SignalGate

There is a lot going on with the whole situation of a reporter from The Atlantic being added to a Signal text group during discussion, planning, and real-time commentary on a US military action from top Trump administration officials.

The Context

The United States is dropping bombs and shooting missiles at people in Yemen. According to Houtti Rebels via the BBC there were 53 human beings killed in the March 15 attack, including five children. Our national leaders received the news that one of the targets had been killed along with his girlfriend and likely a building full of other people with the solemn gravity of tweens watching Call of Duty on Twitch. 👊🇺🇸🔥

The Houthi are Iran-backed militant extremists. Not a fan. But our leaders are murdering their children by twiddling their thumbs on a phone screen. I can see why they might not like us much. That seems like important background that I haven’t heard much mention of. We are murdering brown people’s children to further our interests. There were more strikes this last Friday (3/27), with no reporters that we know of invited to the planning Signal, Facebook, MySpace, Reddit, or Slack thread.

There are Rules for That

I worked for NASA for about 37 years. I briefly had a Secure clearance, but I never saw a Secret or Top Secret document. The highest level documents I ever saw were what we called Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU). I could easily have lost my job by being sloppy with SBU info. Depending on what it was, criminal prosecution would have been possible.

Stakes go up for higher-level government employees. Senior Executive Service and political appointees are required to keep all the communications they do related to decision making in their position. Those communications are Federal Records. There are retention schedules depending on the content and who is involved that say how long things need to be kept.

The laws cut in two directions. You have to both keep things available for your successors/managers/auditors/historians, and you have to keep them away from those who aren’t authorized to see them. There is a tension between the requirements. I found it frustrating that I couldn’t use Messages on my iPhone even though it had better encryption and a better interface than the official tools – but in fact I could have had conversations over Messages that nobody else could see. I could have been sending secrets to someone. So it wasn’t legit.

It’s hard to get more important than Cabinet level appointees making life or death and tens to hundreds of millions of dollar decisions. 

The government has a whole set of protocols, with dedicated devices (phones, computers, satellite links) to protect and retain the communications. This group purposely avoided that to use a commercial software service, Signal, set so that their discussions would disappear in one week or four weeks. That was a blatant, premeditated illegal act, even if they were just discussing the brand of straws to buy for the White House break room.

I do get that this administration considers itself above the rules and laws of government, so arrogance and willful ignorance mix in with the premeditation. Pretty sure at least JD Vance should know the basic rules, though.

I figure they should be treated with the same amount of grace and forgiveness they have demonstrated toward Hillary Clinton in running her own email server and likely violating both retention and security regulations.

What’s Wrong with Signal?

Signal itself is an application that uses state-of-the-art point-to-point encryption. But it’s consumer software. At least some of these people were almost certainly using personal phones and home computers to chat (Steve Witkoff was on the thread, but mostly missed the conversation because he was with Vladimir Putin and didn’t have access to his personal phone). Having early access to information from these people could be worth millions to billions of dollars. Boeing stock went up 20 points in the week after the attack. Think any Americans might pay to hack their phones? Much less Russian, Chinese, North Korean, Iranian, or Houthi operatives. And how about Canada, Denmark, Panama, France, Germany, and England, at this point? Point-to-point encryption doesn’t help if you have a dozen strangers on each end watching the thread.

So what about the monumental stupidity of adding a journalist from The Atlantic to a thread? Well, up front, had they not been blatantly violating a ton of laws and regulations in creating the chat outside of federal systems, it simply couldn’t have happened. The chat would have been encrypted (probably in a very similar level of technical competence as Signal uses), but it would have required the use of a government ID to decrypt and read it. On devices, and in places, where no one could be watching them type without proper authorization and vetting.

But the group chose efficiency and convenience over safety and security, and decided to use a consumer tool for a nation-state job.

What a boner.

It may turn out that Michael Waltz just fat-fingered an invitation. Or maybe one of his kids did it from Signal on his computer, when Michael was out of the room, just for grinz? Maybe he was showing someone a YouTube on his phone and went to the potty? Or maybe one of twelve different groups that have hacked his phone decided they wanted to embarrass him?

I get that Donald Trump in particular doesn’t like the communication rules exactly because they have held him somewhat accountable. He was recorded extorting Ukrainian officials by withholding military aid until they made up compromising information about Hunter Biden, and when telling a Georgia election official to create votes. Kings don’t like accountability, and neither do his vassals. If the King does decide to crush a used-up vassal, he shouldn’t need facts, anyway. He can just make up damning evidence. The administration’s take is that a dictatorship doesn’t need checks and balances, and rules are for losers. But, actually, though burdensome and sometimes annoying, the rules are there for a reason, to protect even the losers.

Although the incident demonstrated massive incompetence, and the response shows immense hypocrisy, I don’t expect much in the way of fallout. Hypocrisy works as a show of power, and groveling toadies don’t need to be competent as long as they are unwaveringly loyal to their liege lord. There will likely be something more outrageous this week, anyway.

 

 

The Federal Upside Down

I retired from NASA at the end of 2021 with 34 years of service. I started co-oping in summer 1985, while working on a Masters in Electrical Engineering, so it was my only professional job.

I felt good about my career. It was challenging, interesting, and growthful for me. I could probably have made more money in the private sector, but pay and benefits were good and I was serving my country.

But, now it turns out I was actually a thief and layabout. The United States government is not, according to the leader of the US government, an indispensable component of a healthy, thriving country. It’s just a bunch of thieves and incompetents standing in the way of good Americans making money. Most federal employees really ought to be pushed out and find “productive” work.

From the OPM Frequently Asked Questions page about the “Fork in the Road Letter,”

Am I allowed to get a second job during the deferred resignation period?

Absolutely! We encourage you to find a job in the private sector as soon as you would like to do so. The way to greater American prosperity is encouraging people to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector.

I wasn’t a “civil servant.” I was actually a deep state lacky. Allies are our enemies. Dictators are our friends. Vaccines make people sick. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

Currently, the war on federal workers is aimed at eliminating vast swaths of the people who provide government services (also known as “corruption”), especially anything a Democrat might approve of.  At least thousands of probationary employees are currently being sacked, through no fault of their work and almost certainly illegally. This includes a friend of mine’s daughter who recently changed Agencies and moved from New Orleans to Denver for the new job. 

I do expect they will eventually turn to clawing back the benefits those employees and past employees are/will be sucking from the good people of America, like retirement savings and health care. That’s when it will directly affect me. Treating government like a business obviously includes sacking pensions, running up debt, and then abandoning the husk, as virtuous corporate raiders do.

I get that the fear and uncertainty is most of the point. Even the whole “Gulf of America” nonsense is to sow chaos, to make everyone uncertain of reality. It’s a cultural revolution, and truth is whatever our great leader says it is today.

In our new Orwellian reality, the US Government is the enemy. Has it ever done anything good? Can you think of anything the American Government has ever done to benefit you, or anyone you know? Let’s see if we can remember anything, before the history rewrite is complete.

King Trump

So, as America’s first elected king, Donald Trump is above US law. The Supreme Court has confirmed that the only check on his actions is Congress, and their only recourse is impeachment and conviction, which isn’t going to happen until there is a genocide of white Americans or a nuclear attack on an ally, and only maybe then.
 
Trump also believes he can declassify any government document by thinking it unclassified. I’m pretty sure that isn’t true or legal, but since he is above the law, it doesn’t matter.
 
He has given Elon Musk permission to rummage through all the government documents on government computer systems. Elon Musk has hired a bunch of kids to access the systems and data and they are doing so. They also fired people who tried to do their job and protect government data according to laws passed by Congress.
 
I’m assuming all these citizens breaking the law could be prosecuted, but the assumption is Trump will either tell law enforcement to let his loyal people do whatever they want, or just pardon them (maybe in advance?) for any crimes? There doesn’t seem to be anyone to stop them, though their access clearly violates multiple laws and policies.
 
Is that how it works now? I guess the same principle applies if he has the Proud Boys sack the Capitol again? Maybe kill a few Congressmen or Senators this time to keep them in place?
 
I didn’t realize how fragile it all is. I thought the danger was to democracy, but that can come later if it needs to. I didn’t realize a President could be a king just by ignoring the law, and get away with it.

It is completely legitimate for a Democracy to vote out Democracy. 

That was America’s choice last Tuesday. We elected a dictator, with a majority of the popular vote, apparently, certainly within the rules of the system. Despite all the lies about a broken election system, I believe elections have been overall free and fair in America since implementation of the voting rights act in the 1960s. I don’t expect that will continue.

Donald Trump and his MAGA-Republican party will take power in what will be, at least from the Democrat side, a peaceful transfer of power in January. In office he will be above the law, with control of the Senate, the Supreme Court, and likely the House. The Court has already ruled that he is above the law as President, unless  impeached and convicted in the House and the Senate. With loyal followers in both, he is immune to any restraint. If part of his own party in House or Senate were to turn, he could have them jailed or lynched. 

He has made it clear that he intends to use his power to reshape American government. He will use the Justice Department, and potentially the US Military to punish anyone he considers an enemy of the state. And he is the state. His first term was constrained by underlings with loyalty to the US Constitution. This time, loyalty will be to Donald Trump. The Executive Branch will be purged, starting at the top with appointees and Senior Executive Function, but at least attempting to reclassify large swaths of the people who actually make government work, reclassifying non-political civil servants as “Schedule F” employees, so they can be fired and replaced by loyalists. That’s for Agencies that aren’t wholesale gutted or defunded.

I take that personally as someone whose career was in government. Government bureaucracy is seldom efficient,  but it slowly grinds on and functions. It the stable skeleton of democracy. Making the government out to be the enemy of the nation works about as well as healing your body by removing its bones. But that is the experiment we’ve begun.

Weaponization of the Department of Justice and groundwork in the states to “protect our elections” will do the opposite. There will be threats of violence  against dissenters to the MAGA regime at federal, local, and fan base levels. There will be games to further undermine trust in the electoral system. I’m not sure how far repression and punishment against any critical press will have gone in two years. But with a leader without guardrails, I don’t expect the next election to be free and fair.

Many of Trump’s promises will not be realized, of course. Just as Mexico didn’t pay for a wall, tariffs will not “bring down” the now sub 3% inflation rate. But his failures will never be his fault. They will be the fault of the liberals, the Jews, the gays, the immigrants, and perhaps China, along with the US government, and the press. Punishing the enemies will distract from any failures, and demonstrate his strength.

My wife and I were just in Budapest, where we started a Viking River Cruise up the Danube to Germany. We had a couple of days to explore the city. It was very nice. It wasn’t obvious to a visitor it was run by an authoritarian fascist. Maybe it will be like that here, as well. As least for an old white guy like me, if I keep my mouth shut. I hope I have the courage not to. I’m grieving for the USA that at least strove for liberty and justice for all. Abandoning democracy is legitimate, but it’s very sad. I believed in that experiment.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/how-trump-presidency-could-lead-purge-pentagon-2024-11-10

Get Some Narcan Now

If you don’t have a dose of Narcan in your home, purse, or possibly car, order some now.

If you are in Alabama, it’s available for free from a Jefferson County Department of Health site by mail after watching a short video.

Narcan is a drug, provided in a single-shot nasal inhaler, that can block the body’s uptake of opioids. If someone collapses from an overdose, a dose of Narcan will typically bring them back to consciousness and breathing within a couple of minutes. If that wasn’t why they collapsed – it won’t do anything at all. There is no downside to having taken it.

There is currently a lot of fentanyl in the US, which is currently the primary cause of opioid overdose. Overdoses killed over 1000 people in Alabama in 2020 (over 3000 in Tennessee), with the provisional numbers for 2022 higher than that (1394 and 3786, respectively). Besides people purposely using illicit drugs, there are possibilities of accidental or intentional contamination of other drugs, food, or drink. 

I just ordered a dose to have around, just in case I see someone collapse. I’ll keep it in the car until it gets hot out again. Here’s the article that inspired me to put in the order and write this post.

 

Clearing Yellowed Headlights

I bought the 3M Ultra Headlight Restoration Kit from Amazon and used it on my 2012 Prius. It took a bit longer than the 40 minutes on the box (though I did wash the whole car at the same time), but made a huge difference in the clarity of the light covers and the brightness of the headlights. 

However, I did find that because the light covers are such an odd curved shape, I wasn’t good at coloring inside the lines and damaged the paint in multiple spots. The kit provides a roll of narrow green painter’s tape/masking tape which I used. I would recommend adding to that a wide roll of the blue stuff to give yourself a wide margin for slips of the drill with the sanding pads.

Before
Before
After
After

Trump in the Rearview Mirror

This is at least my third run on writing about my thoughts on Donald Trump. I’ve gotten tripped up on there just being too much to say, with something new every day. It’s easier, with him out of office (no longer my boss!) and no longer a flowing cesspool on Twitter. I certainly hope his time in the driver’s seat of anything more dangerous than a golf cart is over, and a retrospective is appropriate.

I believe that Donald Trump is a disgusting human being who came to power by exhibiting some of the worse tendencies of humanity. Before he was elected President, he was an ostentatious, egotistical, boorish braggart who lied, bullied, and generally made the world a worse place. As President, he took all those things to the next level, and did immense damage to the country I most love. He somehow became the darling and idol of the evangelical right wing of the nation while pouring gas on xenophobic, misogynistic, racist tendencies that used to be at least hidden from plain view.

He lost the 2020 election solidly. He claimed, without offering any convincing evidence, that there was voter fraud causing him to lose. This undermined the national trust in the election process, directly attacking the foundation of a democracy (or a democratic republic).  The best evidence he seemed to have was simply that it was impossible that he could lose. His supporters made up more specific claims, but again without any compelling evidence that could hold up even in courts primarily appointed by him.

Sadly, the majority of voters and states turning against Trump in the election did not apply to the Congress and Senate races, significant evidence against corruption in the election itself. If Democrats hacked the machines, or faked ballots, to cause Trump to lose, why wouldn’t they also take down the down-ballot Republicans? Was the corruption by anti-Trump Republicans? If so, was the same corruption there four years ago pro-Trump, and should Hillary Clinton have had Trump’s term?

From the lead up to his 2016 election through the present, Trump has been very effective in the art of bullshit. His communication is full of lies, but they are lies without any respect for the truth. The Washington Post counted 30,573 false or misleading claims he made in his presidency. Often, his lies were obviously false, or easily disproven. But the point of bullshit isn’t to be believed, but to be heard, and to drown out other voices. By maintaining a constant barrage of bullshit, he was able to keep Twitter, the news, and the internet full of himself. He made truth seem irrelevant to any discussion, instead “winning” by the emotional impact of his repetition, his attacks, innuendo, contempt, and pride. He is an artist of sorts in his manipulation of media and debasing of communication. It’s not an art I enjoy or respect.

I don’t, of course, attribute the total death toll of COVID-19 on Trump. His complete lack of useful leadership and consistent downplaying and disruption of a helpful federal response to the pandemic caused the needless death of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of Americans, but whoever was in office, there would have been a spread and many deaths. The United States could have done much, much better in its response with effective government and leaders who set the nation a good example in working together and caring for each other, rather than polarizing, and championing the idea that not wearing a mask is sign of freedom, rather than self-centeredness. Operation Warp Speed was one of the better things to come out of his administration, and helped enable even the vaccines made outside the program. But managing the wait and the lockdown was a debacle. That was the primary reason he did lose the election, and his reaction to losing the election lost the Georgia Senate races, and thus the Senate.

The Trump administration was actually rather good for NASA, and for space exploration overall. The aggressive push to return to the Moon, the appointment of Jim Bridenstine as NASA Administrator, and Trump mostly staying out of the way except for astronaut photo ops, was good for the Agency. I don’t think Space Force needed to be a branch of the service, but the functions it serves (and has been serving as part of the Air Force and Army) are important. Pence actually seemed to care and pay attention in his position at the head of the National Space Council. Unlike many of the other federal agencies, there wasn’t a parade of different leaders, or no leaders, many with no qualification, and more than a few actively hostile to the purposes of the agency (e.g. Betsy DeVos, champion of taking public education fund for private schools, for Education, David Berhardt the oil lobbyist for Interior).

What most aggrieved me about the Trump administration is the intense loyalty, and in some cases idolatry, that he garnered with the Christian right. His trademark has been to trample simple decency, the idea that to be strong is to be brutal rather than kind, empathic, or, well, nice. The seven deadly sins are pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. It seems to me a pretty good description of the Trump brand, though I will concede that he keeps busy, even if it’s just golfing. His sloth shows mostly in being unwilling to read or listen to anything of substance, and that’s more pride than sloth. He seems so far from the ideal of Christian leadership I learned growing up, so far from any idea of a Godly man. And yet, I see the burning anger and devotion in those who have become his disciples, somehow in the name of Christ, ready to destroy the country to save it. Though Christianity is not the path I’m on anymore, I always had respect for the integrity of those who consistently held to the teaching of the Bible. That many have embraced the kind of bullshit that builds dictators and fuels genocides makes me sad.

 

 

 

 

Credo

Facebook is a horrible place to hold cogent discussions. In general, our social media veneer is thin and shiny, not a very accurate representation of what is beneath.

One of my intentions for my blog is to have a place to put my thoughts out for, at the least, those who know me and care to see where I’m coming from mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. By writing it down, it also gives me a chance to put some structure into what’s in my head, and so better examine it myself.

I’m tagging the series “Credo,” Latin for “I Believe.” It could also be “I Think,” or “I Know.” I’m not primarily talking about faith, though I’ll touch on that, but more circling around truth. We are living in a time of bullshit unprecedented in my lifetime, to the benefit of some and the detriment of most. It’s not easy to know what is true. But some things are. I’m not a person of hard certainties – I’ll admit that the universe might all be a simulation that’s indistinguishable from reality, or God may have created it all 6000 years ago with fossils in place, or 30 seconds ago with memories in place – but there are some things that I’m pretty sure of to every degree of certainty that practically matters. I’m an engineer, and that’s both good enough, and as good as it gets.

I was brought up in the Church of Christ, a conservative Christian church somewhat to the right of the Southern Baptists, best known for not allowing musical instruments in worship and for being the only ones going to heaven. My mother was devout, and I came up that way, too, serious, studious, and attentive. My father didn’t go to church, or at least only visited very rarely for special occasions. But he was always respectful. My siblings toed the line of attendance until they were out of the house and didn’t have to, but weren’t all that into church. The Church of Christ[1] tradition included questioning, discussion, and respect for a well-crafted argument or proof that I still respect very much. In college at Tennessee Tech University, I kept the Church of Christ foundation while participating in and learning from Baptist, Methodist, Intervarsity, and Catholic student groups. Out of school, working for NASA, I eventually felt “called” to examine the foundations of my faith. I didn’t find convincing answers on the primarily Bible-based faith I was raised in, or in other variations Christian or non-Christian. I’ve ended up a part of the local Unitarian Universalist congregation, which is welcoming of those who don’t have answers or a particular set of beliefs, as long as they adhere to some core principles, one of which is, “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” These blog posts are my search (and documentation of said search) for truth and meaning right in front of God[2] and everybody.

You are welcome to follow along, and to comment either here or on Facebook. Facebook, for its many faults, is where my friends tend to be. Any comments here will stick around, and will be moderated to keep them respectful and constructive. Facebook is transient and is Facebook.

[1] Another Church of Christ tradition is to insist that the Church of Christ isn’t a denomination, but credo it actually is, certainly for the purposes of having a pretty good idea what you’ll find on a building with that label, but without an “International” in front or a “Scientist” after.

[2] assuming He, She, It, or They read the internet, or my mind, or all of history, or something

Thoughts on the Language of Racism

Sometime in the 1980’s, I think it was in the Tennessee Tech University library, I came across a book about racism. It was a thin tome, written by a black author for a black audience, as I remember. It said that only white people could be racist.

I remember it over 30 years later because of the emotions of anger, righteous indignation, and defensiveness it sparked in me. It seemed unfair, unjust to say a problem could be all on one side of a conflict. Clearly, a black person could fear, distrust, or misunderstand me just as much as I could them, right? And, based on those things, I could be discriminated against based on how I looked as a white man in America, as much as anyone else?

Forward to 2020, I recently read White Fragility, a book by a white person writing for white people about race. The message was gentler, and likely more nuanced, but contained similar description of racism as being a cultural construct that acts for the dominate race against the “other.” In the America of my experience, that’s white vs. black specifically, and people of color (or whatever counts as non-white) in general.

With over 30 years to settle in, the concept was no longer radical or personally challenging in the same way. But in reading, I could remember my younger self’s affront, and as a contemporary reader I still felt annoyance and frustration with the language available to discuss the topic. A key point of White Fragility is that difficulty in discussing racism is a facet of racism. I’ll write more later about some of the more important topics from the book, but here I’m struggling with the English language. I feel the need to marshal my words before tackling the topics.

Lest it come as a surprise at the end, let me say that I do recognize that systemic racism is a real thing, that it is baked into our culture, that it supports the status quo and keeping the powerful powerful. It’s hard to talk about for various reasons. Part of that reason is that English is a mess.

Racism

I remember the heat of my indignation at the idea that racism could only be pro-white. In a theoretical sense, it’s not strictly true. But there is a strong, valid point. I prefer the term systemic racism to get the meaning across that we are talking about the cultural construct that doesn’t depend on individual thoughts or actions. It’s fair to ask if there is any other kind of racism; I know that young me could have argued the point for hours, distracting from ever getting to any substantive discussion. Certainly, there is plenty of prejudice of many flavors, including racial prejudices and bigotry based on racial perceptions. But systemic racism requires a system, a culture, that is bigger than personal opinion or belief.

So, systemic racism is the cultural construct that skews power and privilege to one group and away from those not in that group based on race. In America, systemic racism favors the white “majority” and particularly disfavors those considered black or African American. Majority is in quotes above because:

  1. Whites aren’t necessarily over 50% of the population in many areas, and aren’t very far from being in the minority nationwide
  2. However many whites there are, white in America is the baseline, or “normal” (normative?) state of being

Minority

A minority is, technically, less than 50% of the whole. In the context of racism, though, minority is a synonym for non-white. Because black is the most non-white of options, minority is often a euphemism (or dog whistle?) for black. However, it sometimes includes gender, sexual preference, or other non-race-based categories.

Multicultural in the US essentially means something other than mainstream white culture, and sometimes black, so is more or less a synonym for minority, but relatively exclusively to racial, ethnic, or national origin.

-isms

I defined systemic racism as a cultural construct that skews power and privilege to one group and away from those not in that group based on race. Obviously, there are (and could be) other cultural constructs that skew power and privilege to one group and away from those not in that group. It would make logical sense to have a clear taxonomy of these cultural biases. But, given that clear taxonomy doesn’t necessarily benefit those with the power and privilege, there is some cultural sense in keeping the language turgid.

The suffix “-ism” points to a distinctive doctrine, theory, system, or practice, so it’s definitely more general than what I’m trying to get at. Sexism is a cultural construct that skews power and privilege to one group and away from those not in that group based on gender, but optimism is not a cultural construct that skews power and privilege to optimists over non-optimists. There are lots of “-ists” who practice some “-ism,” but we aren’t terribly consistent about usage.

Homophobia is the most common term for the cultural construct that skews power and privilege to cisgender[1]heterosexuals and away from those not in that group based on sexual or partnership preference. Googling finds heterosexism as a term, but it’s certainly not in common usage. The area of sexual preference is a semantic dumpster fire; LGBTQIAP[2] does not roll trippingly off the tongue. Homophobia should literally mean, “fear of the same,” before you even get to the problem/discussion of whether fear is the root of the cultural construct.

Religion is the other biggie for skewing power and privilege to one group and away from others based on it. That one actually varies by location as to the group being skewed toward, and in the current case of China, Communism is the group skewing against any religion.

The point of this “-ism” section is that there are parallels to racism that result in institutional or systemic discrimination. And also share some problematic semantics.

Race

Defining systemic racism as a cultural construct based on race, what is race? Race is a cultural construct based largely on apparent physical similarities and differences. There was a lot of work in the 19th and early 20th centuries to define race scientifically, without a lot of luck. Genetics hasn’t really helped. There are genetic differences that vary with populations, and there are genetic variations that are unique to particular lineage, some limited (or once limited) to a particular population or isolated community. But there is significant diversity within populations, and in most cases there has been a lot of genetic sharing across geographical and cultural boundaries.

Africa has more genetic diversity than the rest of the world combined. I would expect that any (and every) African-American is more genetically similar to me, a white American, than to the least-similar African one could find. Especially since the majority of African Americans have white ancestors (the average African American has 24% European ancestry according to 23andme data[3]).

Despite any underlying scientific reality, though, race is a defining component of life experience in America.

Identity Politics vs. Color Blindness

Identity politics refers to political activism or coalition based on any of a large number of identifiers, race being a primary one. Identifiers can be unique or combined. The connotation is self-identified group(s) advocating for the group.

Issue politics and party politics are obvious alternatives.

Controversy over identity politics is that involves people self-identifying into identities that have often been marginalized or stigmatized, that it has the potential to reinforce stereotypes and cultural division, that it may encourage cultural fragmentation.

The flip side in the racial context is a call that we all be color blind, ignoring the existence of any structural racism in the belief that if we don’t see it, it will go away.

There is some truth that constant focus on a problem can keep the problem alive, by putting more energy into the system. And there is danger that an identity group can potentially become self-generating or self-protecting beyond any valid need or point so that it becomes self-serving (NRA, I’m looking at you). Victims can become bullies.

For the topic of systemic racism, though, I don’t see a danger there any time soon. Though a color-blind society is a noble long-term goal, pretending systemic racism doesn’t exist serves to prolong, rather than reduce, its power. That certainly is how it’s playing out in gutting of the voter rights protections.

Equity and justice require recognizing the sources of inequity and injustice and addressing them. When that happens the energy in groups formed by identity politics will recede, maybe without the identity going away. I know some very Irish Irish-Americans, but their politics aren’t focused on Irishness. It doesn’t need to be.

“Defund the Police”

As a slogan apparently intended to be incendiary this succeeds, but not in a productive way. The point is to open discussion towards reconsidering the ongoing militarization of the police, and the long-term scope creep of American police forces. I personally believe that we as a society need to be dedicating more, not less, to many components of what has become policing; community mental health and drug recovery program first response are on top of the list.

From a language point of view, I give “defund the police” a flunking grade. It has raised awareness and caused discussion, but in a divisive rather than constructive way.

Speaking of Systemic Racism

As a white person in America, it’s hard to talk about systemic racism. The only word we have for people who benefit from systemic racism is “racist,” which is right up there with “Nazi” or “baby killer” for stopping a conversation in its tracks. Clearly there is a continuum from an “out” Ku Klux Klan leader or Proud Boy to the woke and ashamed Liberal, and from all of those who are very aware to of racism to the big middle who either don’t know, or pretend not to, that any benefit exists. Saying all those people are racist isn’t very helpful or accurate. It’s uncomfortable to consider that we may have inherited a benefit that we didn’t earn or deserve. So options include choosing to believe that we do deserve it, they don’t deserve it, there is no benefit, or it just has nothing to do with us. Or feeling bad. Or changing the subject.

But, the fact is, there is a benefit to being white, to being in the majority, in America. The chance of being killed by police is 2-3 times higher if you are black than if you are white[4]. Death by COVID 19 is 2.1 times higher for blacks than whites.[5] Black men in America earn on average $.87 for each $1 white mean earned (though for a given job with similar credentials, it’s $0.98 per $1)[6]. The incarceration rate is over 5 times higher[7] for blacks than whites.

The reasons aren’t simple. COVID 19 isn’t bigoted. But reasons start with the American legacy of slavery, and have continued generation by generation with the construct of race being reason enough for a continued divergence of opportunity and benefit, baked into how things work. That’s systemic racism.

It’s worth figuring out how to talk about systemic racism, and how we can get over it as a system and as a culture. Like wearing a mask during a global pandemic, the difficulty is worth the reward, a reward that will benefit those who have the deck stacked against them more than the rest, but will ultimately benefit everyone. My hope is that, if systemic racism went away in America, instead of part of the community having “white privilege”, everyone in the community would have “just nation privilege”, and that would be even better. Talking is going to mean coming up with some better language, I think. Currently it’s hard to talk about, even if it weren’t hard to talk about.

[1] Or just “cis,” indicates those whose gender identity matches the gender assigned at birth.

[2] Lesbian; Gay; Bisexual; Transgender; Queer (or questioning); Intersex; Asexual (or Ally); Pansexual/Polysexual

 

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4289685/

[4] See https://www.statista.com/statistics/1123070/police-shootings-rate-ethnicity-us/ or https://gunsandamerica.org/story/20/08/06/who-is-most-at-risk-police-violence-explainer/

[5] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-race-ethnicity.html

[6] https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/compensation/pages/racial-wage-gaps-persistence-poses-challenge.aspx

[7] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/rates.html

The Supreme Court post-RBG

It is, in general, my belief that the sitting President has the right to nominate a new justice on the death of a sitting justice of the Supreme Court, per the Constitution.

The President … shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint … judges of the Supreme Court…

It is the President’s Constitutional duty and privilege to nominate a replacement, and it the Senate’s Constitutional duty to offer advice and consent, ultimately accepting or rejecting the nomination in a timely manner. Rejection should be a rare thing – their duty is to consent, unless there is a higher duty not to.

 

With the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that means that President Donald Trump should has the right to nominate a candidate, and the Senate to consider that nomination.

 

And yet…

 

I have a short memory, with more holes than it used to have. President Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland to the court seems like ancient history. But these current events bring the memory back. After the death of Antonin Scalia, President Obama nominated Garland to fill the vacant seat on March 16, 2016, with nearly a year left in his second term as President. The Senate, led by Mitch McConnell, refused to consider the nomination, abdicating their Constitutional responsibility to provide advice and consent to the sitting President. This was a clear violation of McConnell’s (and the rest of the Republican leadership’s) oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, an abuse of power only thinly veiled behind the stated belief that a vacancy during the last year of a President’s term should stay open until after the election, and left to winner to fill.

 

I’d mostly forgotten my anger in the fog of time, under the unrelenting barrage of abuses of power coming from the White House and Senate since then. But the removal of the thin veil, as McConnell has casually shrugged off his own precedent, committing to go forward with a vote on whoever President Trump may appoint, has reminded me. Cynical, unprincipled power with no pretense of honor or decency in pursuit of the goal of accumulating more power, is playing out, with the full support of nearly half of my nation, and a large majority of the Evangelical Christian community that was my heritage. It shocks me and saddens me.

 

Cheating, lying, and rigging the system have always been part of politics. But I have really felt that honor, patriotism, and the ideals of justice, freedom, and equity, have been a strong counterbalance in America. Instead, the ideals have been buried in a mulch of bullshit so thick it’s hard to see anything clearly except fear, outrage, and confusion.

 

I’m afraid, I’m angry, and I’m bemused. If the Democrats plan the same kind of procedural games that McConnell did to Obama to save the Ginsburg seat – I’m ambivalent. It doesn’t seem right, but it does seem fair. Not honorable, decent, or just, but fair. Is even fair too much to ask for?

 

I’m going to send some money to McConnell’s Senate challenger, and of course I’ll vote here in Alabama. My signs are out. I’m doing what I can to get out the vote here in North Alabama. I see little chance of any of those contributing to change in Alabama or McConnell’s Kentucky, though. Perhaps there will be a landslide in November? And perhaps the loser will concede? I have some hope, but little confidence. And, whatever the outcome, I’m still concerned for the division, not just in opinion but in observed reality, and what it means for America.