks or her family, there is a long and sordid history in this country of experimentation and exploitation of Black people at the hands of white doctors.  We have every right to say that the photo proves that Northam is unfit to lead the state of Virginia. Continue reading ““It wasn’t me””

January 31, 2019

 

Our placid workday routine was shattered Tuesday afternoon by the stunning news of the homophobic and racist attack on Jussie Smollett.  Each detail of the assault was horrifying – the slurs hurled by the perpetrators, the bleach they poured on him, and most chillingly, their attempt to lynch him, tying a rope around his neck, (Source:  “‘Empire’ star Jussie Smollett attacked in possible hate crime,” by Sandra Gonzalez, CNN.com, 1/30/19).  Once the news broke, social media feeds of Black queer men and Black women were filled with images of the warm multi-talented actor with the hashtag, #JusticeforJussie.  Other folks were eerily silent, or worse still, took to trolling social media to doubt the veracity of Smollett’s account.  Even in the face of something as blatant as this, the press was maddeningly circumspect, calling it a “possible hate crime.”  If an attempted lynching while shouting racial slurs doesn’t constitute a hate crime, nothing does and words have no meaning. Continue reading “(All)Black Lives Matter”

January 29, 2019

 

As federal workers streamed backed into their offices yesterday, on the first Monday after the entirely avoidable disaster of a 35 day government shutdown, people everywhere were busily trying to quantify the damage.  The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the shutdown led to $11 billion dollars in economic losses, $3 billion of which would never be recovered, (Source:  “CBO:  Shutdown cost economy $3 billion,” by Niv Ellis, TheHill.com, 1/28/19).

Elsewhere, pundits and pollsters were calculating the loss in terms of the drop in Trump and the Republican Congressional members’ poll numbers.  A Politico/Morning Consult poll found the shutdown had driven Trump’s disapproval ratings to an all time high, at 57%, and that nearly the same percentage blamed Congressional Republicans rather than Democrats.  A CBS poll found that 70% of voters did not think a wall was worth shutting down the government.  Most importantly, Trump has lost ground with key components of his base:   suburban men, white evangelicals and men without a college degree, (Source:  “The Shutdown Leaves Trump’s Base Cracked,” by David Graham, TheAtlantic.com, 1/26/19).  We may have finally reached the point at which people’s economic self-interest outweighs their racism. Continue reading “The price of everything”

January 23, 2019

     Now that our federal government has been shuttered for 33 days, the impact is being felt beyond the 800,000 federal workers (and countless federal contractors) going without pay.  Yesterday, the Commandant of the Coast Guard released an unprecedented video decrying the fact that service members had rely on food pantries while protecting our nation’s coasts without pay, (Source:  ‘Unacceptable’:  Coast Guard’s top officer criticizes lack of payment in government shutdown”, by Dan LaMothe, The Washington Post, 1/22/19).  The FBI Agents Association released an anonymous report depicting an agency  whose investigative capabilities had been crippled by lack of funds.  In the Southern District of New York, the district executive said that if the shutdown was not resolved by this Friday, it would activate the pandemic emergency plan developed in 2005 in the wake of the “bird flu” outbreak, (Source:  “City’s Federal Courts Brace for Full Force of Shutdown By Beth Fertig, WNYC.com, 1/22/19). Continue reading “America Held Hostage (h/t David Frum)”

January 21, 2019

    Today, we celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in what would have been his 90th year, had he not been assassinated at the young age of 39.  Around the country there will be commemorative programs where children dutifully recite excerpts from his speeches and politicians spout empty rhetorical references to Dr. King’s “dream” of a society where Black people would be judged on the “content of their character,” rather than demonized for the color of their skin.

    The version of Dr. king celebrated by America is a bowdlerized, denatured one that upholds the status quo, rather than challenges it.  It casts Dr. King as a supplicant petitioning America to recognize the humanity of Black Americans, rather than a radical pacifist demanding the long overdue payment of the debt America owed to its Black citizens. Continue reading “Chaos or community?”

January 19, 2019

      Against the backdrop of a shuttered federal government, where federal works stand on bread lines and the Coast Guard cannot afford to deploy new recruits, there have been a dizzying array of developments that make the extent of Trump’s complicity with Putin increasingly undeniable.

    Earlier this week, we learned that Trump has repeatedly expressed a desire to withdraw from NATO, the 70 year old alliance among the U.S., Canada and Europe formed in the wake of World War II to contain Soviet (later Russian) expansion.  Putin has made no secret of the fact that he would like nothing better than to destabilize NATO (Source: “Trump Discussed Pulling U.S. From NATO, Aides Say Amid New Concerns Over Russia,” by Julian E. Barnes and Helene Cooper, The New York Times, 1/14/19).  While there is no question that the U.S. spends too much on defense, Trump’s antipathy to NATO has nothing to do with any pacifist leanings, and everything to do with appeasing his paymaster, Putin. Continue reading “Who will save us?”

January 16, 2019

    As we lurch into the 26th day of our country being held hostage by hatred, all that’s missing is the sound of Sonny and Cher belting out “I Got You, Babe,” from an analog clock radio. In a vain effort to distract from the shutdown’s effect on his poll numbers, the Creamsicle colored rodeo clown in The White House enlisted the championship Clemson football team in a ridiculous stunt. He invited them to The White House for a dinner of fast food burgers and lukewarm fries. The spectacle of the hapless felon grinning like a hyena while standing in his overcoat in front of the “spread” he had arranged was so risible that even one of the players was caught on camera admitting that he thought it was a joke.
    While we were enjoying a bit of gallows humor, Trump’s Republican enablers were embarking on a stealth image reclamation project. First, the House Republicans belatedly stripped Rep. Steve King of his Committee positions, after literally years of his making overtly racist statements. Apparently, openly asking what’s wrong with white supremacy was a bridge too far for his Republican colleagues, (Source: “Republican’s Racism is Punished. Some Ask Why It Took So Long,” by Jonathan Martin, The New York Times, 1/16/19). Continue reading “Window dressing”

January 12, 2019

    We awaken each day to our government playing out the same depressingly familiar scene, as if we are trapped in a horror movie version of “Groundhog Day.”  The shutdown is now the longest in history, as the bloated reprobate, who conned his way into the presidency, holds our government hostage over its refusal to erect a monument to his racism.  Trump is aided and abetted by the amoral fossil in charge of the Republican Senate majority, who cunningly manipulates the arcane rules of the chamber to throttle democracy.

    It isn’t clear how this shutdown will end, given the combination of Trump’s truculence and McConnell’s willingness to hold his own chamber hostage.  The damage is mounting, as 800,000 federal workers and countless federal contractors enter their fourth week without pay. Twitter is awash in #ShutdownStories of the hardships they are facing.   Vandals are trashing Joshua Tree National Park and the FDA is curtailing food inspections, endangering our food supply. Continue reading “Our #Shutdownstory”

January 8, 2019

 

Yesterday, Trump cowed the compliant television networks into ceding 8 minutes in prime time to broadcast his lies to the American public from the Oval Office.  Trump tweeted that he would address the “humanitarian and national security crisis” at the southern border.   Although there is zero national security threat, there is no question that Trump will use the platform willingly given to him by the television networks to shamelessly fearmonger.  We know this because his minions, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and distaff Goebbels, Kirstjen Nielsen, have been making the rounds echoing these lies.  Sanders’ lies were so egregious that she was fact checked in real time by Chris Wallace (no doubt haunted by the ghost of his father, the estimable Mike Wallace) who said that only six suspected terrorists had been apprehended at the border, not 4000.  In fact, the most common way that foreign terrorists enter the country is via our airports, a problem actually being exacerbated by the Trump created government shutdown. Continue reading “State of emergency”