The Carpentariat

And now for something completely different - and groovy, man

This is especially groovy for speed-reading history buffs with 20/10 vision. 

Every single New York Times front page since 1852. Note the explosion of pictures in news (h/t Josh Begley)
pic.twitter.com/u2GThQkhwH

— Khai (@ThamKhaiMeng) July 25, 2021

Fighting crime should not take a backseat to needed police reforms

Since I've been on an anti-extremism kick this morning, I'll stay with it. In this case, the extremism is of the benignly intended kind — that of some cities' official reaction to ghastly police transgressions; municipal actions whose real-world consequences, however, have been anything but benign.

The Washington Post's Colbert King, no right-winging Trumper of cowboy law enforcement, has had enough.

The nasty business of taking someone’s possessions, whether by snatching, punching or stomping, or by brandishing a knife or sticking a gun in the face — called 'robbery' — is having a field day across the District [of Columbia]…. Cops have a hard time keeping up. 'Stretched thin' is the way one top cop put it — citing staffing shortages, rock-bottom morale and resignations….

The D.C. Council and mayor, no political slouches if nothing else, know something needs to be done…. [But] by any yardstick, the chief preoccupation of lawmakers and public safety advocates is police reform. That tops all else. The crime crisis comes in a distant second…. As for holding criminals accountable, stopping criminal behavior, not condoning or finding ways to excuse it when it’s repeatedly committed — well, not so much.

And who knows that better than the dudes with the guns.

Those also in the know are the dudes' victims. And in the city 230 miles to the northeast, they just elected former cop Eric Adams as mayor, who, as the Times notes this morning, has never "shied away from bluntly challenging left-wing Democrats on the subject." In fact many responsible, national Democrats now "appear eager to elevate [Adams], as gun violence shatters parts of major American cities and Republicans seek to caricature their opponents as naïve about crime."

Which the Trump Party will likely be successful at, because of its huge assist by Democratic extremists. It seems they'll never learn to think before charging, notwithstanding a massive body of history yelling Stop!

Extremism in defense of wrongheaded math is a vice

Bob Moses, a 1960s civil rights activist who fought in Mississippi's voting wars, died yesterday. "Bespectacled, owlish and bearing a master’s degree in philosophy from Harvard," in late 1970s he left that activist struggle, sort of, by creating another, the Algebra Project, which "marked a pivotal shift in his civil rights vision from political to economic equality. The project has instructed thousands of middle school students in what Mr. Moses called 'math literacy' as a crucial steppingstone to college and employment, an often difficult process among underserved students."

As the Washington Post's obituary describes it, Moses' "Algebra Project relies on igniting enthusiasm among students by having them link common daily tasks to basic mathematical procedures, using schoolyard vernacular and helping one another with minimal teacher input. In the process, students learn to solve problems by converting concrete numerical values — distances walked, liquids measured — to abstract algebraic symbols."

And you know what? There are indeed right answers. I discovered this in kindergarten; it seemed there were such things as wrong answers in all sorts of then-foreign disciplines, which by the first grade had my teacher thumping us on the back of the head to instill appreciation for precise thinking, rather than screwing around. And, alas, arriving at the right answers in math class was not an exercise in oppressive white supremacy — though at times it certainly felt blue-haired oppressive — as is argued today by more radical critical race theorists.

See below, my related, sorrowful post on the Democratic Socialists of America. It's always the wackjob extremists who sully the splendor of knowledge, enlightenment, social consciousness and human progress.

From the philosophical splendor of Michael Harrington to sheer wretchedness

Michael Harrington's The Other America profoundly influenced my politico-philosophical maturation as a young man, as he did for so many, including the architects of President Johnson's War on Poverty. As a co-founder of the Democratic Socialists of America, Harrington resisted the New Left's more extremist tendencies, which appealed to my Jamesean appreciation of political pragmatism as well. Arthur Schlesinger Sr. called him the nation's "only responsible radical."

When I returned to graduate school in the early 2000s, I discovered that some significant portion of democratic socialist thought — this is anecdotal, so I can't put a percentage on it — had "matured" in the other direction, that of being less responsible, less realistic; in fact, almost comically fantastical. In seminars I was somewhat amused but also disheartened to hear other demsocs expound the marvels of Marxist-Leninist thought, as though its future had any place — any chance of success — in American politics. They, however, were convinced of the ultimate triumph of righteousness, as they and they alone framed it.

Now, what of their righteousness? Charlie Sykes, once a Harrington man himself, bitterly notes that the Democratic Socialists of America "supports Cuba" — not the Cuban people, but their country's regnant oppressors. "There is even a DSA 'Communist Caucus,' whose website prominently displays the hammer and sickle. Its members believe that the group 'is at a crossroads,' and that the Biden administration 'is characterized by the same politics that have brutally' — brutally —' eroded working class power for decades.' Hence, they condemn what they call a 'centrist strategy' that removes the 'leverage' of the left wing…. DSA also offered its support to Nicolás Maduro and his repressive regime in Venezuela."

I can't say if these plucky "democratic" socialists of today, indulgently free from the actual brutality they support, have read much American political history. But if they have, I'm at a loss at their uncomprehension of it. As Sykes further notes, "perhaps they should make it clear that DSA supports totalitarian and repressive governments in the name of protecting socialism—just as the Old Left did throughout the Cold War with the Soviet bloc" — to their shame.

I remain a democratic socialist in its double-worded sense. Too many of my would-be comrades, however, are fixated on only the second word, as was the Old Left, as was the New Left, as is the DSA, whose sole purpose, it seems, is to give the concept of social democracy a squalid name.

Father Coughlin would have jumped at this, too

Praise Jesus and pass the promotional ammunition. I have seen my future and it's that of online evangelism as The Most Right Reverend of Carpenter's Shrine of the Little Flower. I've no idea what I'll evangelize, but that's of no concern. The point is, I can now "partner" with Facebook in this unholy scam and just make shit up as I go, reaping God's financial blessings as Zuckerberg bombards my latitudinarian flock with advertisements. After all, this is America — and that's what America is all about.

As the Times reports, Facebook is escalating its inspired mission of becoming "the virtual home for religious community, and wants churches, mosques, synagogues and others [that would be me] to embed their religious life into its platform, from hosting worship services and socializing more casually to soliciting money." For us apostles, high priests and Elmer Gantrys of transcendental, transubstantiating rapture, however, it's the "soliciting money" part that really twangs our sincerity. Perhaps the swag will droppeth like the gentle rain.

Says Facebook's demigod and chief operator, Sheryl Sandberg, "Our hope is that one day people will host religious services in virtual reality spaces as well, or use augmented reality as an educational tool to teach their children the story of their faith." Damn I like that: augmented reality — granted, an ambiguous phrase, but, suggestively, a huckster's perfect description of boodling hucksterism, exaltingly akin to "alternative facts." Never mind that reality and its "educational tools" are to organized religious faith what Einstein was to Aimee Semple McPherson.

An imam in California, of course, has realized the true grace of augmentation. He "raised record funds," reports the Times, "by using Facebook Live during Ramadan last year." A Catholic bishop, also in California, has, on the the hand, cracked up, saying that Facebook gives "people kind of an intimate experience of the Mass that they wouldn’t normally have." Or maybe he was only referring to his intimate experience — that of raising record funds.

Rejoice! I say. I too envision such divine intimacy. And in furtherance of that, God bless 'em, Facebook's fellow profitmongers are offering us pontiffs of celestial protection rackets a subscription service wherein a user can "pay, for example, $9.99 per month and receive exclusive content, like messages" from The Most Right Reverend of Carpenter's Shrine of the Little Flower. Screw those other guys, dear believers. For I am the one with a monopoly on The Truth. (And if it doesn't pay, whatever it is, I'll find another.)

A Senate race subsumed by a sensationalistic name

The Washington Post has a lengthy and rather peculiar piece — titled, in part, "A scandal-scarred Senate candidate wants Donald Trump's endorsement" — on the electoral strivings of Missouri's former governor, Eric Greitens, who's running for the open seat of retiring Roy Blunt.

I say peculiar because the reporting concentrates on the absence, so far, of a Trump endorsement, although any such prized endorsement would be superfluous at best.

Greitens — ejected in 2018 from his governor's seat because of his also peculiar family values; he was said by his victim to have bound, blindfolded and forced her into oral sex — is already a Trumpian star and, accordingly, is receiving the aid of the devil's disciples, namely Rudy Giuliani, Bernard Kerik, Sebastian Gorka and little Donald's girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle.

Greitens derives this crackpot support for two simple reasons: he avers to the rubes that the Donald may yet be restored to his hellish throne — those "audits," you know — and, in obligatory Trump style, he whines about his victimization at the hands of wicked libs and RINOs.

Oh, and he owns an assault rifle. Those, of course, are but the three planks of any platform needed to amass redneckian love.

Which Greitens is getting. He holds gargantuan leads over his primary competitors. The Post, in another peculiarity, writes that he is nevertheless "struggl[ing] to raise money, despite receiving a $2.5 million commitment from conservative donor Richard Uihlein for an external effort to support his campaign." Despite? More like "because," probably.

All that, and yet throughout the article the Post's Michael Scherer and Josh Dawsey belabor, thump and prioritize the aforementioned superfluousness: a Trump endorsement, and Greitens' lack thereof.

My educated guess and likely yours as to why? Dropping the latter name in both headline and text, extensively, is the wiser path to clicks. Readers may say they're sick of hearing about the devil, but it ain't so. They eat it up. I know I do. The devil fascinates.

A curiosity of science reporting

Why is it that the evolution of scientific knowledge is so often characterized as evidentiary folly?

"Senior [administration] officials now say they expect that people who are 65 and older or who have compromised immune systems will most likely need a third shot from Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna…. That is a sharp shift from just a few weeks ago, when the administration said it thought there was not enough evidence to back boosters yet."

The passage is from the Times, and in this case, the "foolishness" characterization — a sharp shift — is admittedly subtle, perhaps even innocent. Nevertheless, the mischaracterization provides a springboard for the you-know-whos to assert that even the sycophantic NY Times suspects White House and CDC incompetence: They're all over the road, saying one thing on Thursday and something different on Friday. In reality there was nothing "sharp" about the shift; for weeks the researchers have been gathering evidence, doing due diligence, and now their advice differs from when they lacked adequate evidence. Simple as that.

More judicious wording would be "understandable shift" or "logical shift," given that scientific knowledge comes in trickles and spurts, and only rarely in geysers.

The wit and wisdumb of Ron Johnson

My week would not be complete without visiting the public musings of one of America's heroes of the judgmentally disabled and utterly stupid, Sen. Ron Johnson.

In an interview with the Wisconsin State Journal, His Senatorial Malignancy confessed that he "may not be the best candidate" in 2022 for his own seat. Rare is the day — indeed never has been the day — when a politician essentially conceded that his time in the U.S. Senate has been not merely a net negative, but an altogether national blight. "I may not be the best" is just a euphemism for that.

Johnson's previously unheard-of honesty may, of course, also be a signal that he's backing out from another run. He's spending thousands on polling his reelection chances, reports the Journal, and the polling — my guess — has been bleak. He has embarrassed the Badger State beyond almost everyone's preliminary imaginations, and now the clawing badgers want his head.

I wouldn't touch it myself, but they can have it, along with the rest of his Trumpy-diseased body. Poor thing.

A few surprises, and a good-old McCarthyite solution to rescuing American democracy

From Pew Research: "77% of Black Americans say voting is a right for every U.S. citizen and should not be restricted, as do 63% of Hispanic Americans and 66% of Asian Americans. White Americans are divided: 51% say voting is a right, while 48% say it is a privilege."

No one should be surprised that half of all White Americans, the backbone of hysterical Trumpism, regard voting as a mere "privilege," subject to whatever limitations they choose. And it's true that the Constitution's 15th, 19th and 26th Amendments don't explicitly guarantee the right to vote. However neither are rights to privacy explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution, and yet, there they are. Thanks to our founding fathers — though I realize I'm being wildly insensitive in citing them as such — the U.S. Constitution says more than it says.

What does surprise me, at least, is that roughly a quarter of Black Americans and two-thirds of Hispanic and Asian Americans agree, according to Pew, anyway, that voting is not a rightful exercise of citizenship. It is they, after all, being specifically targeted by the anti-democracy mob. Have they heard about this?

Nevertheless, I shall cut them some slack by looking on the bright side. Perhaps what these naysaying Black, Hispanic and Asian Americans more deeply believe is that insurrectionist-loving, America-hating Trumpers should be barred by law from the voting booth. I'm OK with that.

In fact, I'll sign a petition demanding this question be answered — on penalty of perjury — before voting: "Are you now, or have you ever been, a Trumper, thus, by definition, sympathetic to his nefarious schemes of widespread disenfranchisement?" Part II, instructions: "If so, get the fuck out of here."

It's no longer the divine virtues of voting rights. It's now the coarse politics of them.

I wrote about the issue, again, just yesterday, so I won't rehash myself today. In a moment I'll note the issue's coming political fallout, however, an observation I have resisted making so as not to reduce the very salvation of American democracy into merely a political matter.

This morning the Times has a piece in which, mirabile dictu, "voting rights groups and civil rights leaders" are letting the White House know that its strategy to "out-organize voter suppression" is sheer folly. Says Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, "I have heard an emphasis on organizing. [But] we cannot litigate our way out of this and we cannot organize our way out of this." Others are labeling the WH strategy as "naïve at best."

I have noted the same in previous posts. Democrats can organize and turn out every last responsible voter and — so what? If Republican state legislatures and their handpicked election officials can simply erase the voters' will, then large Democratic turnouts will be hollowed out.

Consequently, voting rights activists are cranking up pressure on the Biden administration to more forcefully get behind the For the People Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Acts. Yet neither has the Democratic Congress done what's urgently needed: the writing of legislation that would explicitly prohibit the anti-democratic hijinks specified above.

Activists are also pressing the administration to support ending the filibuster. But supporting such and actually ending the filibuster (as well as passing both voting rights bills and possibly another) are two entirely different objectives. Uncomfortable though it be, the WH has an irrefutable point, which can be made in three little words: the Manchin caucus.

Here, though, are the gritty, plain-to-see politics of this gruesome thing, quite aside from the sacred pursuit of fair elections:

If President Biden fails to come around on killing the filibuster — at a minimum, in relation to voting rights — he's setting up the party and possibly himself for a 2024 thrashing and, before that, a midterm disaster. The Democratic base will be outraged at the president's failure to back the filibuster's death. And anger aimed at a president is, as we know from history, taken out on more than the man in the White House; it flows down to his party's congressional members, too.

My advice to voting rights activists is, therefore, to begin confronting Mr. Biden on the one subject he knows best: political pragmatism. Forget the ethereal splendors of voting rights and the possible means to secure them. Go for the jugular: You, Mr. President, may not succeed in chaperoning voting bills through Congress and strangling the godawful filibuster, but if you don't try — aggressively — you'll strangle the party instead.

It makes no difference that Banks and Jordan are, officially, "Gone Guys"

Political scientist Jonathan Bernstein, in a rather self-conflicted post, criticizes CNN’s Chris Cillizza (and other likeminded pundits) for having "immediately declared that Pelosi’s decision" to bump Banks and Jordan from the Jan. 6 select committee "dooms," in Cillizza's words, "even the possibility of the committee’s eventual findings being seen as independent."

Bernstein then notes what should be the obvious: that "'being seen as independent' isn’t the same thing as coming up with accurate findings, which seems like a more important standard to set."

It seems that way because it is. This committee and other investigating bodies' reason for being is to get at the truth, which is staring us in the face. And let's face it. No further illuminating investigation on earth could ever persuade the pathologically deluded that Jan. 6 was anything but what it was: a coup attempt, engineered for months by a deranged, wannabe Kaiser and his assorted criminal gangs.

Had Speaker Pelosi permitted Banks and Jordan to remain on the inside, they and their three co-conspirators would, of course, have made a farce of the select committee's hearings. With them gone, however, no problem, no problem at all for their party. Kevin McCarthy and virtually all his hyperpartisan minions will now, from the outside, make a farce of it. Yet that isn't really a problem either, since only the pathologically deluded will buy the live-streamed wailings of officeholding insurrectionists.

It's about time, as they say, for us to cease wringing our hands in fearful paroxysms of delicate gentility over the unAmerican absurdities of the Trump Party. Its members, from elected officials to their followers, give not a damn about this country; accordingly, we must stop giving a damn about them. And their "feelings."

The futility of talking to Trump supporters

Gary Abernathy, that homespun, contributing columnist at the Washington Post, advises us in headline manner to "Stop insulting Trump voters and their concerns. Talk to them." He opens with this:

"When supporters of former president Donald Trump hear media pundits analyze them with the usual collection of belittling observations, they must be tempted to respond, 'Hey, we’re right here! We can hear you!'"

No, they can't, nor are they even willing to listen, huddled as they are in their isolation chambers of cultish autocracy love. Besides, have you ever tried reasoning with a Trump supporter?

In my experiences, once having indicated their embarrassing support of the criminal idiot, most of them swiftly and contradictorily move on to saying they never discuss politics. This is a further indication of their know nothing about it, the U.S. Constitution and America's long political traditions. Others simply talk over any gentle corrections of fact. Still others shut down any rational discussion by firmly averring that they know what they know, or rather believe what they believe, and that's that. So go screw.

Abernathy adds that "shaming will never work." There he is right, since shame is foreign to them.

He also admonishes us to "respect other opinions" — a blanket piety that makes absolutely no sense. I and many others have a real problem, oddly enough, with respecting opinions that advocate the wholesale destruction of American democracy and rule by authoritarianism. Does Mr. Abernathy "respect" the opinions of, say, neo-Nazis? Should I? Should you? Should we respect opinionated Holocaust denials? Should we give a casual, gracious pass to those who denounce science as bullshit or proclaim that underprivileged minorities are only getting what they deserve?

I rarely read Gary Abernathy, but not because I disagree with his cracker-barrel, professed "conservative" convictions. Quite the opposite; I enjoy reading opposing views, much more so, in fact, than reading pieces I agree with. No, I rarely read him only because he's so poorly disagreeable. 

Again, from Borowitz, not satire

On the filibuster, Biden is just wrong

President Biden, last night: "There’s no reason to protect [the filibuster] other than you’re going to throw the entire Congress into chaos and nothing will get done." He was correct, though, in adding that "there's a lot at stake. The most important one is the right to vote."

He said the former at a CNN town hall meeting, as Congress sits in its sixth month of abundant chaos and indefensible nothingness. There's the reconciliation route to mitigate the void, but of course that road is mostly blocked by its narrow usage constraints. And while Biden is content to exploit reconciliation wherever he can — i.e., for budgetary legislation — the very foundation of American governance — the federal protection of voting rights — is allowed to languish.

Once the vulturous nihilism party gets its talons firmly into those democracy-giving rights, while adding the coup de grâce of it alone determining election outcomes in swing states, we can just put our heads between our legs and kiss our autonomous asses goodbye. The vulture will have a hold on the White House and Congress; no future legislation will benefit anyone but the reigning turkey buzzards; and fair elections will be nothing but one for the ages.

Four months ago the president acknowledged that the filibuster was "being abused in a gigantic way." Thus he endorsed a kind of Jimmy Stewart filibuster. If he really wants to avoid nothingness, however, a talking filibuster is scarcely the way to go. Days, weeks, possibly months of potential action would be paralyzed by rotations of phonebook readings. Perhaps this occurred to Biden, since by last night his opinion had changed, somewhat. He said he's opposes a "debate" about "going back to the way the filibuster had to be used before." What other way is there, other than first debating it?

It's bad enough that the Senate is grossly unrepresentative of America's body politic, acutely exacerbated by the minority's ability to block much-needed and overwhelmingly popular legislation. And unquestionably, Democrats would regret having killed the filibuster to kill obstructionism if the Senate is returned to Republican control. But it will be, if Republicans have their way in getting a death grip on the electoral process, which makes killing the filibuster — at the very least, in its application to voting rights and fair elections — a democratic necessity.

Well, that's done. Breaking news from Politico.

And good for her.

"I must reject the recommendations of Representatives Banks and Jordan to the Select Committee" on Trump's Jan. 6 insurrection, says Speaker Pelosi.

With that, perhaps the committee can steer itself to a thoughtful, reasoned conclusion, rather than being a showcase for Trumpian madness, with fingers pointing at President Biden, congressional Democrats, the FBI, Antifa and anyone else unTrumpy. 

But Kevin McCarthy also did his job, which is to swathe and pamper the partisan lunatics. It's the only way to remain the top ape in the monkey house.   

***

I just watched Kevin, live, in his furtherance of lunatic swathing, accusing Pelosi of "partisan politics." Who could have foreseen this Very Clever Tactic?

The much funnier part of his unhinged burlesque show, however, was that his three, non-Banks, non-Jordan committee members then stepped up to whine about how they can't now expose, as select committee members, Pelosi's near-sole responsibility for the insurrection, even though she has approved their committee participation. They have rejected themselves, with an assist from Kevin. I guess they hope the base doesn't notice the rhetorical scam, which is a vastly reasonable hope.

And now Kevin is taking all his loose marbles and going home.