Journal of the Plague Years

November 8, 2018

 

After a momentous election which saw both heartbreaking losses (Beto, Gillum) and inspiring firsts (Sharice Davids, Ayanna Pressley, Lucy McBath) our relief was tempered by our losses in the Senate. In addition to Texas, we lost Indiana, North Dakota and Tennessee and the jury is still out in Florida and Arizona.  Our joy at seeing an incoming Congress filled with record numbers of women and welcome diversity was muted by the realization that the structural disadvantage built into the Senate will make it frustratingly difficult to elect a Democratic Senate majority for the foreseeable future.

That said, the importance of Tuesday’s election results should not be understated.  Everything from having Maxine Waters chair the Banking Committee to Adam Schiff chair the House Intelligence Committee means that for the first time since his inauguration, Trump and his toadies will face real Congressional oversight.  The gravity of that fact may not have been immediately apparent to us, but, as his erratic and impulsive actions yesterday made abundantly clear, it is apparent to Trump. Continue reading “It’s only the beginning”

November 5, 2018

 

What we are facing tomorrow is nothing less than a reckoning that has been more than two centuries in coming. This country was founded on two diametrically opposed ideas — that all men were created equal and that Black people were not citizens entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In order to make the white citizens of this new nation comfortable with the contradiction, this nation invented the pernicious myth of white supremacy.  This country told its children the fairy tale that Black people weren’t really “people” in the way that white people were.  They said that we lacked the intellect, the impulse control, the ability to form familial attachments, that white people had.  By inventing this vicious mythology, they rationalized denying us any education, selling our children away from us and exercising absolute control over us by the most violent means at their disposal.  By doing so, Southern slaveholders (and those Northern merchants that profited from them) could sleep at night, secure in the delusion that those they brutalized weren’t fully human. Continue reading “The reckoning”

November 3, 2018

    In 72 hours we will face the most consequential election of our lives.  It is no exaggeration to say that Democracy hangs in the balance. The choice is stark.  On one side are those who want a fascist oligarchy that will cement white supremacy. On the other side is a multicultural coalition with a hopeful vision for America’s future, where we all can love and worship as we want, and no one’s horizons are limited by their race, gender, religion or sexuality.

    One side is represented by hate filled individuals who murder people in synagogues and supermarkets; the other by Muslims who raise money to help Jewish families bury those senselessly slaughtered.  One side defaces and sets fires to synagogues; the other holds peaceful vigils to protest anti-Semitism.

     One side appeals to its base by proudly trafficking in racism, featuring an ad so vile that CNN refused to run it.  The other fields candidates who forcefully reject the politics of division and propose actual solutions to Americans’ problems.

     One side is exemplified by the venomous rhetoric of the tangerine Grand Wizard in the Oval Office, who orders a military response to a humanitarian crisis.  The other side is represented by the nation’s first Black President, crisscrossing the south from Miami to Morehouse, repeatedly exhorting us to vote for a “vision where love and hope overcome hate,” until he was hoarse.

     This is The Last Weekend.  What we do between today and the moment when the last polls close in Hawaii will determine our future.  Leave it ALL on field, because, as President Obama said, nothing less than “the character of our country is on the ballot.”

#SWINGLEFT.ORG

#GOTV

#VOTE

October 31, 2018

We awakened yesterday morning to the ping of a news alert bearing ominous news— that Trump planned to do away with birthright citizenship by executive order, in direct contravention of the Fourteenth Amendment.  This is part and parcel of a malevolently coordinated attack on Latinx immigrants, which mixes demonizing propaganda, a manufactured crisis justifying military action and a declaration that the emergency necessitates suspending the Constitution .

In the four days since a hateful murderer outraged by HIAS’ assistance to Central American refugees gunned down 11 Jewish Americans; rather than exercise restraint or demonstrating contrition, Trump, his administration and Republican candidates, have continued with anti-Semitic dog whistles and proudly advocated treating migrants fleeing violence like an invading army. Continue reading “Welcome to our nightmare”

October 28, 2018

     Yesterday’s massacre of eleven people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue was truly unspeakable.  Armed with an AR-15, the assailant burst in on Saturday morning, shouted anti-Semitic slurs and started firing indiscriminately.  It was the most deadly act of anti-Semitic violence in American history, capping a week which saw assassination attempts targeting two progressive Jewish philanthropists, along with most of the prominent leaders of the Democratic Party.

       The murderer was allegedly enraged that the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society was assisting Central American refugees attempting to flee horrible conditions (Source:  “11 Killed in Pittsburgh Massacre; Suspect Charged With 29 Counts,” by Campbell Robertson, Christopher Mele and Sabrina Tavernise, The New York Times, 10/27/18).  Of course, Trump has been demagoguing this issue for two weeks, aided by outlets as disparate as The New York Times and Fox  News, all of whom treated a desperate group of women and children currently 1100 miles from the U.S. border and traveling on foot, as front page news.   Continue reading “Courage”

October 26, 2018

     The events of the last few days evoke memories of Fort Sumter.  On April 12, 861, four months after South Carolina had seceded from the Union, Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter, bombarding it for 34 straight hours, until Union soldiers gave up. In the last few days, a Trump superfan named Cesar Sayoc mailed pipe bombs to several prominent Democratic critics of Trump, including Presidents Clinton and Obama, Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, Congresswoman “Auntie” Maxine Waters, former Attorney General Eric Holder, former CIA Director John Brennan (sent to him ℅ CNN) and former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper.  Philanthropists George Soros and Tom Stryker were targeted, as was actor Robert DeNiro. It is only because, Sayoc shares his idol’s incompetence, along with his virulent racism, that the bombs did not detonate (Source: “Bomb Suspect Arrested in Florida; Charged With Five Counts,” by William K. Rashbaum, Alan Feuer, and Adam Goldman, The New York Times, 10/26/18). Continue reading “Fort Sumter”

October 23, 2018

 

From the time Trump was elected, we knew it was only a matter of time before he openly declared his allegiance to the white supremacists’ vision for this country.  Of course every policy goal he pursued was evidence of that, but his statement at last night’s rally for soulless hack, Ted Cruz, deprives journalists and apologists of the fig leaf of deniability, (Source:  “Trump Comes Out As A White Nationalist,” by Stephen A. Crockett, Jr., TheRoot.com, 10/23/18).

Trump’s speech yesterday, along with the strategic leak of a plan to define transgender people out of existence- thereby validating and encouraging their persecution, is straight out of Hitler’s playbook.  Hitler started by destroying scientific works on the study of sexuality, moved on to closing gay clubs to drive gay people underground, and finally herded gay men into prisons and concentration camps (Source:  “Persecution of Homosexuals in the Third Reich,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia, encyclopedia.ushmm.org).  Meanwhile, the Republicans’ contempt for the right of people with pre-existing conditions to have healthcare would be right at home in ancient Sparta. Continue reading “The first battle”

October 21, 2018

    On Friday, federal prosecutors in Virginia unsealed an indictment against Elena Khusyaynova, an accountant employed by Russian troll farm, Concord, for her role in its efforts to interfere with the 2018 midterm elections.  Concord was already indicted by the Special Counsel in February for its interference in the 2016 Presidential elections, (Source: “U.S. brings first charge for meddling in the 2018 midterm elections,” by Josh Gerstein, Politico.com, 10/19/18).

    The indictment charges that the Russian scheme, dubbed “Project Lakhta” aimed to “sow division and discord in the U.S. political system, including by creating social and political polarization, undermining faith in democratic institutions and influencing U.S. elections, including the 2018 midterms,” (Source:  Criminal Complaint, United States v. Khusyaynova, Case No. 1:18-MJ-464 (Dist. Ct., E.D.Va)).  The indictment alleges that the budget expended on this criminal conspiracy from 2016 to 2018 was $35 million dollars! Continue reading “The seeds of our destruction”

October 18, 2018

 

The details of Jamal Khashoggi’s grisly assassination are beyond shocking.  Turkish officials claim that the Saudi death squad who intercepted him at the Consulate employed particularly sadistic methods.  They cut off Khashoggi’s fingers, possibly while he was still alive, and then continued to dismember him, cutting off his head.  The forensic pathologist imported for the occasion advised the killers to play music while they tortured Khashoggi to “ease the tension,” (Source:  “Audio Offers Gruesome Details of Jamal Khashoggi Killing, Turkish Officials Say,” by David S. Kirkpatrick and Carlotta Gail, The New York Times, 10/17/18).  Given the fact that four of the members of this hit squad have ties to Mohammad Ben Salman, there can be no doubt that Khashoggi was murdered at his behest. Continue reading “Pulp (non)fiction”

October 16, 2018

 

With 21 days until the critical midterm elections, the news continues to give us cause for white hot rage.  Although polls continue to show Democrats with a 70% chance of re-taking the House, the Republicans have displayed ruthless determination to thwart the will of the people, using every method at their disposal.  This is the context through which we should view Senator Elizabeth Warren’s release yesterday of DNA test results “proving” her Native American ancestry (Source:  “Warren Releases Results of DNA Test,” by Annie Linskey, The Boston Globe, 10/15/18).  Warren’s gambit to silence Trump’s continued racist taunts was not only futile, but dangerous.

By releasing her results as “proof” of Native American heritage, Warren implied that membership in a tribe could be determined by DNA, rather than being a political and legal decision made by the tribes themselves, based on their own extensive records, (Source:  “Why So Many Native Americans Are Upset That Elizabeth Warren Tried Proving Her Ancestry with DNA,” by Molly Olmstead, Slate.com, 10/15/18). Continue reading “Don’t get mad…”