The school district in West Ada thought it was getting rid of the dread menace of D.E.I. when administrators ordered teacher Sarah Inama to take down a poster reading "Everyone is Welcome Here." This is what followed:
Enjoy. There's learning happening here.
Crosspurposes: Christianity's broken bargain with democracy by Jonathan Rauch
This is a strange book. Someone -- don't remember who -- must have recommended it. I needed distraction while Democrats were failing us in DC yesterday, so I rushed through it.
Sometimes Christian America [he means white evangelical Protestantism] and secular America can rub along merely leaving each other alone. But sometimes they come into conflict; and when they do, they have positive obligations to make room for each other. ... Their bargain requires that the Constitution be interpreted in a way that is consistent with the well-being of democratic pluralism. The bargain is implicit, but America depends upon it nonetheless.
... America's demonstration that a country can be both devout and diverse, secular and spiritual, has been a historic achievement and a gift to the world. ... But the religious side has been less and less able to uphold its end of the bargain. ... A result is what I think of as a cultural trade deficit.
... Look at it this way. Secular liberalism certainly promotes important values: tolerance, lawfulness, civic responsibility, equality, and so forth. But they are primarily procedural values, which orient us to follow certain rules. The legitimacy of those rules must come largely from outside of secular liberalism itself ... in practice, that has meant relying on Christianity to support the civic virtues. So we atheists rely on Christianity to maintain a positive balance of trade: we need it to export more moral values and spiritual authority to the surrounding culture than it imports. If, instead the church is in cultural deficit -- if it becomes a net importer of values from the secular world -- then it becomes morally derivative rather than morally formative. Rather than shaping secular values, it merely reflects them and thus melts into the society around it. ...Yes -- one subset of Christians has replaced the way of the uppity itinerant peasant murdered by a vicious empire (that's Jesus) with the worship of Emperor Donnie. Many others, Christian and not-Christian, merely try to keep their heads down and wonder what became of values like decency, generosity, honesty and kindness.
Ten Senate Democrats threw away their only chance for relevance against Trump/Musk's fascist takeover the United States government by voting to advance a budget resolution which codifies the coup. Here's the list (reporting didn't make this easy to find.)
Shaheen and Peters are retiring. The rest of them think they can put this betrayal of their voters behind them. Maybe they can.
But what's the point of having them if they can't get off their knees?
My ancestors risked life to end the reign of a king -- and they thought a bath of tar and feathers was the just deserts of traitors. We don't go in for such things these days -- but the traitors should have a very hard time if they think they can walk among their voters without being shouted down and shamed.
If Kamala Harris had narrowly won the presidency, we'd be talking vigorously about this book, trying to understand why some Latinos shifted their party preferences in the vote. Since the Donald sneaked narrowly through to commit his ungoverned mayhem on the nation, most of us will likely miss it. But we shouldn't.
Two things can be true at once. Simon Bolivar could have been both a liberator and an authoritarian caudillo. He could be a hero to some, an enemy to others. That seems a recurring story in Latin American history and politics, strongmen achieving "democracy" by way of authoritarianism. Or, rather, their own distorted version of democracy. ...
Democracies in Latin America are haunted by the shadows of strongmen. ...[For example] Nayib Bukele [in El Salvador] is simply the latest iteration of this dark legacy. ... Millions of people love Bukele. Millions of people want Bukele. They look up to him, not just in Latin America, but also in the United States.She goes on:
For many Latinos, the purpose of being in the U.S. is to heal. To run away and escape from these wounds of the past. Yet the United States has a long history of exploiting the political trauma many Latinos carry -- particularly those fleeing communism and violence -- to score political points. ... American administrations have leveraged that pain, exacerbated it, and carefully weaponized it to their advantage. I thought about everyone who has been featured in this book ... So many of them don't appear to have healed from their wounds. ...
... America's foreign policy created fertile grounds for the steady rise of authoritarianism, not just in Latin America, but in our own backyard. It all comes full circle.Ramos concludes:
The image America has of us doesn't necessarily translate into the image many Latinos have of themselves. Americans may see us as minorities, but many feel like the majority. They may see uses immigrants, but many feel like border vigilantes on the inside. They may see us as Black, but many feel white. They may see us as Indigenous, but many feel like Spaniards. They may see us as liberal on paper, but many feel conservative in their hearts. They may see us as people who value democratic ideals, but many yearn for the authoritarian strongman. The path toward finding ourselves in this country has never been linear. In our quest to find belonging in America, many Latinos are quietly oscillating between identities, spaces, and stories that are often disconnected and at odds with each other.Latinos in this country are our future. That coming into demographic might has meant one trajectory in California and a different one in Florida. But what does it really mean? Ramos provides glimpses. There will be more.
• • •
For what it is worth -- not much but there will the more to come -- Latinos are rapidly becoming disillusioned by the Trump regime's record on "Jobs and the Economy" according to the YouGov/Economist poll. In January Hispanics gave Trump a favorable 41-36 rating; but late February, they were registering 32-58 disapproval. That's a -31 point swing in a month!
Before Mark Kelly was a US Senator from Arizona, he was an astronaut. One can say, literally, he's been around.
Last week he took it on himself to visit Ukraine and meet the people Donald Trump wants us to betray in order to make nice with Russia's Putin.
In response, Trump's drug-addled phony edge lord (that's Elon Musk) called Kelly a "traitor." Kelly is not taking it.
Let's cut the crap: If Ukraine falls, American safety is at risk.
If Elon Musk thinks defending Ukraine makes me a traitor, then it's clear he knows nothing about keeping America safe.
Oh sure, obviously Kelly is posturing to raise his political profile, perhaps testing a 2028 presidential run. But that's what we want Dems to be doing: competing to show who can be the toughest and smartest leader for a better country. Let the competition to smash Trump/Musk thrive. Let us collectively decide what flavor of competitor serves the country's needs best.
From the neighborhood newspaper, El Tecolote:
For the past 10 months, the Honduran mother, her husband and their two young children have lived in a San Francisco family shelter, waiting for a rent subsidy that might help them afford a place of their own. Her husband, who works as a garbage collector, earns just enough to keep them afloat but not enough to pay the city’s sky-high rents.
... She is one of dozens of homeless parents facing evictions this month due to a controversial city policy that limits family shelter stays to 90 days.
... With 318 families on the shelter waitlist, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) says the policy is meant to “increase the flow of families” through the shelter system and connect them with long-term housing solutions faster.Faith in Action took a delegation made up of these families to meet Mayor Daniel Lurie. Nothing came of that.
“[Lurie] told us not to worry,” said FIABA advocate Brenda Córdoba. “We thought that meant he would mobilize, maybe talk to access points about giving all families extensions… but now he’s saying he didn’t commit to anything.”
At first, she said, the meeting with the mayor felt like a breakthrough. But when families reconvened on Tuesday, many still had eviction notices set for the coming week.
... Vilma, who is currently in asylum proceedings, says she’s been struggling to get her shelter to understand her situation. She says she’s seen a disconnect with what the shelter tells her she can do and what she’s required to do to gain another extension.
“They tell us that we can’t attend meetings because we were on our way out, so we get a warning,” Vilma said. “But then they ask us why we didn’t request a meeting and we get a warning.”
John Ganz writes the substack Unpopular Front. Sometimes I find his highbrow intellectual history a little precious. People have died, if not directly in consequence, certainly under the cover of fancy right wing racist apologia. They don't deserve much explication.
And as push comes to shove, Ganz does know it. He takes off after one such apologist. (I've added paragraph breaks for easier reading and emphasis on what I take to be the vital point.)
... this guy is just totally baffled someone could feel passionately about anything—other than maybe that some races or groups are unnaturally inferior.
It’s true that Nazi salutes make me feel burning rage and hatred. Nazis and fascists are my enemies as I think they should be everyone else of goodwill. That was my whole point. It might have something to do with the fact that these guys murdered my family members. It also might have something to do with the fact that I view that ideology and movement as the worst thing ever devised in history, as a deep affront to everything good and noble in the human experience.
Racism, like the author’s, that tries to pass itself off as scientific or dispassionate does not soothe me into complacency: it makes me even more angry, because it is coldblooded and slimy. I don’t consider it a legitimate object of discussion. It’s an insidious ideology that dissolves the common bonds of humanity.
I have more tolerance for ignorant prejudice than for “scientific” racism that tries to organize itself as a body of scientific knowledge that would systematically degrade and ultimately destroy the equality of mankind.
To me, a preacher of racism—no matter how subtle or qualified—is not just my enemy, but the enemy of all mankind. Even if it were not all pseudoscience and charlatanism, I would reject it in principle. The division of humanity into racial castes is destructive of the very notion of shared humanity.
I try, imperfectly, to follow Adorno’s categorical imperative, that we must “arrange [our] thoughts and actions so that Auschwitz will not repeat itself, so that nothing similar will happen.” To me, racist ideology, especially when it’s sanitized and scientized, is the first whiff of poison gas.
I also don’t think this person understands what a profound insult racism represents. My family fought and sustained wounds in Germany’s wars, they earned medals, they believed in the goodness and rightness of their nation, and felt called to sacrifice themselves for it.
Look at the soldiers in America’s armed forces now being demoted, removed, and humiliated because of their race, gender, or sexual orientation. Or the attempts to erase black citizens’ contributions to America’s wars. These men and women were willing to sacrifice their lives for this country and now some in their country say they are not worthy. It’s been decided they are fundamentally not American.
That betrayal should provoke anger in anyone with a sense of honor.
I’m charged with intolerance of those with different views than me, but even the author says that the right is now infested with Nazis. I’ve seen this political movement turn into something monstrous and absurd in my lifetime: a strange cult of personality around an evident moron, and then I’m asked for more forbearance towards my political opponents.
I once had hopes in a rational center-right to reject these things. Those hopes have been repeatedly dashed, largely because people like this author are unable or unwilling to see things in their proper perspective. You may read but don’t remotely understand my work or much else in the world. ChatGPT will not help you.
While claiming to be defenders of “Western Civilization,” writers like this one have already betrayed its greatest accomplishment in ways they will never fully understand.
Once upon a time, an earlier generation of Americans were much clearer in their thinking. I give you Dr. Seuss:
That is the common thread. Time and again this past week, Trump declared that he has the right not only to define American values, but to define who is excluded — and then to act on it.
That is wrong.
This is not the end. Trump does not have that right. The Constitution, many federal laws, and legal precedent all clearly block him from doing so in many respects.
That, as we have too often seen, is not enough. Many people will have to act to ensure it remains so.
Legal challenges, support for those challenges and the challengers, public officials lodging protests and insisting on accountability, and members of the public speaking out are just the start.
Judges will need to continue ruling against the administration when it acts illegally.
All people need to defend the law and oppose these sorts of actions, not because the law is always right or because it will be sufficient to moving forward and away from authoritarianism, but because the law is a foundational shared understanding that allows us to operate as a society.
Trump has regularly scapegoated groups of people — that has been a key part of his cruelty over the past decade and before. This week, to me, felt different because it went beyond broad attacks on large swaths of people. This was a series of directed attacks on individual entities that Trump believes have challenged him or his policies.
As I’ve written previously, the opening of the second Trump administration has been a series of efforts by Trump and others to see what they can get away with. Those have been extreme efforts at times, but they have, primarily, been about his authority within the government — in particular, when contrasted with other branches.
This week was a further escalation of that — testing out whether he can “get away with” taking a clearly more authoritarian path forward.
We must respond accordingly.
Trump and his acolytes and hangers on and enablers don't get to define what the American people value. We're being reminded that solidarity and empathy are the basis of communal civilization; the war of all against all leads only to collapse of what make us human. We need to take our country back from the stupid, shallow, and greedy.
Timothy Snyder is the preeminent English-language historian of what he has labeled the Eastern Europe Bloodlands. Modern Ukraine, the western frontiers of what is now Russia, Belarus, Poland, the Baltic states were all places and peoples engulfed in human barbarism throughout the 20th century. These lands were where Nazi Germans attempted their "final solution," aimed to erase living Jews from Europe.
Snyder's reaction to the Trump/Vance ambush of Ukainian president Zelens'kyi is long, heartfelt, and deep. Here's a taste; click on the title to read it all.
Anti-semitism in the Oval office
A confrontation seen with a historian's eye... The encounter in the White House was antisemitic. I am an historian of the Holocaust. I was trained by a survivor. Jerzy Jedlicki was nine years old when the Germans invaded, and fourteen when he emerged from hiding in Warsaw, and a prominent Polish historian by the time we met. ...
... Some forms of what [Jerzy] defined as antisemitism had to do with his memories of occupation. Jews had to show deference. Germans mocked the ways Jews dressed. That was before they were sent to the ghetto and murdered. Jews were scapegoated, made responsible for what the Germans wished to do anyway.
Some characteristics of antisemitism as he described it were more abstract. Jewish achievement was portrayed as illegitimate. Jews only gained success, antisemites say, by lying and propaganda. If a Jew was prominent, that only proved the existence of a Jewish conspiracy, and thereby the illegitimacy of the institution where the success was achieved. A prominent Jew was always, went the antisemitic assumption, motivated by money.
Some of what Jerzy said had to do with his experience after the war. Non-Jews will deny the courage and suffering of Jews. They will claim all heroism and martyrdom as their own. ... there was after the war a Soviet antisemitism, with a broader and longer heritage, that claimed that Jews had somehow all remained at the rear while others fought and died. The facts were no defense.
... all of this should help us to see antisemitism in real life. Some cases are so overwhelming in scale that we find them difficult to confront and name. As Orwell noted, it can be hard to see what is right in front of your face.
Much has been said about the evils of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Its antisemitic element, however, has been underestimated. Russia's major war aim was fascist regime change, the overturning of a democratically-elected president in favor of some sort of collaborator. The premise is absurd: that Ukrainians do not really exist as a nation, and in fact would prefer a Russian.
But it was also antisemitic: that it is unnatural that a Jew could hold an important office. Volodymyr Zelens'kyi, the Ukrainian president, is of Jewish origin. Members of his family fought in the Red Army against the Germans. Others were murdered in the Holocaust. Although his Jewishness is not very relevant in Ukrainian politics, it is highly salient to Russian (and other) antisemites.Ukraine, says Putin, does not really exist. But another theme of the propaganda is that Zelens'kyi is not actually the president of Ukraine. These two bizarre ideas work together: Ukraine is artificial and can exist thanks to the Jewish international conspiracy. The fact that a Jew leads the country confirms — for Russian fascists — both the unreality of Ukraine and the reality of a conspiracy. This Russian regime perspective is implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) antisemitic. Russian propaganda treats Zelens'kyi as obsessed with money and as subhuman. ...
• • •
Last Friday I happened to start watching the discussion at the White House between Zelens'kyi, Donald Trump, JD Vance and Brian Glenn towards the end, when Vance was already yelling at the Ukrainian president: "you're wrong!" I took in the tone and the body language, and my first, reflexive reactions was: these are non-Jews trying to intimidate a Jew. Three against one. A roomful against one. An antisemitic scene.
And the more I listened to the words, the more that reaction was confirmed. I won't speak for how Zelens'kyi regards himself. Ukrainian, of course. Beyond that I don't know. These things are complex, and personal.
But not for the antisemite.
It was all there, in the Oval Office, in the shouting and in the interruptions, in the noises and in the silences. A courageous man seen as Jewish had to be brought down. When he said things that were simply true he was shouted down and called a propagandist.
• • •
... I had a strong personal reaction to that scene in the Oval Office, and I checked it for a week with friends and colleagues, who confessed that they had had the same reaction. I reconsidered what I had learned as a historian. I looked at the scholarly definitions. Everything, sadly, lines up. ...
In writing about antisemitism here I am obviously making a moral point. I am asking us, Americans, to think seriously about what we are doing, about Russia's criminal war against Ukraine, in which we are now becoming complicit. That Russia's war is antisemitic is one of its many evils; taking Russia’s side in that war is wrong for many reasons, including that one. ...
... In the world of the antisemite, all is known in advance: the Jew is just a deceiver, concerned only with money, subject to exclusion, intimidated by force. As soon as he is humiliated and eliminated, everything else will fall into its proper place. Consider the smirks in the Oval Office last Friday: the antisemite thinks that he has understood everything.
But in the actual world in which we actually live, Jews are humans, perilous and beautiful like the rest of us. The United States has never elected a Jewish president, and perhaps never will. But Ukraine has; and that president represents his people, facing challenges that those who mock him will never understand. ...
... About one thing I am certain. Our eyes have to be open to what we do not wish to see.
Yes. Too much, sadly, lines up as we watch the Donald betray friends and attack our best hopes and aspirations.
Children Were Forced to Torture Sam Nordquist, Prosecutors Say
Seven people are now charged with first-degree murder in connection with the death of Mr. Nordquist, a transgender man ... [gift article]
... The killing of Mr. Nordquist, who prosecutors have said traveled from his home in Minnesota to the Finger Lakes region of New York, where he was held captive and tortured, has prompted a national outcry over anti-transgender discrimination and violence.
... “To have two children have to participate in the beating of another human being, it’s deeply disturbing,” Kelly Wolford, an assistant district attorney in Ontario County, southeast of Rochester, said at a news conference on Wednesday....
... Mr. Nordquist was originally from the suburbs of St. Paul, Minn. Last September, prosecutors said, he traveled to New York to meet Ms. Arzuaga, who was living in Room 22 at a motel called Patty’s Lodge in Canandaigua, N.Y. The two had met online last year, according to investigators, and were in a romantic relationship.
According to the indictment, from roughly Jan. 1 to Feb. 2, Mr. Nordquist was kept in confinement, beaten, sexually assaulted and denied proper nutrition, among numerous other depraved acts. The torture, investigators said, eventually caused his death.
Ms. Wolford said that Mr. Nordquist’s body was then removed from the motel, wrapped in plastic bags and dumped on the side of the road in a field at a farm in nearby Yates County. Police discovered his body there on Feb. 12.
“In my 20-year law enforcement career, this is one of the most horrific crimes I have ever investigated,” Capt. Kelly Swift of the New York State Police said after the circumstances became public.Donald Trump, JD Vance, Elon Musk and their goons didn't kill Sam Norquist. But their vicious denial of the complexities of gender certainly eggs on disturbed people.
But no presidential proclamation can erase the truth of gender fluidity; the Trump administration executive order trying to do so is in a category with trying to declare the earth is flat ...
It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality. ...So says Donald. As in so many areas, he's on a collision course with truth.
But today I still find the LAT's politics newsletter in my inbox; for how long I don't know. But for the moment, I still see some of Anita Chabria's opinion writing and it's so good and strong I'll post an excerpt, even though I can't link to it. She's got the spirit we all need in these times.
Hello and happy Thursday. President Trump addressed Congress — and America — Tuesday night in a speech that was both painfully long and studded with all the threats and grievance we have come to expect from our perpetually peeved commander in chief.
The World Health Organization? “Corrupt!” he cried.
The United Nations Human Rights Council? “Un-American!”
Federal employees? “They will either show up for work in person or be removed from their job.
All this while Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene appeared to be chewing gum and Vice President JD Vance’s jaw hung open in glee. I couldn’t help but think he looked like a vintage Howdy Doody marionette, eternally trapped in smug if mindless satisfaction.
“Our country will be woke no longer,” Trump exclaimed to the roaring cheers of MAGA Republicans. And I fear he is right — if by woke, he means empathetic, inclusive and interested in civil rights.Meanwhile the Democrats shot back with ... nothing.
... Texas Democrat Al Green takes the honor for at least trying to cause some good trouble, by shaking his cane at the president before being kicked out at the order of Speaker Mike Johnson.
“I’ll accept the punishment,” he told CSPAN afterward. “It’s worth it to let people know that there’s some of us who are going to stand up to against this president’s desire to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.”
And indeed, for those who are vulnerable and in MAGA’s sights, there was plenty of terror in Trump’s windy rants, even beyond those critical social safety nets. Migrants, legal or not, should know that the “great liberation of America” remains underway, a promise to continue to ramp up deportations.
Transgender people should know that Trump is “forever ending the lie that any child is trapped in the wrong body,” and “we feel so much better for it, don’t we?”
Panama and Greenland? Coming for you.
Even farmers aren’t safe, with Trump proclaiming that they will “probably have to bear with me,” while his tariffs and halting of agricultural exports for foreign aid demolish their businesses.
But the sad spectacle of the Democrats just sitting there during the whole tirade reinforced that they simply don’t know how to handle Trump 2.0 — and Trump knows it.
... So the takeaway from Trump’s speech should be that MAGA has long known exactly what it wants, and now knows how to get it.
But Democrats have forgotten the most basic lesson [of politics] ... : When the attack knocks you down, get up and fight.
That's the spirit we need.
