Morning inauguration protests in San Francisco

It stopped raining in time for a determined march around Financial District sites this morning.

This was not a large crowd -- several thousand (?) over the morning activities -- but very determined.

In all the alarm over the GOPer/Trump administration, there's been less public attention than I think warranted to the mortal threat these forces pose to the elementary rights of workers to organize in unions. It was good to see labor activists out in force this morning.

Today's marchers understand that the human and civil rights of immigrants and people of color are on the chopping block if the white nationalism Trump trumpeted in his inaugural address gets its way. The only remedy we have is solidarity, protest, and keeping on resisting.

Resist and protect much.

Not feeling equal to commenting on today's events

So I offer this:

Its Italian creator, Maurizio Cattelan, called it "America." This 18k gold toilet is installed at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, is fully functional, and visitors can experience it themselves. ***Perhaps I'll have some protest pictures later today.

Generosity is drowning

And so enforced suppression of compassion moves center stage. From the office of California State Senator Ricardo Lara:

Marilynne Robinson, best known as the author of novels including Gilead, teacher at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and a reflective Calvinist, captured something of our national condition in essays titled The Givenness of Things. In a chapter discussing Dietrich Bonhoeffer, she writes:

I had always thought that the one thing I could assume about my country was that it was generous. Instinctively and reflexively generous. ... I have to even admit that I fear this might have begun to change. ... Recently America, along with much of the rest of the world, has been living through a grand-scale disaster that has cost families their homes, their savings, their livelihoods. ... The response to it has been worse than meager.

... Are three yachts better than two? There are old men now who spend their twilight using imponderable wealth to overwhelm the political system. I am sure this is more exciting than keeping a stable of racehorses, or buying that fourth yacht. After a certain point there isn't much of real interest that can be done with yet more money. But imagine how great a boost to the aging ego would come with taking a nation's fate out of its own unworthy hands and shaping it to one's particular lights ...

... I am proposing that the West is giving up its legal and cultural democracy, leaving it open to, or ceding it to, the old and worst temptations of unbridled power. Nowhere in all this is there a trace of respect for people in general -- indeed, its energies seem to be fueled by its contempt for them.

Not being much of a Calvinist, I tend to believe we are born knowing how to be human. It's life in a society gone mad, corrupted, where unkindness profits some, that makes us less than generous. Might practicing generosity heal? Worth giving it a try as best we can. There's nothing easy in that, but there is nothing else to do.

The great sorting on college campuses -- and an exception

Erudite Partner teaches ethics at the University of San Francisco. That's the Jesuit institution, not the state school. She often tells me how interesting the place is, how diverse the student body is, how generally progressive both faculty and students seem.

Well no wonder. The New York Times' Upshot looked a study of the economic demographics of who goes to which colleges (or to college at all) and came up with some stark findings. If your parents were part of the one percent, you have to screw up pretty badly not to have a chance to attend an elite college. If your parents were part of the 60 percent of the population which earns less (often a lot less) than $65K annually, even if you get into one of these places, the largest fraction of your classmates will be children of the one percent.

At 38 colleges in America, including five in the Ivy League – Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Penn and Brown – more students came from the top 1 percent of the income scale than from the entire bottom 60 percent.

A few schools are different. And, lo and behold, USF is one of them.

According to the article, 7 percent of USF students come from one percent families while 27 percent derive from families under $65K. Good for USF.

Mathematical values

As with so many things, writing about Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O'Neill feels a different, less hopeful, project since the November election.

O'Neill is a math scientist, a former financial markets quant, who took her unease to Occupy Wall Street. In this book she explicates what she calls the "the dark side of Big Data." What she calls "WMD" are the algorithms that have so much impact, whether we know it or not, on how we live. Separate chapters delve into how US News generated simple and rather stupid scores that higher education institutions game for prestige and cash, how courts use unscientific predictions of possible recidivism rates to decide criminal sentences, how companies sort job applicants mathematically and then monitor the work they do once they are hired, how credit and insurance decisions are governed by algorithmic ratings, and how politicians use data to influence voters. Over the last fifteen years, the sophistication of all these systems has increased so much as to almost exclude any human judgement in their day-to-day operations. Your life and mine is hedged in by mathematical models from which there is little, if any, appeal.

And yet, this is not a Luddite book, a tract denouncing the systems that give us so much we want and perhaps need, as well as dehumanizing and controlling us. She knows that going backward is impossible. Given the choice between Facebook and no internet, streaming entertainment and network television, Amazon's universe of consumer choices and the department store at the mall, we know what human beings will choose. She insists that, with WMDs,

... the heart of the problem is almost always the objective. Change that objective from leeching off people to helping them, and a WMD is disarmed -- and can even become a force for good.

O'Neill is terribly clear why, structurally as well as because of bad intentions, it is hard to embed humane objectives within algorithms.

... human beings learn and adapt, we change, and so do our processes. Automated systems, by contrast, stay stuck in time until engineers dive in to change them. If a Big Data college application model had established itself in the early 1960s, we still wouldn't have many women going to college. ...

Big Data processes codify the past. They do not invent the future. Doing that requires moral imagination, and that's something only human can provide. We have to explicitly embed better values into our algorithms, creating Big Data models that follow our ethical lead. Sometimes that will mean putting fairness ahead of profit. ...

What does she think can be done? She harks back to state and federal regulation from the early 20th century forward that, partially, guaranteed health and safety of goods and services, despite costing corporations some of their bottom line. (We know the corporations often responded by offshoring their worse goods and practices, but that's the next phase.) She calls on math scientists to develop their own ethical code for their creations. And, ultimately, she looks to law to inject values into applied mathematics -- and insists this could happen. Algorithms should be subject to human auditing of their ethical implications. She reports hopeful initiatives.

Movements toward auditing algorithms are already afoot. At Princeton, for example, researchers have launched the Web Transparency and Accountability Project. ... Academic support for these initiatives is crucial. ... If you consider mathematical models as the engines of the digital economy -- and in many ways they are -- these auditors are opening the hood and showing us how they work.

... Finally, models that have a significant impact on our lives ... should be open and available to the public. Ideally we could navigate them at the level of an app on our phones. ... The technology already exists. It's only the will we're lacking.

Unhappily, that will seems likely to stay lacking under the GOPer/Trump regime. These folks are more likely to love them some data that enables them to identify, track and hurt those they consider their enemies or just beneath their concern.

But I'm still with O'Neill on the basic thrust of this book. We don't win more justice by going backwards. We have to figure out how to control our tools as we go forward.

O'Neill blogs are MathBabe, and even a mathematical illiterate like myself can almost take it in.

Resistance forces coalescing

We are not going to stand by and let this country move backwards ... we are facing fascism right now. We have to affirm our common citizenship and, more important, our common humanity. ... We will stand together -- for all of us.

Unstoppable Together.

People who have worked in the splintered world of progressive non-profits will recognize that the united front proclaimed here is an extraordinary accomplishment. Yup, the GOPer/Trump ascendancy has concentrated the minds and wills of organizations too often all too accustomed to compete for money, attention and energy. Under threat, this unity has a chance of holding. And nothing short of a broad, unselfish, unified coalition is likely to do the democracy-affirming majority much good.

Yes, we'll eventually need the Democratic Party to represent this coalition within the political arena. But the Dems will do that, if this assemblage keeps pushing together. If the people lead, our leaders will follow. And, very likely, our leaders in many aspects of resistance to cruelty and barbarism in the next few years are somewhere among these organizations.

Among these groups -- and others too -- there will be plenty for all of us to do. Pick the effort that moves your heart (or the aspect that answers your immediate crisis) and get busy.

Rallying for Obamacare

A couple of thousand people rallied in Civic Center Plaza yesterday in opposition to the GOP plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare.

Led by House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi, this was a politician heavy crowd. It seemed as if Pelosi had drawn in most all the Northern California Democratic Congresspeople, as well local San Francisco regulars. Note one interesting attendee: way over at the far right of this picture, that's Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison who is seeking backing for election as the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Ellison has been endorsed by Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, as well as the AFL-CIO and some mass-based Democratic advocacy groups. He is in a contest with Tom Perez, outgoing Labor Secretary in the Obama administration, who is broadly considered the candidate of Clinton/Obama regulars. Hard to know what Ellison was doing on Pelosi's stage in San Francisco yesterday. (For what it is worth, which ain't much, I think either Ellison or Perez would bring an organizing focus to the Dems as much as local organizations can be cajoled into that difficult work. They are both smart guys who understand that people want feel more connection to a political party if they are to trust it is representing them.)

Aside from the pooh-bahs, the speakers were individuals telling stories of what having access to health insurance has meant for lives and families. It is completely obvious that the Republicans now in power don't give a damn about who they hurt. They just want tax breaks for their fat cats. Killing Obamacare will deliver a windfall to their sponsors. The losers in repeal can just go die.

#Institutionfail

In Masha Gessen's widely distributed article on Rules for Survival in the illiberal, managed democracy into which our election has delivered us, one item is this: Rule #3: Institutions will not save you.

The authorities (a bishop and a dean) at the Episcopal Church’s Washington National Cathedral are demonstrating the truth of that admonition. Not only will their imposing edifice be used for its traditional interfaith prayer service the day after the inauguration, but they are sending their choir to sing at the ceremonies on Friday.

They have no excuse for sending the choir. Trump will undoubtedly treat the inauguration as a coronation; by sending the singers, they are blessing a man who promises only bigotry, cruelty, and misogyny. Whatever happened to their baptismal promise to "respect the dignity of every human being"? Sure, Trump is apparently human, but he spews bile before breakfast.

There might be some excuse for offering the interfaith service. After all, the building was designed for such civic exercises and probably depends on the prestige of them for its costly upkeep. But apparently the event will

... not include a central preacher or a customary sermon...

Would the Trumpkins only schedule this if promised either one of his sycophantic preachers like Franklin Graham, who was probably too far a stretch for the Bishop of Washington, or no preacher so there was no danger that he'd be challenged in any way? I would not be surprised.

As I wrote on the Episcopal Diocese of Washington Facebook page, I guess church authorities don't mind that, in fifty years or so, if any of us are around (which seems more and more questionable), the Episcopal Church will be generating another round of headlines like this from 2008:

Anyone interested in the Episcopal Church's historic equivocation on matters of slavery and race might want to look at this paper in Louie Crew's archives. This time around, I guess the word is -- so sorry, we abetted the coming of a foul fascist regime ...

By the way, I have no quarrel with the Episcopal Presiding Bishop's call for Episcopalians to pray for the civil authorities. I've found it healthy to pray for my enemies. I don't know if it does anything for them, but it seems to be good for me ... for my equilibrium. I can pray that God heal the Donald's obviously broken soul, as much as I can pray for such healing for mine.

Meanwhile I'll couple that prayer with offering up this from the Book of Common Prayer:

Grant us grace fearlessly to contend against evil and to make no peace with oppression; and, that we may reverently use our freedom, help us to employ it in the maintenance of justice in our communities and among the nations ...

Saturday scenes: bronze figures from Chinatown

Walking San Francisco took me down the main commercial street of Chinatown the other day. The purveyors of tourist merchandise undoubtedly know what visitors will buy.

Apparently at least one set of tastes runs to metallic (bronze?) statuary of surpassing ugliness.

Somehow I don't think he's catching anything. Might he live comfortably by a small carp pond?

It's hard to think of any setting this fellow would suit -- perhaps Donald Trump's foyer?

This watchdog might give an intruder pause ...

... while this frog might have encourage jumping out of one's skin.

I find this tortoise's face sort of sweet, but really, we haven't room for a 400 pound turtle.

#DontNormalizeHate

We all do what we can, working together as much as possible. Katy Perry produced this video along with Aya Tanimura.

Resist much and protect much.

Police attitudes and beliefs

Those polling nerds at Pew Research have issued survey results from questions put to 8000 cops, mostly from large urban departments, last summer.

Many of the findings are unsurprising, if discouraging, to those of us hoping to stop police shootings of blacks and other people of color. Eighty-three percent of officers feel that their job is not well understood by the public, a belief that walls them off from the rest of us. Most white officers (92%) think enough has been done to ensure blacks have equal rights; black officers (29%) disagree. The white population outside law enforcement is more of a mixed bag; "only" 57% think that racial equality has arrived. The black public (12%) overwhelming says "no way."

Some of the other findings Pew reports are less intuitively obvious. Here are some that struck me.

• Protesters aren't the only ones who believe police departments too often keep bad cops on the job. "... most officers are satisfied with their department as a place to work and remain strongly committed to making their agency successful. Still, about half (53%) question whether their department’s disciplinary procedures are fair, and seven-in-ten (72%) say that poorly performing officers are not held accountable."

• "While two-thirds of all police officers say the deaths of blacks at the hands of police are isolated incidents, only about four-in-ten members of the public (39%) share this view while the majority (60%) believes these encounters point to a broader problem between police and blacks." That 60% is higher than I expected; let's keep getting out the stories!

• "... while a majority of Americans (64%) favor a ban on assault-style weapons, a similar share of police officers (67%) say they would oppose such a ban." Have these officers no fear that someone will use these weapons against them? After all they feel misunderstood and under-appreciated.

• There seem to be significant differences between the attitudes and possibly the actions of male and female officers. "A majority of black officers (57%) say [highly publicized fatal encounters between police and blacks] encounters are evidence of a broader problem between police and blacks, a view held by only about a quarter of all white (27%) and Hispanic (26%) officers. Black female officers in particular are more likely to say these incidents signal a more far-reaching concern. Among all sworn officers, 63% of black women say this, compared with 54% of black men. ...
  
  "Most officers say that outside of required training, they have not discharged their service firearm while on duty; 27% say they have done this. Male officers are about three times as likely as female officers to say they have fired their weapon while on duty – 30% of men vs. 11% of women. ..."

• Hardly any cops think well of those of us protesting against excessive use of force by the police, but there are differences among them. "Among black officers, 69% say the protests were sincere efforts to force police accountability – more than double the proportion of whites (27%) who share this view. Female officers, older police and department administrators also are more likely than male officers, younger police and rank-and-file officers to believe protesters genuinely seek police accountability."

• A significantly large proportion of cops seem to shrink from operating as agents of federal immigration authorities. "Officers are divided over whether local police should take an active role (52%) in identifying undocumented immigrants rather than leaving this task mainly to federal authorities (46%)."

Friday cat blogging

He's climbing the doors again. Often he gets up there and then appears to wonder how he is supposed to get down. I guess it's good exercise.

Still pertinent

This blast from the past was on target when it was made by a volunteer videographer some years back (can you guess when?) and it is still apt now.

Last night Senate Republicans took a step toward taking access to healthcare away from 20-30 million children and adults. Their Obamacare repeal process has a long ways to go; Congresscritters are beginning to understand that constituents might not be so happy about losing doctors and bankruptcy protection; and the great orange conman doesn't want trashing his phony pretense of sticking up for the little (white) guy to be the first accomplishment of his regime. So it ain't over til it is over and, just maybe, some of these kids or their younger siblings might still be able to go to a doctor if the dice role just right. But nobody should count on it.

And so, after the trauma of an unanticipated narrow election defeat, we get back to the ordinary stuff of politics: Republicans working hard to guarantee their medical, fossil fuel, and corporate sugar daddies get all the goodies; the rest of us trying to keep the enfeebled Democratic Party caucus from making any compromises that would give legitimacy to the rightwing wrecking crew.***Focusing on this is not to say that the immediate threat of engulfing Trumpian fascism has receded. It hasn't. But the new regime means that we have to fight back on at least three fronts, all of which matter and any of which may yet create the friction in the system which might help a democratic (small "d") comeback.

• Ordinary GOPer viciousness. They will repeal or sabotage anything that requires taxes on their sponsors. Period. They will work to erode the rights of all who aren't straight, white men. That's what they do. And they'll make sure they have judges who defend the same perverted values.

• Kleptocracy. Trump intends to use his position to enrich himself and probably throw a few bones around to control his sycophants. Republicans could stop him, but they are too scared or on the take themselves.

• Trump's bullying authoritarianism. Sure, he'd like to emulate Putin's unconstrained power. He makes that quite clear. This is where we should expect our own Reichstag fire -- an unanticipated happening that the autocrat uses to overthrow previous constraints on his power. Can he scare us into letting him? We've been a bit of a fraidy cat nation since 9/11. Are we still? Time will tell. Courage and love are the best remedies.

Waters rising

San Francisco Bay came ashore briefly yesterday along the Embarcadero breakwall. This wasn't yet a consequence of rising sea levels due to climate warming/arctic ice melting. It was an instance of a king tide, a super high tide that comes along twice a year in particular alignments of the sun and moon in relation to earth. Nobody who reads tide tables was surprised.

But that doesn't mean that having the Bay come ashore shouldn't worry us. Most of the year, high tides peak at about five feet, four inches; king tides reach seven feet. With rising sea levels, this contained and infrequent rise will become the new norm.

“What we have today is mild coastal flooding that will become the new normal by as early as mid-century,” said [Marina] Psaros, [of the King Tides Project.]

... Some scientists predict that between 2060 and 2070, we may experience tides at the same magnitude as king tides on a monthly basis, due to sea-level rise caused by climate change. ... Even though scientists and planners are able to forecast and prepare for king tides, the tides’ severity can be exacerbated by other naturally occurring episodes, such as flooding, El Niño, and storms. Dramatic increases in water levels have the potential to cause damage to infrastructure, property, and the coastline.

Meanwhile, executives of the Port of San Francisco are raising alarm about the integrity of the seawall that bounds the bay. Much of the city's perimeter depends on this wall to keep a century of building on landfill from flooding. So far it does the job, but they fear it won't survive next time we have an earthquake. And that goes double as the waters rise.

If we want to preserve downtown, this monster construction project will have to be funded somehow. Oh yeah -- and we have a generally hostile, climate change denying adminstration in Washington.

H/t Hoodline for alerting me to this.

Tuesday was a surreal day in the USA, in two parts

The Prez was at his best in his farewell address, reprising his aspirational vision of this mixed bag of a country and polity.

... Our youth, our drive, our diversity and openness, our boundless capacity for risk and reinvention means that the future should be ours. But that potential will only be realized if our democracy works. ...

... Democracy can buckle when it gives in to fear. ... If the scope of freedom and respect for the rule of law shrinks around the world, the likelihood of war within and between nations increases, and our own freedoms will eventually be threatened. So let’s be vigilant, but not afraid. ...

... It falls to each of us to be ... "anxious, jealous" guardians of our democracy. Embrace the joyous task we have been given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours because, for all our outward differences, we in fact all share the same proud type, the most important office in a democracy, citizen. ...If something needs fixing, then lace up your shoes and do some organizing.

If you missed the speech, it's worth an hour of your time. ***Meanwhile unconfirmed opposition research dribbled into view which makes this cartoon seem more than metaphorical.

Quite apart from the possibility that the PEOTUS was filmed by the Russians in compromising sexual bullying, a new Quinnipiac University poll finds him with record low approval numbers for a new chief exec. And those numbers have only declined since November.

American voters give President-elect Trump a negative 37 - 51 percent favorability rating, compared to a divided 44 - 46 percent favorability rating November 22. ...

Donald Trump will take the nation in the right direction, 45 percent of American voters say, while 49 percent say he will take the nation in the wrong direction. ...

A total of 44 percent of voters are "very confident" or "somewhat confident" that Trump will make things better for them and their family, while 53 percent are "not very confident" or "not confident at all."

American voters disapprove 40 - 30 percent of the individuals Trump has nominated for his cabinet, with 28 percent who say they haven't heard enough about them.

Trump's election makes them feel "less safe," 45 percent of voters say, while 27 percent say they feel "more safe" and 27 percent say they feel "just as safe."

Voters support 72 - 22 percent, including 52 - 42 percent among Republicans, a review of Trump's finances to identify possible conflicts of interest.

It's not like he's sailing to office on a wave of popular enthusiasm.

This creates room for resistance. As Republicans in Congress try to use his elevation as an opportunity to enact their long time agenda of bonanzas for the One Percent at the expense of everyone else, they need to be reminded his tweets may not be enough to save them from furious constituents. He just doesn't have enough juice to cover for them. Let's keep calling ...

Facebook rant

I'm feeling a little rant about Facebook. Why should I have to look at bullshit like what I've posted next to this?

Both these ads are obvious fakes. Both gents are alive and more or less kicking. But somebody pays Mark Zuckerberg to show them to me in the vain hope that I'll click on them.

And this crap is inescapable. I have no control over what turns up next to my feed -- and no control over what turns up in my feed. Twenty percent or so of that seems to consist of planted garbage from institutions that some friend incautiously "liked" at some point. I mean, I don't hate the National Geographic or Amnesty International, but if want to relate to them I can visit their digital premises. In no sense have I asked for them just because someone I know "liked" them once.

I didn't like AOL back in the day -- that ancient (1983-2009) connectivity service tried to give us a diminished internet selected to meet AOL's commercial needs. AOL mailed half the population floppy disks in the hope we'd sign on. Many did, for awhile, till they discovered they didn't need it to venture online. AOL merged with/purchased Time-Warner as the temporarily more valuable partner in 2000. But most of us wanted an unfiltered web and that old AOL died of disuse.

But the unconstrained potential of the web apparently was too much for us. These days most all of us have allowed ourselves to be corralled in Zuckerberg's stable. I'd never look at Facebook except that too many of my friends and acquaintances who want to comment on my blog seem to live there. I try to be polite and friendly. I show courteous interest in others. I respond if contacted. But dammit, the space is a commercial playpen! I'd be quite happy if I never had to look at it again.

Anyone want to tell me what is good about Facebook?

Local Democracy

Hundreds of San Francisco Democrats lined up in the rain yesterday to vote for delegates from our local Assembly district to the state party convention. These elections take place every two years, selecting seven women and seven men.

There's nothing new about these contests being contested. In a place where all elected officials are Democrats, politics simply switches from being constructed as struggle of Democrats against Republicans/conservatives to a contest between Democratic Party "moderates" and "progressives."

In San Francisco, the former refers to tech money moguls and real estate developers with their numerous associated hangers-on including our present mayor. This set has money to burn and consequently can gather a crowd. Progressives include lefties, Berniecrats, many rank and file union members, organized tenants, and the remnants of the social movements of the last 40 years. When the latter motley crew is organized, they usually have the numbers. The progressives lose when most people aren't paying attention.

This year, Reform Democrats were paying attention. They did a terrific job of turning out a progressive crowd. The voting line stretched round the block.

Once inside the union hall where the voting was happening, the line snaked around chairs and tables. We shambled from station to station quite cheerfully. For old timers among us, this was a chance to encounter friends and acquaintances from campaigns past (as well as to avoid a few political opponents).

Finally we received our ballots, marked and deposited them in carefully guarded, marked, cardboard boxes.

Does this activity matter? In some ways, not much. The California Democratic Party is deeply anchored in generally progressive constituencies; whoever grabs the leadership and hence ends up writing resolutions and endorsing (or not) candidates and measures will at least make noises in a "progressive" direction. We don't have to worry about that.

But it is good to get the most committed people possible in official roles -- people who feel some accountability to a mass progressive base. I'm grateful for people who take up that cause; they make the electoral front a better arena. I don't think elections are the only front for progressive agitation -- far from it. But this is not something to be ignored either. It is certainly worth an odd, wet hour.***UPDATE: In the 17th Assembly District, the progressive "reform" slate won 8/14 delegates.

Three temptations described by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

My friend and mentor Fr. John Kirkley, rector of St. James Episcopal Church, spoke highly last spring of a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor executed by the Nazis; I read it, blogged about it, and came away more confused than enlightened. This past Advent season, John presented a series of talks about the life and faith journey of Antony, one of the hermetic eremetic Desert Fathers of 3rd century Christianity. He was kind enough to share the text with me. By permission, I am posting here a small segment from those talks that explicates some of Bonhoeffer's thinking. Bonhoeffer's words are inset in the usual style of this blog; the rest is from John.

Reflecting on his own experience of evil, Dietrich Bonhoeffer noted that there are three ways in which we become tempted to participate in the violation of human dignity and the desecration of the earth. The first temptation is the idolization of human power in the face of fear and uncertainty.

The weaknesses of human nature appear more clearly in a storm than in the quiet flow of calmer times. Among the overwhelming majority of people, anxiety, greed, lack of independence, and brutality show themselves to be the mainspring of behavior in the face of unsuspected chance and threats. At such a time the tyrannical despiser of humanity easily makes use of the meanness of the human heart by nourishing it and giving it other names. Anxiety is called responsibility; greed is called industriousness; lack of independence is called solidarity; brutality becomes masterfulness.

By this ingratiating treatment of human weakness, what is base and mean is generated and increased ever anew. The basest contempt for humanity carries on its sinister business under the most holy assertions of love for humanity. The meaner the baseness becomes, the more willing and pliant a tool it is in the hand of the tyrant.

The small number of upright people will be smeared with mud. Their courage is called revolt, their discipline Pharisaism, their independence arbitrariness, and their masterfulness arrogance.

For the tyrannical despiser of humanity, popularity is a sign of the greatest love for humanity. He hides his secret profound distrust of all people behind the stolen words of true community. While he declares himself before the masses as one of them, he praises himself with repulsive vanity and despises the rights of every individual. He considers the people stupid, and they become stupid; he considers them weak, and they become weak; he considers them criminal, and they become criminal. His most holy seriousness is frivolous play; his conventional protestations of solicitude for people are bare-faced cynicism.

In his deep contempt for humanity, the more he seeks the favor of those he despises, the more certainly he arouses the masses to declare him a god. Contempt for humanity and idolization of humanity lie close together.

Bonhoeffer could be describing the phenomenon of Trumpism in our own time. It is the reversal of all values in which evil is called good, words mean nothing, and freedom is exchanged for mass participation in the elixir of violent power. This is evil in its purest form.

There are, however, more subtle forms of complicity with evil.

Good people, however, who see through all this, who withdraw in disgust from people and leave them to themselves, and who would rather tend to their own gardens than debase themselves in public life, fall prey to the same temptation to contempt for humanity as do bad people. Their contempt for humanity is of course more noble, more upright, but at the same time less fruitful, poorer in deeds. Faced by God’s becoming human, this contempt will stand the test no better than that of the tyrant. The despiser of humanity despises what God has loved, despises the very form of God become human.

This is, perhaps, a peculiarly contemplative temptation: to retreat into interiority and abdicate one’s responsibility for the renewal of the world. Such a retreat betrays an actual contempt for human beings, whether through self-righteousness, sectarianism, or cynical indifference. Here, one perceives the reality of evil but refuses the risk of love.

Finally, Bonhoeffer describes what I call the liberal, humanitarian temptation:

There is, however, also a sincerely intended love for humanity that amounts to the same thing as contempt for humanity. It rests on evaluating human beings according to their dormant values – the health, reasonableness, and goodness deep beneath the surface. (This love for humanity grows mostly in peaceful times. But also in times of great crisis these values can on occasion shine forth and become the basis for a hard-won and honest love for humanity.) With forced tolerance, evil is interpreted as good, meanness is overlooked, and the reprehensible is excused. For various reasons one shies away from a clear No, and finally agrees to everything. One loves a self-made picture of human beings that has little similarity to reality, and one ends up despising the real human being whom God has loved and whose being God has taken on.

Bonhoeffer is describing the temptation to love the world as we would like it to be, rather than as it is, denying or tolerating actual evil in the misguided belief that people and institutions are ultimately good. “He can’t really mean that.” “Oh, that will never happen here.” It can happen here. It has happened here. Though evil, unlike love, cannot endure forever, its reality, however long or short lived, must be acknowledge honestly, resisted, and overcome by the power of authentic love: love that is willing to risk everything for the sake of real human beings and the real world.

Saturday scenes: snow in San Francisco?

For a place where it never snows (well, hardly ever -- I saw some flakes once in the '70s), San Franciscans frequently build their their holiday decorations in snow motifs.

Perhaps because I come from a place where winter snow is the norm -- and then some -- I find this a little odd.

If you don't have snow, I guess you can treat the white stuff as merely an opportunity for damp creativity.

Or warm fuzzies ...

All from one unexceptional San Francisco precinct encountered while Walking.

Why working to rein in the SFPD still matters in the Trump era

In fact, I'd say this matters EVEN more in the Trump era. We must continue to struggle to constrain and prosecute rogue police departments at the local level.

Yes, we must also shine light on the cruelty and racism that will emanate from Washington Republicans and the con man who has eaten them for an appetizer. We must be alert; how far will this go? Will Trump succeed in making lunch of whatever he can grab of the wealth that workers hands and brains have made in this country? Will he gorge on using the state power to crush our imperfect democracy? Struggles at all levels will decide. Some thoughts:

• The rule of law, however fragile, is what makes this a democracy. We assert that everyone must play by the rules. Police impunity, their escape from accountability for acts what would be criminal if done by anyone else, is a clear assault on the rule of law. That's worth screaming bloody murder about. Equality before the law is the baseline condition for any rights we may have.

• The easy option in this time would be to wallow in cynicism. The U.S. people -- Trump voters, Republicans, most of our fellow citizens -- are just lazy, dumb suckers. All that stuff about democracy and equality and rule of law is just window dressing for exploitation; the system is rigged. Well, maybe. Skepticism is sensible. But unrelenting cynicism, now and perhaps always, is suicidal. There's always more than our most horrible imaginings hidden somewhere in reality or the species wouldn't have made it this far.

• The struggle for justice matters because innocent people are dead. Amilcar, Alex, Mario, Luis, Jessica are dead and the SFPD shot them. They had lives. Not perhaps lives that were easy to empathize with for comfortable people in this society, but lives that were their own. They had families who loved them. And they were snuffed out, without apparently defensible reason or accountability for their killers. There is such a thing as wrong and these killings fit the definition. They cannot be allowed to pass without a ripple.

When activist Benjamin Bac Sierra speaks about the SFPD murder of his friend Alex Nieto, he always leads the audience in a chant: "Amor por Alex!" We respond "Amor por Alex!" That's what this struggle for accountability is about. It's about LOVE, love for particular people and for a way of being in society together. Let's try not to forget it.

For the record: It has been 679 days ...

since Amilcar Perez Lopez was shot 6 times in the back by plain clothes officers of the San Francisco Police Department. District Attorney George Gascon is still sitting on the case.

Fr. Richard Smith of the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist spoke at the county Hall of Justice on Thursday for the coalition that has come together to press for charges.

Public Defender Jeff Adachi sharply called out the DA's pattern of inaction on police use of force cases.

According to police data presented Wednesday at the Police Commission, there are currently 15 open investigations into police shootings, three of which date back to 2014. Twelve of those cases are waiting for a charging decision letter from the District Attorney’s Office before the homicide investigation can be closed and an internal affairs investigation undertaken.

“There is no accountability, we’ve been promised accountability by the district attorney, by the Police Commission, by the Office of Citizen Complaints, and so many others, yet we have failed to see that materialize,” Adachi said.

The parents of Alex Nieto (killed by officers of the SFPD, March 21, 2014) and relatives of Luis Gongoro Pat (shot by the SFPD April 7, 2016) were among the speakers. Felicia Jones represented a group working for justice for Mario Woods (gunned down while surrounded by officers of the SFPD on December 15, 2015.)

Since 2000, the SFPD has killed 40 civilians; no officers have been charged.

Friday cat blogging

Not all cats are furry. This is a maneki-neko, literally Japanese "beckoning" or welcoming cat. They are much favored by Chinese-origin merchants in San Francisco.

This one doesn't look all that happy.

Here, the cat on the shelf hides amidst a jumble of other items.

Take your choice of greeters ...

All encountered while Walking San Francisco.

Getting loose while getting clipped

People from other states often wonder whether Californians reside quite on the same planet. I tend to think we're fine here in the land of fruits and nuts, but others are not so sure. We are different.

This being the beginning of a new year, California inaugurates the usual slew of new laws. This one (I'd never heard of it until I read a round up) is my favorite of the current batch.

Californians who go in for a haircut or hairstyling may soon be offered a complimentary glass of beer or wine ... The new law, which takes effect Jan. 1, allows beauty salons and barbershops to serve up to 12 ounces of beer or six ounces of wine at no charge without a special license or permit.

Can a proffer of pot from your hairdresser to be far behind?

Deportations could trash the housing market

This looks like a prosperous neighborhood, doesn't it? It's out in one of the further reaches of San Francisco where tech workers and urban professionals seldom visit, where people still raise children while working multiple jobs and living in extended families. Once populated by Irish and Italian Catholics, it is now full of Filipinos, Latinos, and people of various other Asian origins.

And it is the kind of neighborhood where the little-anticipated consequences of a radical deportation dragnet removing undocumented residents would likely to hit hard.

Many undocumented immigrants live in — and contribute income to — households with legal residents. In those 42 counties [studied by Jacob Rugh and Matthew Hall], for example, the researchers estimate that nearly three-quarters of the 1.2 million households with at least one undocumented adult immigrant also contained a documented adult household member. And about a third of all undocumented immigrants in those counties lived in owner-occupied homes.

“It’s just so much higher than what people think,” Mr. Rugh said. “It’s a very interesting twist on the Latino incorporation story: Their tremendous increases in homeownership and other things — a lot of those gains are because they pooled resources across legal status.”

... By deporting undocumented immigrants, in effect, the country may be making it harder for Hispanics to realize the American dream. And if that argument doesn’t convince you, Mr. Rugh and Mr. Hall propose a more self-interested appeal for the country’s coming debate over what to do about undocumented immigrants:

Homeowners need Hispanic buyers.

“This is the future,” Mr. Rugh said. “The Asian and Latino population are a big part of the future of the housing market. And people want to be able to sell their homes, right?”

Rugh and Hall noticed that neighborhoods like this were hit hard during the foreclosure crisis of 2009-2013 -- just as mass deportations by ICE (the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency) were increasing radically and removing some of households' earners. The foreclosure crisis was worst where counties cooperated actively with the federal government's push to deport.

San Francisco issues proclamations about protecting our newcomer neighbors. But these researchers have pointed out how other residents also win when cities fight the Trump deportation agenda.

Resist and protect.

Denounce lawless "law enforcement"

Like residents of most all U.S. cities and towns, San Franciscans live under a legal regime that throws the book at young black and brown people charged with impeding or assaulting police officers -- even if the charges amount to nothing but the cops covering their asses because they roughed someone up.

Meanwhile, officers who shoot and kill civilians get to walk free.

This week, those of us who have been demanding that District Attorney George Gascon prosecute the officers who shot six bullets into the back of Amilcar Perez Lopez will be joining up with Public Defender Jeff Adachi to denounce the discrepancy.

When: Thursday, January 5, 12 noon
Where: San Francisco Hall of Justice, 850 Bryant
What: Demand the D.A. charge Amilcar's killers and stop inflating cases of alleged violence against police

Here's a primer, created in the wake of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, on how courts have construed the law to allow police officers to shoot to kill without fear of penalty.

Kaepernick broke the mold and found he was not alone

Yet another season of futility ended for the San Francisco 49er football gang yesterday. Our local gladiators suffer from a terrible ownership -- the York family -- and an inept management -- York family hacks. These diffuse their incompetence and short-sightedness across the organization. We can't blame the guys we see on the field when years of dumb and cheapskate decisions have robbed them of their chance to display their athletic potential.

But against all odds, the season was not quite lost because of quarterback Colin Kaepernick's decision to call out the country's racial sins by taking a knee during ritual performances of the national anthem. Even though 69 percent of NFL players are black, commentators mostly assumed he would merely alienate his fellows. Aren't these big, dangerous men taught early and often that they can only succeed in their much loved sport by tamping down their thoughts and feelings? At every level, coaches and decision makers strive to make automatons of brilliantly talented athletes -- "for the good of the team," of course.

Well, it seems not to have turned out that way for Kaepernick. He was often booed by hostile crowds. But his fellow 49ers apparently admired his stand. Even the team's authorities stood up for him. The players voted to give him

the Len Eshmont Award, their most prestigious honor, which is given to their most courageous and inspirational player.

...After Kaepernick’s national anthem stance became public in the preseason, he swayed skeptical teammates by passionately explaining in a players-only meeting that his decision was inspired by his disgust with racial inequality. In September, CEO Jed York matched Kaepernick’s $1 million pledge to community organizations, and head coach Chip Kelly strongly supported his quarterback.

“He’s shedding light on a situation that is heinous,” Kelly said of Kaepernick’s outspokenness on the killing of black men by police officers.

SF Chronicle

Who knows where any of these 49ers will land next season. The General Manager and Kelly have already been fired. But Kaepernick broke through the showy phony patriotism and machismo of the national spectator sport -- and found he was not so alone as might have been feared.

Onward into a perilous new year

Today I'll share what some others have to say -- enough of my musings appear here.

As Trump torpedoes into the presidency, we need to shift from realist to moral reasoning. That would mean, at minimum, thinking about the right thing to do, now and in the imaginable future.

Masha Gessen, New York Review of Books

... politeness is no substitute for morality, and won’t save us in the end. We only get to decide who we are.

Barbara Kingsolver

When it comes to combating Trump, one must take particular care not to join him in the land of conspiracies, however intellectually engaging or emotionally satisfying that may be. One has to start, instead, by holding fast to the truth. That is a lot of work, too.

Amy Davidson, The New Yorker

Hannah Arendt wrote, “Under conditions of terror, most people will comply but some people will not. Humanly speaking, no more is required, and no more can reasonably be asked, for this planet to remain a place fit for human habitation.”

Quoted in the NYT

I seem to be partial to women's thoughts. Well that seems appropriate. But some men have insights too.

... the country is wobbling between two extremely different futures: pluralist social democracy on the one hand, and white nativist protectionism on the other. The election’s bizarre schism, with Clinton winning the popular vote and Trump winning the electoral college, is a sign of how razor-thin the margin between those dramatically opposed futures is.

Rising diversity isn’t going away. Income inequality isn’t going away. Support for redistribution isn’t going away. For liberals, pluralist social democracy is the project of the future, and any alternative falls somewhere between xenophobic and amoral. But what if the vast majority of white voters who voted for Trump aren’t interested in any version of that future, no matter who the messenger is?

Derek Thompson, The Atlantic

I sometimes hear that democracies have lost their sense of purpose. This isn’t so. Democracy’s purpose is to create conditions in which free citizens can lead the most fulfilling lives possible that they themselves choose. Human beings need not only livelihoods and security but also freedom, dignity and justice. Democracy, whatever its flaws, is the political system that can best respond to those needs.

Kofi Annan, retired U.N. Sec'y. General

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

President Abraham Lincoln, via Digby

Onward to a perilous new year ...