Listen to the old timers ...

According the Johns Hopkins Measles Tracker the US has seen 1513 measles cases this year as of March 13. (Yes, I looked on a university site; dare I trust whatever stats the federal government is offering any longer? Don't know.)

I am old enough to have vivid memories of a time when measles and chickenpox were simply considered hazards of childhood. In the 1950s, most of us got the diseases; most of us came through fine. But not everyone. 

There was a little kid who lived down the street. She was several years younger, had a sister my age who was someone I played with. The family was not exactly close to mine, but a pack of us kids rioted around in each other's houses. I can still remember that family's entrance hall and front room. And then, the younger sister got sick and we were kept out of that house. Several weeks went by and we were told that the little one had died. Her illness had begun with measles; she suffered complications which I now think probably included encephalitis. And then she was gone.

The kid pack never went back to that house and I don't remember the older sister ever playing with us again.

Naturally I have no trouble believing that vaccines which prevent measles, mumps and rubella (chickenpox) and later polio (that scourge too crippled several girls in my school) are among 20th century America's best inventions.

So I was heartened to read Jonathan Cohn's shout-out to a creative intervention. 

Grandparents for Vaccines recruits elders who lived the pre-vaccine era to tell their stories.

The goal of Grandparents for Vaccines is to push back against [the anti-vaccine] movement, while getting Americans thinking about what’s at stake if the trends continue. And while that’s an awful lot to ask from a group of seniors, most of them political novices still learning the finer points of social media, they have two powerful weapons for making their case: the unique moral authority of grandparents, and insights that can come only from people who have seen these scourges up close. ...

[Founder Arthur] Lavin likens the effort to what Mothers Against Drunk Driving did in the 1980s and ’90s. ...

Judging by the offerings on YouTube, the project needs more new immigrants and people of color. But if we have to do public health for ourselves without federal authorities we can trust, who better to testify than grandparents?

I am thankful for our rising rage ...

As we come into the Thanksgiving season, I realize that I am heartened by growing rage against the offenses against our country by the Trump regime and oligarchy. These are too many to catalog. The list here is necessarily short and incomplete, but plenty infuriating.

• a deportation dragnet which empowers masked thugs to abduct harmless persons within our country for the crime of speaking another language or having brown skin;

• a plan to turn over our coastlines to oil drillers to pollute; 

• the attempted surrender of the sovereign state of Ukraine to Vladimir Putin. (Europe might yet step up; Ukrainians have no choice but to resist. I remain convinced the proper historical analogy is the democracies' betrayal of the Spanish Republic to the fascists in the 1930; the resulting regime of terror lasted 50 years in unhappy Spain.)

• Trump's claim of treason against brave office holders who reminded our military they swear fealty to the Constitution, not Donald Trump;

• and then there are ongoing skirmishes over Jeffrey Epstein's sex crimes. Beneath the noise, there's a smoldering blaze sustaining too many watching women, perhaps slow to ignite, but enduring and combustible.

Somewhat to my surprise, the New York Times has given space to a professor of literature and journalism at American University, Rachel Louise Snyder, [gift link] to lay out the case for legitimate fury among women.

... the emails are just a piece of the larger story: the lengths this country and the systems we’ve created — from the smallest jurisdiction to the national stage — will go to maintain the power of men at the expense of women’s bodies. 

... Mr. Trump is right. He has nothing to hide because he stands to lose nothing. Whatever exists in those files surely will not be enough to wrest him from his perch. At least not yet. ... [He] has overseen an era that might be unique in its willingness to sacrifice democratic institutions and American norms to control women.

As I write, there is a White House proposal that aims to lower the Office on Violence Against Women’s stature within the D.O.J. and cut its shoestring budget by nearly 30 percent. This would devastate shelters, advocacy programs and violence prevention measures, and escalate the danger for victims of intimate partner and familial violence in all corners of the country.

At the same time, a report on violent deaths of girls and women from 2014 to 2020 noted that laws constraining abortion providers were associated with a 3.4 percent rise in the rate of homicides related to intimate partner violence. We are being killed for our own lack of choice. An estimated one in 20 women in the United States gets pregnant from rape or sexual coercion, which equates to a whopping six million women with violence-initiated pregnancies. Six million. Two-thirds of the women who became pregnant from rape were injured during their assaults.

Are you as angry as I am yet? The misogyny that is such a casual part of Mr. Trump’s entire modus operandi gives license to systems that prioritize men’s freedoms over women’s lives. ...

We are entitled to demand more from our leaders, to demand an open investigation into the Epstein files, to demand accountability for the perpetrators regardless of political party or cultural cachet, to demand justice for the children and women trafficked by Mr. Epstein, and perhaps more than anything to demand actual real change in which a broken system is compelled to reinvention.

In the meantime, we are entitled to all of our rage, and men, frankly, we would welcome a moment of gratitude from you that we have not burned this whole damn human enterprise down just yet. ...

Stay mad. Rage is dangerous, but it can be righteous. Our lives depend on it.

Posting may (or may not) be sporadic over Thanksgiving week as family assembles. I expect further outrages in this time when many look away.

The fury to come

 

Even the complicated, partial release of the Epstein files has revealed and confirmed enough to make decent women (and men) see red -- and should help push our mad king off his phony pedestal.

I don't know how this plays out in younger age groups, but casual sexual exploitation of very young women is all too recognizable to most women in my age group. These guys, these powerful men, just assumed that women's bodies existed for their pleasure. (In their eyes, we had no souls.) Least culpably, some merely leered without remorse at young women; many of the richest and most powerful felt entitled to molest.

Some women can only deal with our dehumanization by men by denying it happens. A small number aid the perpetrators. In my generation, a lot of us gave up on men, even those men who were not personally guilty, but who couldn't see the burden women carry under the male gaze. Most women just soldiered on, living on a hurtful battlefield that is barely recognized by their male peers, even the men they love. 

And, if the good women and men with any power have the strength to pursue the Epstein revelations and implications, the nation faces a protracted release of stifled fury and agonizing confusion, necessary but terribly painful. Thanks Donald.

Cartoon via The Guardian. 

"What's happening right now just doesn't define America."

What's so striking about George Retes' story of false arrest and abuse by ICE and/or other unidentified federal agents in Southern California is that he is absolutely clear that he's a person with rights. He's suing the federal government because he trusts he should expect accountability for what was done to him.

Civil rights in America have always been about one thing: holding power accountable when it strips people of their dignity and freedom. They are not privileges that government agents get to decide whether to honor. What happened to me wasn’t just a mistake—it was a violation of the very protections that our Constitution guarantees.

On July 10, I was on my way to work when ICE agents engulfed my car in tear gas, smashed my driver-side window, and pepper-sprayed my face. They dragged me out, threw me to the ground, and even while I was complying, one agent kneeled on my neck and another kneeled on my back as others stood by and watched.

I spent three nights and three days in federal custody. During that time, I was never told what I was charged with, was not allowed to shower despite being covered in tear gas and pepper spray, had no phone call to my family, and no access to an attorney. I was placed on suicide watch and missed my daughter’s third birthday. No explanation. No charges. No apology. One day, I was just told, “you’re free to go.”...

... [The Department of Homeland Security has] stated that US citizens are not being “wrongfully” arrested by ICE, that their enforcement operations are highly targeted, and that their personnel conduct due diligence to know who they are targeting. DHS also framed criticisms of the operation as “smears” against ICE officers, alleging such claims have contributed to an increase in assaults on law enforcement.

... DHS’s statement ignores reality and is designed to demonize and villainize people who don’t let the government trample over their rights, and aren’t afraid to speak the truth. ... The truth is that I am a US citizen and a veteran, and I will continue to pursue accountability for the rights that were violated that day.

This fight is not just about my case—it’s about ensuring that there is recourse when people are silenced, detained, or dehumanized by the very government meant to protect us. ...

Retes gave a detailed YouTube interview to Tim Miller of the Bulwark which you can watch or listen to. In his own words: 

... I was just trying to get to work. Like I'm clearly not going to get there. So I'm just going to leave. Um, and so I get back in my car and they just surround my car, uh, I have agents on my left, my driver's side, my passenger side, agents behind my car, agents in front, just all yelling at me to do different things. The agents on the side are pulling on my door handles, banging on my windows, telling me to get out. Agents in the front of my car are telling me to reverse, to leave.

... like they're telling me to leave, telling me to get out and doing like contradicting each other. And I'm just there like coughing, trying to catch myself and just eventually my driver's side window shatters. And so ... , an agent sticks his arm through and pepper sprays me in the face.  

[Miller] they just didn't ask you for ID, nothing?

... glass flew everywhere. I had glass in my leg. Uh, they pulled, they dragged me out of the car. Uh, threw me on the ground.

Uh, and I kind of just went with it. Like I wasn't fighting, like there was no point. I'm not stupid. Like I'm not going to fight 20 agents at once. Like that's stupid. Uh, so I kind of just go through with like, you just got to take it. ...

As much as it sucks, as much as this is stupid and this is shitty, it sucks. But you got to take it. ...

And so they dragged me out. They throw me on the ground. And I'm just trying to comply with them, letting them do whatever. And even though I'm complying and just letting them do whatever, an agent comes and he kneels on my neck and another agent kneels on my back.

Retes' account makes clear that immigration agents who hauled him away from this scrum didn't have any real idea why he'd been arrested. They were pretty soon able to verify his U.S. citizen status and that he worked as security at the farm where they held him. They didn't seem to know what to do with him, so they had him taken to Los Angeles' Metropolitan Detention Center. Authorities there also didn't seem to know what to do with him. Still covered with pepper spray, he was put on "suicide watch."

That Friday morning, they, they put me on suicide watch and, uh, they put me in this, uh, they put me in the cell. I'm naked, uh, in like a hospital dress and just a concrete bed with like a mattress, like a thin mattress. And, uh, they leave the light on 24 seven. Uh, there's a glass door and officers just always standing, like sitting out there, um, The psychiatric nurse comes and checks on me once a day.

And so from Friday morning to Sunday afternoon when I'm released, I'm literally in that cell, naked, just in that room. What the fuck? With a light on 24-7. ...

... eventually another officer comes up and he takes me downstairs. He gives me back my clothes.

They make me sign for my phone, my piercings, my watch and stuff. And that was it ... all they just told me like all the charges on you were dropped uh you're free to go uh and that was it ... 

... After being in the military, after doing all that, through that entire process, I knew to just be calm. I've been through the mud. I've been through the fucking shit before, if I'm being honest with you. I know how to keep my cool. I know how to stay calm under pressure and all that really helped me. And just when I got released, ... I was really thankful if I'm being honest with you, like who knows what else could have happened ...

Retes was thrilled to be back to his home and his kids -- and he's still trying to figure out what it means that his own government could do this to him.

[Miller] ... What are you going to do?

Honestly, just... figuring out my life. Honestly, doing all this is a big responsibility as well. Just sharing my story, keeping it alive, letting it be known. ...  Like some people just like this stuff happens to and they just want to forget about it or they just are scared that the government might retaliate. ...  I'm not, I'm not afraid. I mean, I know I did nothing wrong. ... I know the facts for sure. And I'm a hundred percent confident in my, in my story.

... They can lie all they want. They can make all the tweets they want. They could try to live in their own reality, but the truth is out there. And when it, like, if they want to take it to court, I'm like a hundred percent in and I'm a hundred percent ready. ... 

... Like I still love this country and a hundred percent love the army and I love that experience. I love the brotherhood and just the family I made and just the experience. It made me a better person.

It helped me grow. It taught me a lot. ... I know that just what's happening right now just doesn't define America. What's happening right now just doesn't define the flag that I wore, the flag that like we stand for...

... I have no problem still standing by the flag and standing by and believing in the constitution. ... it's really important. ... I think it's everyone's job to speak about it, to get involved because it's not just my rights that were violated. It could happen to you. Nothing's really stopping them really ... I think it's really important to speak out and just tackle this head on. For the government, it's like what they're doing is completely wrong, and I don't agree with them at all. It doesn't matter if you're left, you're right ... like it affects us all. ...

George Retes did not volunteer to be made a test case about whether federal agents can be held accountable for abuses done while carrying out the Homan/Miller/Trump immigrant deportation agenda. But here he finds himself. We all owe him for his courage to stand up for the freedoms he believes in.

This Independence Day, It's on us. As it always has been

 

I'm more comfortable with this image after having spent quite a bit of time recently in New England. To many people of that part of this huge country, the image feels fitting. Elmer Davis was a radio journalist who served FDR's war against European fascism and Japanese imperialism in the role of Director of the Office of War Information.

 

How might similar sentiments be expressed these days in my home state of California? Perhaps like this:

Here on the Left Coast, we'll take a dose of snark with our defiance of unjust rulers. But that doesn't mean we are not a force to be reckoned with when aroused. And we're getting aroused.

• • • 

The USofA has had quite a good 249 year run. Not saying we've always (or even most often) been on the side of justice, against oppression, for full liberation of all. In fact, this enterprise has always been murderous to some. It's taken us all those years to more fully recognize some people are really people. But in our better seasons, African people imported as slaves, and foreign newcomers, and women, and LGBTQ+ people, and even the native people whose land the rest of us stole have been increasingly recognized as fully human by the polity we have made for ourselves. 

 

Our institutions are creaky and not currently serving our best aspirations. We need to remember that there's more in our Declaration of Independence beyond the bold assertion that "all men are created equal' and should be understood to have "inalienable rights." The declaration goes on to insist that this understanding of where and from whom government acquired legitimacy means we can have expectations: 

... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Current US institutions -- the Congress, the Supreme Court, the Constitution of 1789, the various states -- are proving no match for an oligarchic aspiring king whose executive power derives from the votes of 31 percent of the citizens. (Kamala got nearly another third and the rest stayed home.) 

Trump is governing by arrogating to himself powers our system never gave him nor meant any executive to have. And the system itself is proving incapable of stopping him.

Looks like the future of the United States of America is up to the consent of the governed, once again. Are we going to let King Donald get away with his heist?

This is a test -- and it is no rehearsal

Maybe they thought she was a pushover because she has blonde hair that hangs down to her shoulders. Women in the Trump world tend to present such an appearance. They were wrong. The glasses might give her away.

They expected Danielle Sassoon, a thirty-eight-year-old conservative lawyer whom Trump had named acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, to violate her understanding of her professional responsibility by dropping the federal corruption case against New York's Mayor Eric Adams in return for Adams' aid to Trump's goons at rounding up migrants. She wouldn't accept the bargain; after all, her office had reason to believe Adams is crook. Instead she argued back and resigned/was fired. (I expect which to be a contested question.)

And then six or seven attorneys at the Department of Justice in Washington in the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division also refused to do the corrupt deed.

Then lawyer Hagan Scotten who was prosecuting the Adams case in New York joined the defectors. “I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion,” he wrote. And he quit. 

Emil Bove, Trump's flunky at DOJ, eventually did find such a cooperative underling. He also made his corrupt reasons for dropping the case clear in a vituperative letter, as did Trump's new more tame blonde Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Former US Attorney Joyce Vance immediately highlighted the human cost of these dramatic events. The attorneys at the Public Integrity Section proved their legal and personal integrity.

Rather than violate the oaths they took by following orders they could not abide by, they gave up their jobs, their incomes, and their benefits. It’s no small thing to forgo medical insurance when you’ve been living on a prosecutor’s salary and have given up your job with scant warning on a Thursday afternoon in February.

That’s the kind of courage that inspires us, and we hope it will inspire you, too. We have to stand up for what we believe in and what is right. We have to maintain our fight for democracy. It is up to us.

Writing in the New York Times, Masha Gessen draws on experience of Putin's Russia to share lessons from this drama:

In a column published last weekend, I mentioned the concept of collective hostage taking, pioneered by the Russian sociologist Yuri Levada. He spent decades trying to understand the methods of enforcement used by totalitarian regimes and the accommodations people make in response. He identified collective hostage taking as one of the most important totalitarian tools. It functions by enforcing collective responsibility and threatening collective punishment. 

In Stalin’s time, if people were arrested for a (usually invented) political crime, suspicion would also fall on their family members, their co-workers and their children’s schoolteachers and classmates. In later Soviet years, if dissidents were arrested, their colleagues would be scrutinized; some could lose their jobs or be demoted for “failing to exercise sufficient vigilance.” It is remarkable that Bove, if the reports are accurate, enacted collective hostage taking literally, by putting attorneys in a room and tasking them — over a video call — with finding at least one person to take the fall.

Levada had compassion for people who folded under conditions of collective hostage taking. Normal people confronted with abnormal demands will just try to survive, he wrote. Nothing prepares ordinary people for extraordinary times.

In fact, though, many life experiences do prepare us for times such as these. Most American schools, for example, practice collective punishment: If half of the class is unruly, the entire class may be docked recess. When I heard about lawyers being put in a room, I thought, “This has happened to my kids in New York City public schools.” In this way, U.S. schools are almost indistinguishable from the old Soviet ones.

The legal officials involved in the Adams debacle ... are only some of the first people to confront a choice most of us will face, if we choose to recognize it: Do you act like a schoolchild, who can survive and succeed only by conforming, or do you insist on your dignity and adult agency? 

Even in situations where the end seems preordained, as it certainly seemed to be in this case, will you be able to say, “I won’t be the one to do it”? If enough people withhold their cooperation, the end is no longer preordained.

The paragraph I've highlighted is our test. Opposing creeping tyranny requires both individual courage and collective solidarity. Americans aren't used to this, but we have many models in our history to draw on: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, FDR, Fannie Lou Hamer, Dr. Martin Luther King, Harvey Milk, Cesar Chavez, and so many more among the immigrants who made and are still making this land. The people who built this county weren't wimps and we needn't be either.