The Elephant Is The Room

 

The daily, the hourly assaults.  Remember back when Boss Chaos was threatening to invade Greenland?  That was all of eight weeks ago.  Now added to the barrage of corruption, callous cruelty, lawless authoritarianism, aggressively racist and sexist policies and actions, and all but unprecedented stupidity, destroying institutions and damaging institutional integrity for years to come, we're mired in profligate murder and international economic suicide.

While all along, the assault on the future of life as we know it on planet Earth accelerates.

The climate crisis as a focus of news and public attention has sunk almost out of sight.  Partly (one assumes) at the behest of tech bros anxious to power their AI bubble by any means necessary, previous federal efforts to lower carbon, support green energy and even to control pollution have been officially halted.  Climate denial has never been easier.

Despite extreme weather in increasingly long doses, somewhere in America, almost all the time.  Quite recently for instance: a record high temperature for March of any year in any place in the US was registered in Arizona: 110 F.  From the Pacific to the Rockies, the recent mid-March heat wave registered temps some 30 F degrees above the previous normal.  Some 140 cities were affected by that heat dome, which scientists said would be "virtually impossible" except for climate distortion. 

As a consequence, mountain snowpacks in places like Colorado and California are low and likely to disappear early, leading to summer drought, and adding to wildfires (already ongoing in Colorado.)

Meanwhile, Hawaii is experiencing record rainfall and the worst flooding in 20 years, with one place worried about a major dam failure.

But just about all of the United States has been hit with extreme cold or heat (and some areas of the Southeast getting doses of both within 24 hours), snow or rainfall of greater intensity and longer duration, during unaccustomed seasons, for just the past year.  And there are doubtlessly effects as bad or worse elsewhere in the world, of which we are wearily and systematically ignorant. 

These are the markers of what climate scientists have been predicting, more and more precisely, over the past 35 years.  They are symptoms of the sickness enveloping the planet.  There's little point in rehashing all the research results announced over the past year--it's pretty much all bad.  As goals haven't been met and promises not kept, it's been clear for awhile that the world is going to crash past the global temperature red line of the Paris Accords. (And that's even before the obscene bombing and warfare in the Middle East is reportedly spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere faster than 84 countries combined.) Among the predicted effects, sea levels have risen and are rising higher than previously known, and ice near the poles is melting faster.

But the latest UN report came out this weekend, and it shows that greenhouse gases are now trapping so much heat on the planet that it's not cooling off as it has in the past.  In other words, the greenhouse effect is in effect.  Hothouse Earth is no longer a prediction.  It's the planet's present, and its future for potentially thousands of years--except of course it's likely to get worse. 

Climate distortion is no longer the elephant in the room.  That elephant is the room.  

Current US policies and actions are patently insane.  Other insane policies, like the destruction of public health and FEMA, will sooner or later contribute to the rippling effects of climate distortion.  But the failure is shared. It's not all the party with the elephant symbol, though mostly it is. 

 Democrats in power had opportunities to do much better.  But no Democratic candidate--not Clinton or Gore or Kerry or Obama or Biden or Harris--made climate a central issue in their campaigns.  No Democratic President--not Clinton or Obama or Biden--ever made an Oval Office address outlining the dimensions of the climate crisis, with a comprehensive program to address it.  

Obama (with the Paris Accords and environmental policies) and certainly Biden with his massive support for clean energy in the Inflation Reduction Act, made substantive changes to address aspects of the climate crisis.  But especially in Biden's case, it was done stealthily.  Obviously the judgment was made that calling for all-hands-on-deck efforts was politically dangerous, if not suicidal and therefore impossible to achieve.  They had to bet that the crisis could be successfully addressed incrementally. Some experts even agreed, for awhile, especially about green energy.  No one knows the future, but to me it so far appears to be a lost gamble.

For the first time, humanity faced a comprehensive global challenge to current civilization and current forms of life.  But also for the first time, humanity has the knowledge, the ideas, the potential and the power to meet that challenge.  Or so it once seemed.  If this is an evolutionary test, so far humanity is failing.

I've been reading about and writing about the climate crisis for 35 years. On this blog alone, I've written somewhere between 835 and a thousand posts on this subject and related subjects since 2005.  But I haven't written a word about it since Boss Chaos took power.  And it could be I won't write about it again.  

Younger generations will have no choice but to deal with its consequences.  Maybe some of them will find meaning and purpose in their lives in addressing the causes and effects of climate distortion, by concentrating on them in whatever field of endeavor best suits them.  For them, hope won't be most importantly an emotion.  It won't be what they feel.  Hope will be what they do. Real hope will not be felt or expressed so much as enacted.  

Most may well suffer the consequences of climate distortion without ever naming it, just as we almost never name it now.  An environment, McLuhan used to say, is invisible to its inhabitants, as water is to fish.  In a practical sense that's nonsense, but in terms of conceptualization, it's probably true.  Right now it's some mix of denial, fatalism and unconsciousness.  Nevertheless, the elephant is the room.

At Long Last

 Much of what happened Monday wasn't a surprise: The Celtics mauled a depleted Warriors, the NFL team known as Ohio State overwhelmed Notre Dame, and Chaos unleashed chaos upon the world, or at least tried to, including freeing from jail convicted violent seditionists.  

Before that, outgoing President Biden did something no President should have to do: he preemptively pardoned people he was justifiably afraid Chaos would go after, including members of the January 6 Committee who investigated Chaos and found him guilty of--what else--leading the seditious attempt to overthrow the US government by force and violence. These were people--mostly current and former Members of Congress-- who were never accused of crimes but threatened by the incoming administration with prosecution anyway.  As awful as anything else Monday, but not altogether surprising.

No--the surprise was Leonard Peltier.  After nearly 50 years in prison for murders of two FBI agents he all but certainly did not commit, Biden finally commuted the double lifetime sentence of this 1970s Native American activist. Ever since the evidence presented against him fell apart in a trial that was fatally flawed in the first place, many prominent people--including Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama, as well as several European parliaments and Amnesty International -- have advocated for his clemency.

The 60s and 70s were a violent time on Pine Ridge Reservation and other reservations, and the FBI was implicated in supporting and fomenting violence against Black and American Indian activists.  Peltier had engaged in gun violence, so he was a credible scapegoat.  But this murder case against him quickly fell apart.

 As far back as the final days of the Clinton administration, I performed my one and only act of lobbying, by contacting a college friend who happened to be the outgoing White House Chief of Staff to urge a pardon for Peltier.  But it proved too politically difficult--basically because the people he was convicted of killing were FBI agents, and the FBI was not interested in hearing anything about recanted testimony, bad evidence and a tainted trial.  They publicly pressured Clinton not to do it.

By then, the esteemed writer Peter Matthiessen had written a long book that went into great detail concerning the injustices of his trial and conviction.  After Clinton left office without pardoning him, a Native American activist told me he expected Peltier would die in prison. He was often attacked by other inmates, and had a variety of health problems.

But Peltier managed to stay alive, and since then every President has denied his petition, including President Obama, even after a senior US Attorney who prosecuted the case against Peltier wrote a letter advocating for clemency due to weaknesses in the trial evidence. 

 Since Peltier is now 80 years old, President Biden was likely his last hope.  Thirty-three members of the US Senate and House petitioned for his release.  The FBI once again vociferously opposed it--even though officials have stated that the government doesn't really know who shot the FBI agents, but they know it wasn't Peltier.

 In the hours before he left office, President Biden commuted Peltier's sentence to indefinite house arrest. After nearly 50 years in prison, Peltier may get to die in his own bed.   

We're Not Going Back

Already it has disappeared into the American amnesia, but it was a little less than four years ago: Inauguration Day 2021.  This is what it looked like.  

Before that day, Chaos had reigned for four years.  Covid-19 was an unchecked epidemic, the American economy was in shambles, as was the western alliance of the US and Europe. Remember?

We remember the world wars, Korea, Vietnam, the Iraq wars and Afghanistan.  We remember the history of the Civil War, in which more Americans died than in all of those wars put together.  We do not remember the year of Covid, in which more Americans died than in the Civil War, which took four years.  Maybe the trauma is too fresh, maybe we're snowed under with so-called information.  But, you know, it happened.

Under pressure, President Chaos did allow government financing of a crash program to develop a vaccine, though he later repudiated it.  He advised American to drink bleach instead.  

Then came the elections of 2020.  Chaos could not abide the outcome, and fomented chaotic violence that came to a head on January 6, 2021, with the trashing of the US Capitol, endangering the lives of the country's highest legislative officials.

So for the Inauguration in 2020, there was no parade, just as there had been no rallies during the campaign, because of the danger of Covid infection.  For the Inauguration itself, the principals (as in the photo above) wore protective masks.  

Because of January 6, there were also at least 20,000 National Guard troops in Washington, probably more.  They were no longer sleeping on the floors of the Capitol building to protect it; they were guarding the Inaugural against the forces of Chaos.

But on January 20, 2021, after Joseph R. Biden was sworn in as President, and Kamala Harris as Vice-President, the following happened:

The U.S. rejoined the Paris Accords, the global effort to address the global climate crisis.

 The U.S. rejoined the WHO in a global effort to address the global covid crisis.

 Laws to prevent evictions and to delay student loan payments during the covid crisis were extended.

 The Keystone pipeline permits were withdrawn, among other reversals of anti-environment policies and regulations, including a moratorium on fossil fuel leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

 Masks and social distancing on federal property, by federal employees, and on airplanes and other interstate travel were mandated by federal law.

 DACA was bolstered. The “Muslim ban” on travel was ended. Diversity training returned, anti-discrimination policies in the federal government were strengthened, and the notorious far right 1776 Commission disbanded.

 All of the Chaos cabinet had resigned, and several of the worst sub-cabinet officials were fired, including the guy who turned the Voice of America into a MAGA shill factory.  Competent and experienced career public servants were appointed to run the various departments until cabinet officers were confirmed.

Joe Biden took over the Oval Office, where he pointedly installed a portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt directly across the room from his desk.

Because Americans had also elected a Democratic majority House of Representatives and (with the election of the first black Senator and first Jewish Senator in Georgia history) a Democratic majority in the US Senate, President Biden was able to enact the American Rescue Plan, which funded the initial distribution of Covid vaccine and additional measures to combat Covid as well as measures to re-start the US economy, especially with the first of several direct payments to citizens, known as "stimulus checks."

These payments worked better than anyone had even hoped. With further legislation and executive efforts over the next four years, and despite a nasty round of inflation caused chiefly by supply chain issues and the usual opportunistic greed,  the Biden administration fostered an American economy which last week the Economist magazine called "the envy of the world," with the lowest unemployment, lower inflation, and lower interest rates in years, along with the highest stock market closings in history.

Also last week, the Wall Street Journal published the results of an annual survey of economists, in which a majority (often a large majority) forecast a better economy, lower inflation, higher employment, more American manufacturing and higher incomes under a Harris administration than under a return to Chaos.

The western alliance is healthy again, and stands together defending the sovereign nation of Ukraine against Russian invasion.  Bob Woodward's new book credits Biden and his cabinet and other officials with the most competent handling of world affairs he's seen, and counsels that Chaos was the worst President in history--far worse than Nixon--and is not fit to take power again.

Those are today's judgments.  But try priming your memory of what is was like long ago--from 2017 to 2021--along with the growing evidence of how much worse it would be if Chaos reigns again.

Voting is beginning.

Labor Day

 

The Kowinski family that I am part of seems to have begun in America with my great-grandparents.  John Kolachinski (who went by various names in the U.S., soon settling on John Kowinsky)  came to work in western Pennsylvania coal mines, probably from the impoverished and oppressed region of Silesia in southern Poland, in about 1890.  He was likely in Scottdale, PA during one of the worst mining accidents of the era, killing at least 100 Polish, Italian and other immigrant miners.

 One of John's children, Frank Kowinsky was my grandfather.   He married Catherine Ellis, whose father John Ellis had arrived in America and western Pennsylvania at about the same time as John Kowinsky. John Ellis (originally Ilas) came from somewhere in the Austrian-Hungarian empire of  eastern Europe which include part of Poland and Slovakia, while his wife had a lineage originating in Ukraine.  

 Both my paternal great-grandfathers were in the coal fields for the tumultuous Westmoreland County coal strike of 1910-1911—also known as the Slovak Strike because more than two-thirds of the miners were Slovak. It involved 65 mines and 15,000 coal miners. As would happen again, mine owners used private police and thugs as well as the state and local police and courts to break the strike, which they did, with defeat for the miners. Sixteen miners or members of their family were killed.  Families were thrown out of their lodgings and had no money for food.

There was a larger, more successful national United Mineworkers coal strike in 1919 that involved 100,000 Pennsylvania miners, but industry owners tried to cut the agreed-upon wages in 1922, resulting in another strike.  By this time, my grandparents Frank and Catherine were married, and my father Walter had been born.  Again, families were left homeless. Two of my great-grandparents and their family were living in a tent until winter cold forced them to improvise shelter in an abandoned pool room with several other families. This strike eventually won back the wage levels of 1919.

Attempts to break strikes and prevent organizing were relentless.  In high school I was shown an empty valley where a coal patch town had once existed, with searchlights ringing it so owners could spot when workers moved between houses to attend union organizing meetings.

The Depression of the 1930s hit this area very hard, but in Washington the Roosevelt administration was convinced that to end the Depression required a countervailing force to huge companies in a time of immense disparities in incomes.  Labor union rights were strengthened by law, and over the next decades, national unions became that force.  Better wages, hours and working conditions helped fuel shared prosperity.

By the time I was in high school in the early 1960s, unions comprised an institutional force alongside government and private industry.  Unions became a progressive force and through their political arms, a big factor in elections.  Though in practice many individual unions discriminated, the major union organizations supported diversity, and were among the chief sponsors of the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington.  

The moral authority of unions was weakened by instances of corruption, and then by union support for the Vietnam War, which alienated the young and some minorities.  Then in the mid to late 1970s, steel mills began to close, and industries moved employment away from the U.S. With membership dwindling, the Reagan administration in the 1980s dealt unions a series of death blows.  Today the percentage of union members in the workforce is tiny.

Also today, in another era of massive income disparities, there are the same patterns of unionizing and company resistance at Amazon, Starbucks and other new corporate giants.  Meanwhile, unions have grown in the public sector of the economy.  In both cases, the actual and prospective union members tend to be more female and non-White.

Now the descendants of those European immigrants that suffered for the first labor unions, and the proud union members of the era of union strength, are left without an advocate, an organization looking out for their interests, a place to go to discuss issues, to listen and to be heard.  Even just a union hall bar to let off steam, talk about their families and look each other in the face. They have no collective power to counter the massive power of corporations and the rich, which includes the power to secretly manipulate the information they receive. 

Instead they have the Internet, where they get their information courtesy of trolls and bots and algorithms that feed them vast quantities of the same  tenor of elaborately presented shameless lying--so much of it that it seems it must be true.  There is no countervailing voice to the corporate interests that fund efforts to blame others for the results of corporate decisions, such as immigrants, minorities, or scientists and self-serving, pointy-headed intellectuals.  Instead of collective and constructive action, they are encouraged to wallow in anger and misplaced rancor, racism and closets of military weaponry, and the thrill of "owning the libs," as fleeting and addictive as a cocaine high.  Their participation is limited to seeing who can attract attention by being the shrillest and most provocative, unless until some of them brought their smartphones to an Insurrection on Capitol Hill.

It only gets said on Labor Day if at all, but the American system is broken in large measure because of the gaping hole left in social and economic institutions by the demise of unions.  It's no coincidence that the democracy that President Joe Biden extolled and declared threatened, flourished in his lifetime when unions were strong, and a vital part of that democracy. 

Russia, Ukraine and U.S: The Analogy to Now

The Russian invasion of Ukraine presents us with a situation that seems both unprecedented and eerily familiar.  But what is the right analogy from past events, and what can we learn from them? 

One proposed recently is 1962--the Cuban Missile Crisis.  We are certainly being forced to think about the consequences of nuclear war again, and the US and Russia are in tense opposition.  But there are many differences.  This is not a direct confrontation of the US and Russia (or the Soviet Union) except perhaps in Putin's mind.  The initial dangers are in Europe, and European countries are deeply involved. If nukes are unleashed, a full out thermonuclear exchange between Russia and the US is not the first likely outcome.  We don't know--and I've seen no informed speculation--what the responses might be to various scenarios in Europe, such as chemical, biological or finally a nuclear weapon.  The danger ultimately is there, but at worst it is several steps away.  Otherwise there would be nothing else anybody would be reporting on.  Maybe.

From President Biden's point of view, it must seem very different from 1962.  President Kennedy had to deal with a hawkish military leadership that was dangerously quick to invite nuclear war.  That does not appear to be the case now.  Because it was a direct confrontation with the Soviets, European governments were consulted and kept more or less informed, but they were not at the decision-making table.  President Biden is working a coalition, because it is important that Europe be involved.  They are the edge of the sword, and the battlefield.  

Most importantly, the nation of Ukraine will ultimately make its own decisions.  If there was any doubt of that before, there is none now.  This is not something for the US, or even NATO countries, to decide on their own.   They must however now be deeply engaged in deciding specific responses to specific situations according to what Russia does, especially outside Ukraine, but also within it.

Another difference: In the USSR in 1962, Premier Khrushchev also had to deal with military hotheads, as well as the Politburo and the Central Committee.  If our simplistic reporting is accurate, Putin is a one man show, with no other obvious forces to either push him or restrain him.  It's hard to believe that's really the case, but that seems to be the unanimous view expressed in US media.  It's a little more believable after Trump, when no opposition within his party could effectively restrain him.  Now we have a number of Republican governors who operate as crazed autocrats with the connivance of their toady legislatures.

Because there was no actual warfare in those tense days in October 1962, President Kennedy was free to consider concessions that might give Khrushchev something, because he was preferable to Soviet hotheads around him.  This time there is a brutal shooting war happening, and Putin is increasingly isolated in the world, not only because of opposition to the invasion, but to the ongoing and increasing cruelty of his conduct of the war.  Nobody is interested in saving Putin's leadership; just saving the world from nuclear war, and saving Ukraine from more devastation and death.  The longer that goes on, the more likely some further international action within Ukraine will be needed.

So it's not 1962.  Is it 1939?  That seems a little closer.  A dictator invades an eastern European country, where borders and national identities are often in turmoil.  In 1938 Hitler's Germany attacked Czechoslovakia, and demanded its borderland, claiming it was really part of Germany.  It also happened to be of great strategic importance, but Hitler claimed it would be his only territorial demand.  That much sounds familiar.  In that case, the West appeased him.  In short order, Czechoslovakia ceased to be a country, and in 1939, Hitler invaded Poland.  The Second World War, the largest and most destructive war in the known history of the world began.  

This time it is Russia invading Ukraine, claiming parts of it, or maybe all of it, belongs to Russia.  Because Ukraine does not have official western allies--i.e. is not a member of NATO--the western nations are not bound to become involved.  But they remember 1939, so they are loudly and meaningfully opposing this invasion, and drawing firm lines for the future.  Though Putin may have had illusions of a Nazi-style blitzkreig, the Russian army seems capable only of blundering brutality and primitive siege.  

And let's admit it--all this has uncomfortable echoes of the late 1960s and 1970s in southeast Asia, as well as the US in Baghdad and Iraq in this century.  Putin is a war criminal, but some fingers should be shaking as they point.

So really there is no analogy to now.  There is no lesson of the past that absolutely pertains.  This moment has so many new features (what does Thomas Friedman call it?  Wired World War I?), and yet is steeped in some of the oldest conflicts, especially in that part of the world that has seen so much violence and suffering, that no one yet knows what it is or where it is going.   

Beyond the Glare

 Some stories in advance of President Biden’s State of the Union address suggested that its organizing theme was to be the climate crisis.  But then Russia invaded Ukraine, and Ukraine dominated the top of the speech.  By the time he delivered it, the State of the Union had essentially nothing about the climate crisis.

 This is how it always is.  There is always something more timely, that requires and gets the priority of attention.  And after knowing that the climate crisis is  an immense and growing threat for at least a generation, there has still not been an address to the American people by the President of the United States, either from the White House or to Congress, with the climate crisis as its subject.  Not one. 

This past week, the UN issued its latest report on the effects of the climate crisis, both current and projected.  This is a meticulously detailed report with contributions from more than a thousand scientists. Yet in outline it predicts dangers that I was writing about on this blog and elsewhere some 20 years ago. The difference is in its precision.  What isn’t different is that, while progress has been made here and there on local levels, the world is still woefully unprepared to address the effects.

 It is the second of three reports this year of what some observers say is the last UN assessment that has the potential to do any good, because when it’s time for the next one, it may be too late to prevent the worst from happening.

 Some things have changed.  The language of the report is stark and direct—there’s less obscurity and compromise. The UN Secretary General has given up all diplomatic language, and indicted those nations responsible for inaction, or not enough action. Coverage in major media was better—the Washington Post was particularly good—though the coverage is not a great deal more widespread.  A lot of it, even from more specialized sites, covered it with lists of five or six “takeaways” of their choice, (for example here, and here) but reading several of these covers the major points.

 And of course, the Ukraine invasion news buried it all. Its media glare rendered everything else invisible. The same was true when the first part of the report was issued, in the midst of the Covid pandemic.

 But it doesn’t take a pressing event of this magnitude to overwhelm climate crisis information.  It just takes the latest Beltway/ Internet/social media shiny object. They come and they go, generating immense attention for hours, days or a few weeks, and then winking out, in favor of the next shiny object.

 The same is likely to happen with Ukraine, especially if the war grinds on.  When it does, the threats from the climate crisis to the human future, to the future of life as we know it, will remain, and get worse. 

 Eventually there will be something so immense that it will become the shiny object—something like the twenty million people dying in a single heat wave that Kim Stanley Robinson described in his novel, The Ministry for the Future.  We’ll get a White House address then perhaps, whether or not there’s still time to do what must be done.

 Shiny objects are not the only barrier, of course. The lead article in the WPost on last week’s report pointed out another: the most terrifying effects—at least at first-- are likely to happen in poorer countries, and their frequency and power will be felt most later in this century.  In other words, as the Post pointed out, when those who are now 55 are dead.  It just so happens that the vast majority of wealth and power resides in the hands of older white people in rich countries. 

 Beyond the glare, much is being done—research, design, local resilience projects, regional organizing, political lobbying.  Investment in clean energy is waiting for government action and leadership.  There are resources and some infrastructure ready to be organized and activated in a committed effort.

 But it will take leadership to organize and activate it. Isn’t it time for the President of the United States to speak to the nation from his desk in the Oval Office, and explain to the American people and the world what these reports say, and what this nation needs to do to address the causes and effects of the climate crisis?  What the opportunities and the costs will be, and make this a matter of national purpose? No matter what shiny object is glaring?

 The third and final part of the UN assessment is due to be released next month.  It may be the last opportunity to do it while it still may matter.  At this point, doing it is better than not doing it, regardless of its immediate effect.  The climate crisis needs to be the shiny object before it forces itself to be the only shiny object.

Pivot

 

On the first anniversary of the attack on Congress by Trump-inflamed insurrectionists, President Biden's speech in the Capitol Statuary Hall--one of the places where the mob fought and injured its defenders--was widely hailed for its forthright condemnation of those responsible, and those who continue to defend what happened (mostly by denying it happened.)  

It was not a distinguished speech rhetorically.  It was repetitious, overusing the clash of direct opposites (democracy not autocracy etc.),  and missing opportunities for more memorable language ("dagger at the throat of America" is less direct and familiar, and therefore less powerful that "knife at the throat of America.")  "Inflection point" is a fashionable expression that even President Obama couldn't resist.  But I doubt it communicates forcefully to the general public. I'm also not sure if it's what he really meant.  An inflection point, outside of math, is a turning point or a pivot point.  But that means a change in a certain direction. Did he mean that, or a point in which things could go either way--a decisive point, or point of decision?  Politically, "we're at the point of decision" between (yes) democracy and autocracy (dictatorship is better) seems more appropriate and powerful.

And while I'm in the communication weeds, my own response is that Biden behind a podium, shot straight on from a distance, is not to his best advantage.  He seems better to me when the camera is closer, or when he is standing without a podium, talking person to person.  I miss the intimacy of those White House talks all Presidents used to give, seated at their desk in the Oval Office. 

But in this speech Biden covered the ground he needed to cover.  He was especially good in placing the attack in the context of American history.  He also made the point that I recall making here just after the election that Trump's minions disputed that Trump lost, but not that Republicans elected on the same ballot won.  He was forthright in condemning Trump, and identifying the Republicans party as dangerous to American democracy, now and for the future.

There was speculation about why Biden hadn't talked like this sooner.  I expect it was part of the plan to work for Republican votes on the infrastructure part of the Build Back bill, ultimately separated from it and passed--with Republican votes.  The pivot to voting rights was always going to be made--although the process of getting that early huge legislation took longer (and a large part of it still hasn't been passed, thanks to Senator Joe Mansion.)  

Meanwhile, Republicans regressed to abject fealty to Homegrown Hitler in a way that nobody predicted.  The only strategy left to get Republican votes for voting rights is shaming them, and confronting them.  Shaming hasn't worked so far, but confronting them could shake things up, since so many of them are cowards.  Congress may even get serious about clarifying rules to prevent the kind of direct reversing of election results either by Congress or in the states that Trump wanted.

Otherwise, we should expect to see some hardball--some momentum behind efforts to call the perpetrators to account, including criminal charges, and confrontation over filibuster rules in the US Senate. We'll see if all of this is more than words in the coming days and weeks.  

But President Biden's speech alone puts pressure on the courts, especially the Supreme Court, to defend the Constitution.  None of it may work.  But by the time it's over, everyone involved will have to own up.  Politicians, like other rich and privileged, always have somewhere to hide.  But their options will shrink.  Come November, the choices should be pretty clear.  

In fact, they should be clear now on the state and local level, where traditional Republicans could join in resisting the Trumpian candidates who want to manipulate elections for El Duce.  It was Republican officeholders that guarded election integrity in several key states in 2020, though most of them will be gone by 2022.  How quickly voters become aware of the dangers of letting election subversives take over voting rules and vote counting may be decisive.

 So far, at least some of the fears broadcast last year have not been fully realized.  Indications are that partisan gerrymandering in the states hasn't changed things much, at least for the next few elections.  And the scary poll numbers being widely publicized, of the high proportion of Republicans who say that the election was stolen, and that violence may be necessary, etc. are basically a majority or near majority of a small minority, little more than a third of the potential electorate.  Getting the majority to vote, and making sure they can vote, and that their votes will count, is the task ahead.  President Biden's speech, and presumably the continued repetition of its main points, should aid in motivating those voters.  

That leaves the battle for voting rights at the federal and state level, and again President Biden's speech begins to make the case for why this is so crucial.  Because there is a knife at the throat of American democracy. 

Politics 2021

 I don't write much about politics here anymore.  Why warn of what everyone knows is happening?  Just because the Rabid Right misuses Nazi analogies, doesn't mean they don't apply.  We are Germany in the early 1930s.  Our march to 21st century virtual reality fascism seems inexorable, if not inevitable.  

How many times did political pundits declared the Republican party discredited, disreputable and dead as they crossed one normative line after another?  But Republicans either quit or got with the fascist program, or else were punished and purged.  Now they are all but officially the American White Supremacist Fascist Party, even if many of their officeholders have zero integrity or commitment to democracy or even an ideology, and are only interested in retaining personal political power at any cost and the open taps of certain corporate supporters.

But the clincher is Covid.  Republican officeholders are creating conditions for more people to get sick and die so they can blame it on Biden.  They are sacrificing actual real lives (though mostly old people) for political gain.  Usually politicians don't do this so blatantly.  But is the American public alarmed and outraged?  Nearly 800,000 deaths officially--half a million people over 65-- and certainly many more than are officially counted, apparently aren't enough to matter.  How many lives will it take till we know that too many people have died?  The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.

Whatever the historical analogies of our current rigid political and cultural divisions, the mutual disdain and distrust in any government (or science or anything else) by what seems like a substantial proportion of the population--this polititcization of everything--offers gloomy prospects for effective response to future national challenges, including the foreseeable effects of climate distortion.  And that's regardless of any electoral outcomes.   

The electorate in 2021 seems composed of one-quarter Rabid Right fascists and one-quarter surly and impulsive voters, unable or unwilling to absorb or judge crucial information, whose voting patterns is little more than acting out.  Because of them (and Democrats who didn't vote), Republicans successfully market-tested their fascism in this year's elections.  Who would have believed that fulminating members of a party that says what everybody saw happen on January 6 didn't happen, would actually win the next elections. (We will see if these elections were won on national issues or local issues plus the respective candidates.  Less publicized were some recent local elections that Democrats unexpectedly swept.)

The other half of the electorate broadly agree with one another, but obsess on what fractures them from the others.   They can be coalesced around a candidate like Obama, or to oppose a Trump.  But in 2021 no Obama is apparent. 

 President Joe Biden is fearless and a smart political operator--he knew enough to ask for more than he expected to get, and he still may wind up with several multi-trillion dollar changes for the better.  But the default position of the American media and public is to listen to very little of what a President says.  Even a politician with the skills of an FDR would find it difficult to get through.  Homegrown Hitler did, but being the Troll-in-Chief only gets you attention and a cult of personality --it can't get bring a country together around a vision or a program.  Demagogues have the advantage of evoking the violent dark side; it's harder to guide the light.  

Making a speech while standing in front of a broken bridge or a sparkling solar panel doesn't get you more than a sound bite that comes and goes.  Not since JFK and LBJ has there been a Democrat who could command attention over the noise, at least enough.  Whatever it takes to "communicate" these days, Democrats haven't yet figured it out.  In 2021, it's hard to see where that skill or voice will come from.  It's also not clear who will replace Biden and Nancy Pelosi--the Last American Hero--in effective legislating.

President Biden is less than one-fourth into his term. Things can change (though I wouldn't count on the egregious abortion/choice issue, to do it.)  Whether or not voting rights legislation is possible or can come soon enough to govern the rules for 2022 or 2024 is one of the big questions for the coming year.

But Biden will still be President for both those elections.  In the coming year--and certainly by 24--the White House should be seriously gaming out federal responses to various alarming possibilities, just as if they were the Pentagon preparing for various war scenarios.  For it seems that if the Republicans haven't gerrymandered themselves into power, they will try to negate elections and elect themselves at the state level.  And if that doesn't work, armed insurrection is next on the menu. 

 Before January 6, 2021, that might have seemed like paranoia.  Not now. So what will the federal response be to an insurrection taking over the government of Georgia?  Of Michigan?  Of reversing the outcome of federal elections?  Some folks need to be thinking about this now, and getting reliable resources ready. For the United States has enemies, foreign and domestic--and the most obvious right now are the domestic.

FDJoe?

The First Hundred Days of the Biden Administration are officially over, and many comparisons are being made to the administration that provided the concept of the 100 Days in the first place: that of FDR, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

 I’ve been reading about the 1930s lately, and these comparisons seem apt in at least two regards.  Biden, like FDR, has begun and proposed structural, economic, physical and social policy changes that would likely define at least a generation into the future.  Moreover, though many of these changes in both cases have been made elsewhere or on a smaller scale, they are as creative as they are bold.

As Nicholas Kristof wrote so eloquently in last Sunday's New York Times, the basic intention of  FDR's New Deal and Biden's announcement programs for rescue, jobs and family, are the same: to invest in ordinary non-wealthy Americans, and the places where they live, to both improve their lives and jumpstart new economic opportunities and prosperity.  

 FDR's environmental initiatives are less well known but substantial, while Biden would only like to save the planet.  By sincerely and boldly addressing the Depression, FDR very like saved American democracy.  President Biden would like to save it through safeguarding the integrity and equality of the vote, now under determined attack by the Republican party and the state governments they hold. 

 We are still living with the vital help of what FDR began: Social Security, the minimum wage, the banking system, the forty hour week and ban on child labor, and much more.  We still cross the bridges (large and small) and work in the buildings that New Deal programs built.

 Some of Biden’s proposals could be as far reaching and last as long.  Some are extensions of FDR’s: bringing broadband to rural areas is only possible because FDR brought electric power to rural areas.  And Biden even has a version of the Civil Conservation Corps.

 And like FDR, Biden has communicated his plans and rationales for them in succinct and easily understood terms directly to the American people.  FDR did this with his fireside chats on the radio as well as formal speeches.  Biden has begun doing it with a press conference, an address to the nation and his recent address to a joint session of Congress that amounts to a State of the Union. 

 In his analysis of that speech, Jeff Greenfield called his approach “whispering.”  “His speech was delivered almost as conversation, rather than a series of declamations. He kept his voice, for long stretches, at times a near-whisper of empathy or concern—a tone that would have been completely unworkable in a full room,” Greenfield noted.  

Biden used the crowd limited by Covid to speak with the intimacy of FDR’s radio chats.  FDR pictured a family seated around the radio and spoke to them.  Biden was more aware of the room—he kept referring to the congressional audience—but he spoke with that same tone and direct vocabulary.

 But there are significant differences.  There was a more compelling sense of crisis in America, both among the voters and among the power elites and political class in the 1930s.  When FDR took office in March 1933, coal barons came to the White House begging him to take over ownership of their mines (though he didn’t.) 

 It may well be that the majority of American voters today see the global pandemic as threatening now as the 1930s voters saw the global banking crisis.  But a significant number of voters and politicians do not.  Similarly, there are large majorities today in favor of long-delayed changes like support for child care, early childhood education and support, free community college, and efforts to address the climate emergency through American jobs.  But FDR was able to institute programs of such scope with long-term implications because he was also addressing widely recognized crises.  Biden knows that many Americans are hurting, even if our media swirl doesn't.  But if there is a commensurate sense of crisis, it may be what Stewart Udall once called the environmental situation: the quiet crisis.  Will that be enough?   

 A corresponding difference is the overwhelming political support that FDR brought to the White House.  He won 42 of the 48 states in 1932.  He had large Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.  President Biden has majority approval in the polls, and his policies also have wide public support.  Though his own popular vote margin was impressive, he did not bring with him large Democratic majorities.  In fact, predictions now are that it is very likely Democrats will lose the House in 2022, and could easily also lose the Senate. 

 So while FDR did not accomplish the New Deal in his first 100 days any more than Biden has accomplished his announced plans—Social Security did not became law until 1935 —he had the time to explain his plans, to obtain comprehension of what he wanted to do and why, and to gather support, especially in Congress.  And he remained so popular that it was politically difficult to oppose him, Democrat or Republican. Though there were recalcitrant individuals and sectional interests, and a fair number of crazies, they did not have the power or the voter support they seem to have now for total opposition.  Perhaps they also did not have the self-righteous shamelessness.

 FDR’s popularity—he won reelection in 1936 by taking 46 of the 48 states—also provided the continuity for his initiatives to be accomplished over time, to be modified or even dropped if they weren’t working, and with a better program substituted. 

 This continuity of administration may be a major reason why President Biden and the congressional Democrats are really interested in a bipartisan infrastructure bill.  They want to lessen the chances of a possible Republican Congress dismantling this program.

 Much can happen in the next year or so.  President Biden may yet become FDJoe.  Or these amazing months, and these amazing proposals, may become a brief and tantalizing glimpse of the America that could be, or could have been, rather than the suicidal mess it can still return to becoming.  A lot depends on the 2022 elections.  And so, a lot depends on what happens from now until then.

Earth Day: The Dream Team at the Last Chance Saloon

Michael Grunwald’s Politico piece begins with Jigar Shah, a “green finance legend” who created Generate Capital, overseeing over 2,000 sustainable energy projects and co-hosts the top-rated iTunes climate podcast, but who nevertheless took a relatively obscure job doling out government energy loans because he wanted to be part of the Biden effort to confront the climate emergency which requires an “all-hands-on-deck” response.The piece continues: 

 “We’re in a unique time,” Shah said. “There’s a power of now, a real sense we need to get to work on the big things we haven’t done since FDR. And there’s a new sheriff in town.” 

 The sheriff has recruited a Who’s Who of veteran climate leaders along with a mission-driven posse of outspoken younger climate wonks and activists to help him take on global warming. Biden’s climate all-stars will help him as well as pressure him to keep his climate pledges, including a zero-emissions electric grid by 2035, a carbon-neutral nation by 2050 and the 2030 goals he plans to announce this week at his Earth Day climate summit.”

 Grunwald describes the team that Biden has assembled, including his most senior White House climate aides:”all former managers of large agencies who are now content just to have the president’s ear.” This team also includes the Cabinet, selected with the climate in mind:

 “And while it’s not surprising that a Democratic Cabinet would include committed climate officials like Michael Regan at EPA, Deb Haaland at Interior and Jennifer Granholm at Energy, Biden’s transportation, commerce and labor secretaries, Pete Buttigieg, Gina Raimondo and Marty Walsh, sound just as climate-forward. Buttigieg ran for president as a climate champion; Raimondo pushed America’s first offshore wind farm as governor of Rhode Island, and Walsh, the former Boston mayor, took over the Climate Mayors coalition in November before he was tapped to join the new administration. Even Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who took a mostly traditional approach to the same job under Obama, keeps saying that climate will be one of his top priorities this time around.”

 Even Biden’s chief of staff has climate credentials. “And a diverse array of next-generation voices from the worlds of advocacy, philanthropy, think tanks and government have moved from Climate Twitter to powerful roles throughout the Biden Administration.”

 Grunwald sums up the import of all this: 

It’s often said in Washington that personnel is policy, and it would be hard for the president not to push the climate envelope after hiring so many envelope-pushers. If Biden has recruited the climate equivalent of America’s 1992 Olympic “Dream Team” — as Ali Zaidi, McCarthy’s deputy, describes it — his Michael Jordans and Charles Barkleys will all expect to hoop." 

The team leaves behind the slog of disputes that have kept meaningful efforts from being made. For example, as one participant said: “The assumption is that climate isn’t just aligned with the economic agenda, it is the economic agenda.” 

Not everyone sees such clarity in the Biden team—at the Atlantic, Robinson Meyer worries that progress can’t get past contradictory analyses. But in concentrating on the people involved, Grunwald makes a good case that this is the make-it-or-break it team we’ve been waiting for, and building towards.

 It may be too late, and they may end up accomplishing too little, too slowly. Events may well overtake these efforts, and other factors—such as the continuing power of such reactionary responses as white supremacy to weaken the kind of societal cohesion that may well be necessary to face both the causes and consequences of the climate emergency—may end up being fatal. 

But fighting the good fight at the very least ennobles the present, and without these efforts, the future of the Earth is all but guaranteed to be tragic for life as we know it, and certainly for humanity. For those who love the Earth and will continue to participate in this society, this should be an exciting time.

Manchinations

West Virginia is America writ small.  In a remarkably short and easily verified time, European transplants felled the great forests of the East, moved on to tear up the Midwestern prairie, over-grazed the grasslands of the great wild West and otherwise dug up, poisoned and destroyed the land, air and water to the point where it's increasingly difficult for them to replenish themselves and sustain the life that had previous proliferated on this continent.  While of course wiping out the civilizations that preceded them.  All of that contributes mightily to the global climate and environmental crises.

It's the same and mostly ongoing story in every state, but it remains a particularly obvious feature of West Virginia, where in the process of demolishing the natural environment, to the point of blowing the tops off huge mountains, industries owned by the rich enriched themselves, while exploiting, deforming and impoverishing not only the land but the rest of the people, yet convincing them that it's for their own good.  

Most other states show conspicuous signs of change, for good or ill, and often dramatic and dynamic tensions.  But West Virginia seems determined to double down on what is destroying it, namely the coal industry.  Population is steadily dropping, the economy is in free fall, but the legislature maintains its fealty to the coal barons.

Meanwhile, its Democratic Senator Joe Manchin is lapping up his fame as the deciding vote in the Senate, making demands and pronouncements, notably on the filibuster.  He is unshakably opposed to changing it because, he says, the filibuster promotes bi-partisanship.

The only possibly true thing in that statement is that he opposes ending or apparently even modifying the filibuster, by which every significant piece of legislation requires 60 votes, not just a majority 51.  For nearly the full 8 years of the Obama administration, the Republicans used the filibuster to obstruct every piece of legislation proposed by a Democrat, regardless of its content.  They never compromised, only obstructed.  That's only one of the factual arguments that makes Manchin's argument absurd.

So what is really going on?  I propose two related possibilities.  First, Manchin doesn't want to be the deciding vote, because he wants to be able to vote against anything which threatens to threaten the coal barons of his state, without offending his party leadership.  If he's the swing vote, he can't get away with that--he'll have to make enemies of somebody.  So he needs the filibuster to provide him cover by requiring 60 votes instead of 51.

More specifically, I wonder if this isn't aimed at the infrastructure bill.  Manchin wants an infrastructure bill--he wants the money for West Virginia's crumbling roads and bridges, etc. that it can't even afford to repair.  But his coal baron overlords don't want all the green energy stuff currently in the bill.

The outcome he may be looking for is that the Biden administration jobs/infrastructure bill gets split into several bills, one of which is a roads and bridges infrastructure bill that Republicans can vote for--which means all that green energy and climate crisis stuff will be stripped out of it.  Then when the green stuff gets into another bill, Manchin can vote against it and still get the big highway bucks for West Virginia.  

If that's what he's doing--and I have no idea if it is, this is just my suspicion--it's a very dangerous game, not only for him, but for the country and its future.  

Unity

Congressional Republicans, when they aren’t touting authoritarian proposals or spouting QAnon nonsense, complain that President Biden isn’t honoring his pledge to work together when he doesn’t listen to their deeply unserious ideas. 

 Signing on to Republican unreality is not unity. What is unity is the response of Americans who overwhelmingly support President Biden’s efforts to address the Covid crisis, and in particular the American Rescue Plan, which became law without a single Republican vote, despite its provisions being supported by anywhere from two-thirds to three-fourths of American surveyed. 

 A similar pattern is now developing in response to President Biden’s infrastructure package. Republican leadership has denounced it in its entirety, the day it was proposed. Yet according to public polling cited by the White House, “between 74% and 87% support among Americans for seven elements: new job training for coal miners, highway and bridge work, increasing affordable childcare, expanding broadband access, expanding family and medical leave, upgrading public transportation, and investing in clean energy.” 

 Reported in Axios, this was repeated on the Political Wire which added this quote from Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post: “The media, it seems, are caught in a Republican framing of policy that does not match reality. There is not a hue and cry over a mammoth infrastructure bill. To the contrary, it is super popular. And Republicans might want to stop harping on the tax increases: Those make the bill even more popular.” 

 And what is likely to be even more popular among non-rich voters are two little publicized pledge Biden made in his Pittsburgh speech: first, “I start with one rule: No one — let me say it again — no one making under $400,000 will see their federal taxes go up. Period.” And second: “When we make all these investments, we’re going to make sure, as the executive order I signed early on, that we buy American. That means investing in American-based companies and American workers. Not a contract will go out, that I control, that will not go to a company that is an American company with American products, all the way down the line, and American workers.” 

 Moreover, as political scientist Jonathan Bernstein notes, even though passing this package without Republican votes will require near total (in the House) or total (in the Senate) Democratic support, Biden has a very good chance of getting that unified support, if for no other reason than the popularity of its provisions and the behavior of voters who reward congressional candidates for the success of their party’s President.

 What is crystal clear is the need for this country to rebuild its decaying infrastructure, and to build the infrastructure of the information age. This benefits everybody—every corporation, every small business, every Republican, every American, period. We all depend on the same roads and bridges, the same Internet, the same power plants, and by the way, the same planet. 

 No corporation, no matter how many tax cuts it is provided, ever builds a public bridge. (In fact, they usually demand private bridges and roads be built for them, or they won’t come into your city or township.) It is ridiculous to be arguing about some socialist conspiracy when this is the work government—and only government—has always done.

 And in today’s world only government has the muscle to see it’s done fairly. No corporation is ever going to guarantee that only American materials will be used for anything. They don’t use American materials or manufacturing for shoe laces, why would they do it for roads?

 So why does the media insist on parroting Republican talking points? Mostly because they’re out of office and the media doesn’t have the imagination to come up with their own critical questions. It might require them to, for instance, actually listen to the Biden speeches they report on. 

 President Biden has said it clearly a number of times: his call for unity doesn’t mean unanimity, and it sure doesn’t mean giving into congressional Republicans. In his March 25 press conference he also said, very clearly: And here’s the deal: I think my Republican colleagues are going to have to determine whether or not we want to work together, or they decide that the way in which they want to proceed is to — is to just decide to divide the country, continue the politics of division. But I’m not going to do that; I’m just going to move forward and take these things as they come... All I know, I’ve been hired to solve problems — to solve problems, not create division." 

 “There is nothing we can’t do when we do it together.” President Biden has repeated this mantra time and again. When are we going to take it seriously? It doesn’t mean total agreement. It means once the commitment is made, we make it work. That’s how it worked in the 1930s, which was at least as contentious as now.

The Perkins New Deal

 Somebody probably not associated with the greeting card industry has designated March as Women’s History Month.  It so happens that this month I’ve been reading about the 1930s, a decade in which several of the women in American history I most admire were prominent, including Jane Addams, Dorothy Day, Eleanor Roosevelt and Halle Flanagan (who ran the Federal Theatre Project.)  But the woman I’ve been reading most about is Frances Perkins.

 Maybe it’s an oxymoron by now that this incredibly important woman in history is not very well known. But as FDR’s first and only Secretary of Labor, she was not just the first woman to run that department—she was the first female Cabinet officer in US history.  She was also one of the longest serving cabinet heads in history: all 12-plus years of FDR’s presidency. 

 She was among the most consequential cabinet heads in American history as well, mostly for the innovations during the New Deal that she advocated and worked to achieve, some of which she designed.

  And she knew what she wanted when she took the job at the crucial moment of the Great Depression in early 1933, and told FDR so: immediate federal aid to states and local governments to support relief for the unemployed; a large scale public works program; federal minimum wage and maximum hours laws; a ban on child labor; unemployment insurance and old-age insurance we now know as Social Security.  Eventually she got them all. 

 She was also an effective advocate for unions’ right to organize, and for workplace health and safety, with particular attention to the needs of women in the workplace.  All of these were new, and most were controversial and opposed by vested interests and reactionaries.  She was the model for effective compassion, for the practical heart.

 When she left office a little known and apparently unpopular figure, Collier’s magazine boldly suggested that “when the definitive history of this Administration is written, it is quite likely that [Secretary] Perkins will be hailed as the most successful of the New Dealers, for the Roosevelt pattern of government contains more of her ideas than any other of the President’s followers...What this country has been operating under for the past twelve years is not so much the Roosevelt New Deal as the Perkins New Deal.”

 But what she began did not end with the New Deal.  Consider the provisions of the new Covid Rescue Act that echo her innovations, as well as proposals for the infrastructure package.  Plus the safety net that so many of us depend on, and the further innovations that structures like Social Security have made possible, like the Affordable Care Act. 

 Nor was her contribution only in the ideas.  She knew how to get things done, to bring people and ideas together, to solve problems, gather support—and convince an often reluctant FDR.  She dealt with determined and underhanded opposition, including out-maneuvering FDR’s devious budget director.  She was an able administrator, who helped turn FDR’s idea for a Civil Conservation Corps into a reality that saved young lives and supported entire families, including my father’s.  She transformed the Labor Department from a clubhouse for cronies into a large and effective administrative arm.

 Though she also had to deal with family tragedies, she managed to survive the Roosevelt years and beyond (as FDR and Harry Hopkins did not).  She met President Kennedy, taught and lectured, describing her political experiences in a speech, part of which Laurence O’Donnell played on his MSNBC hour in 2014 or so, all when she was in her eighties.

 She taught at Cornell in her final years, and was so beloved that the male students of Telluride House, a residence for high-achievers, invited her to move in.  She did.  Secretary Frances Perkins remained at Cornell until her death at the age of 85.

Adjustments (And a Thank You)

 Margaret and I just got our second Covid vaccine shot (Pfzer.)  Our thanks go out to Humboldt County Public Health and to the volunteers who organized and administered the jabs.  Compared to what we're hearing from other parts of the country, it was a painless process, even if it seemed slow at times.  All we did was fill out one form--an "interest" form, as in interested in getting the vaccine--with just basic information, especially age.  The county methodically followed the state guidance, so there was a 75 and over beginning, followed by a 70 and over, etc.  Medicare cleared the need for insurance information.  After we completed the form online, we simply waited.  As soon as enough vaccine was available, we got emails inviting us to a clinic on a specific day.  We then made an appointment on that day.  That was it. We got another invitation for our second shot, which we got three weeks and one day after the first.  No running after rumors of who had the vaccine, constantly refreshing sites for an appointment, etc.  So we are very grateful for the County's efforts.  Public Health here has been great throughout this Covid crisis. 

Now we have a couple of weeks to adjust to the end of what has effectively been a year-long quarantine.  The mental adjustment for me will begin with activity.  My car doesn't start, my phone is obsolete, I've needed a new prescription for glasses this entire year, and a haircut would be nice.  Those items are where the list begins.

I also find myself adjusting slowly to the fact that we have an actual President of the United States.  I've felt resistance to fully accepting it, having been thoroughly traumatized by the past four years.  Washington politics is as fucked up as ever, etc. but Joe Biden is more than I could have expected.  He's putting together a potentially effective government in new ways--new especially since the 1930s.  His first address to the nation on Covid was just about perfect.  The covid Rescue law is a wonder.  So if any reader has noted an absence of commentary here that might suggest a lack of enthusiasm, that's not the case.  I've just having a hard time trusting this is really happening, and may not be reversed in a minute from now.

At the moment our weather is reflecting this transitional feeling.  The winter rains have not quite ended, but the flowers are blooming.

Unity

It’s become the Republican canard of the day: because President Biden won’t give into their demands, he’s not really for unity. But unity was never unanimity. Unity is about uniting around a core set of common values that previously defined American democracy, including some that simply define civilization. 

 Republicans had the chance to do this, and then to move on to uniting to solve problems with factual argument and good faith political negotiation. And for a couple of weeks—from the attack on the Capitol through the Inauguration—it seemed possible. But Republicans have again reverted to their anti-democratic obeisance to the apprentice dictator, now in exile.

 Those core values and American institutions that once changed the world include the Bill of Rights, impartial courts and the rule of law, public education and the community institutions that support all of it, like public libraries. But the most basic value, which many of the others serve, is the right to vote, and the system by which votes determine who is in charge of governing. 

 Reaffirming these core values and defending and strengthening these institutions is the only basis for unity. Much of the country fervently desires this to happen. But it appears not to be happening. To one degree or another, most of today’s Republicans in Congress, and the official Republican party in most states, undermine each and every one of these values, none more than the right to vote, and the right to be governed by the voters’ choices. 

 There are plenty of stories now about the Republican party in crisis. Members of Congress turn their considerable ire and well-practiced invective on each other. Despite the rabid state party leaderships, hundreds of thousands of Republicans are changing their registration or otherwise leaving the party. But the parts of the system these shameless, rabid Republicans like are those that allow them to take the presidency and Congress by minority rule. Right now it is still more than possible that Republicans will regain control of one or both houses of Congress in less than two years.

 So the Republican party may be on the road to perdition, but right now it is clearly the party of sedition. That is likely to become even clearer during the upcoming impeachment trial of Trump. By signaling that Senate Republicans will not provide the votes to convict, they perhaps hoped that discouraged Democrats would put on a pro forma case, impatient just to get it all over with. That does not appear to be the plan. The House managers are going to make what happened at the Capitol, and who was responsible, dramatically clear. 

 A truly unified political leadership would gravely but firmly hold even the highest leader in their own party responsible for seditious acts, thus affirming the rule of law, and their oath of office to preserve and protect. Instead they will carp about the divisiveness of this trial, as if it were ordinary partisan politics. They will carp about the urgency Democrats feel to address the Covid crisis and its attendant economic crisis. 

 It is not a stimulus bill, by the way. It is a support bill. It is not designed to stimulate the economy—it is designed to support it. It is designed not to give people extra spending money, but money to buy food, to keep their beds, to pay their bills, until the covid crisis that has disrupted their ability to earn is effectively over. It is designed to keep the states solvent with compensation for the financial burden they’ve borne alone during the crisis. And it is designed to buy what’s needed to end the crisis: more vaccine and better distribution, more needed medical supplies, including the damn right masks.

 And Democrats hope to do the responsible thing by passing this, because it will benefit the country as a whole and everyone in it. That’s unity. That’s the United States.

 But in terms of saving democracy from this unprecedented situation in which one of the two major parties is seditious, I am persuaded by Ed Kilgore’s argument that the most important legislation ahead is a new and stronger Voting Rights bill. Right now, Republicans in charge of state governments are busily instituting new ways to prevent the wrong people from voting. If they succeed, even the crazy one-third of the American electorate might be enough to end democracy at the time we will need it most, the looming future when we will have no choice but to confront the effects and causes of the climate crisis.

Poetry Monday: The Hill We Climb

The Hill We Climb

 When day comes we ask ourselves, 

where can we find light in this never-ending shade?

 The loss we carry,

 a sea we must wade 

We've braved the belly of the beast

 We've learned that quiet isn't always peace

 And the norms and notions

 of what just is

 Isn’t always just-ice

 And yet the dawn is ours

 before we knew it 

Somehow we do it

 Somehow we've weathered and witnessed

 a nation that isn’t broken

 but simply unfinished

 We the successors of a country and a time

 Where a skinny Black girl 

descended from slaves and raised by a single mother

 can dream of becoming president

 only to find herself reciting for one

 And yes we are far from polished

 far from pristine

 but that doesn’t mean we are

 striving to form a union that is perfect

 We are striving to forge a union with purpose

 To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and

 conditions of man 

And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us

 but what stands before us

 We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,

 we must first put our differences aside

 We lay down our arms 

so we can reach out our arms

 to one another

 We seek harm to none and harmony for all

 Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:

 That even as we grieved, we grew

 That even as we hurt, we hoped 

That even as we tired, we tried

 That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious

 Not because we will never again know defeat

 but because we will never again sow division

 Scripture tells us to envision

 that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree

 And no one shall make them afraid

 If we’re to live up to our own time

 Then victory won’t lie in the blade

 But in all the bridges we’ve made

 That is the promise to glade

 The hill we climb

 If only we dare

 It's because being American is more than a pride we inherit,

 it’s the past we step into 

and how we repair it

 We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation

 rather than share it

 Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy

 And this effort very nearly succeeded

 But while democracy can be periodically delayed

 it can never be permanently defeated

 In this truth

 in this faith we trust

 For while we have our eyes on the future

 history has its eyes on us 

This is the era of just redemption

 We feared at its inception 

We did not feel prepared to be the heirs

 of such a terrifying hour

 but within it we found the power

 to author a new chapter

 To offer hope and laughter to ourselves

 So while once we asked,

 how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?

 Now we assert

 How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?

 We will not march back to what was

 but move to what shall be

 A country that is bruised but whole,

 benevolent but bold,

 fierce and free 

We will not be turned around

 or interrupted by intimidation

 because we know our inaction and inertia

 will be the inheritance of the next generation

 Our blunders become their burdens

 But one thing is certain:

 If we merge mercy with might,

 and might with right,

 then love becomes our legacy

 and change our children’s birthright

 So let us leave behind a country

 better than the one we were left with

 Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,

 we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one

 We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west,

 we will rise from the windswept northeast

 where our forefathers first realized revolution

 We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states,

 we will rise from the sunbaked south

 We will rebuild, reconcile and recover

 and every known nook of our nation and

 every corner called our country,

 our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,

 battered and beautiful 

When day comes we step out of the shade,

 aflame and unafraid

 The new dawn blooms as we free it

 For there is always light,

 if only we’re brave enough to see it

 If only we’re brave enough to be it 

 Amanda Gorman 

 This is of course the poem that young Amanda Gorman performed at the Inaugural ceremony for President Biden and Vice-President Harris last Wednesday: January 20, 2021. She read it quickly, musically, conducting the words with graceful hands. The most proximate influence of rap is obvious, but seeing it in print reveals its classic poetic shape. In the poem’s first line it begins with the dawn and asks where we can find the daylight, and it comes back to the dawn in the final lines. Among other things, the dawn can symbolize the beginning of the Biden administration, for this poem is part of an old tradition: it is an occasional poem, a poem written for an occasion, that was often read aloud on that occasion.

 Gorman had reportedly written much of this poem when the attack on the Capitol occurred the week before, and there are obvious references to it. But that context really begins with the poem’s title, that refers metaphorically to climbing the hill towards a more perfect union, but it gets extra weight from the suggestion of climbing Capitol Hill specifically. 

 The poem is full of the sounds that are found in rap as well as centuries of written poems: assonance, alliteration, internal rhyme, slant rhyme, for example. Those sounds dominate and give the poem energy and shimmer. There are many quotable passages, but one of them certainly is:

 It's because being American is more than a pride we inherit,

 it’s the past we step into

 and how we repair it 

We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation

 rather than share it 

 The poetry of that final couplet is powerful, derived from the sound but also from the way it succinctly sums up exactly what’s been happening these past four years, dominated by “a force that would shatter our nation/rather than share it.” 

 A poem on a great national occasion, and on the subject of America, would naturally include a bit of geography ( “We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west,/ we will rise from the windswept northeast” etc.) but I was specifically reminded of similarly effusive references in Dr. King’s speech at the March on Washington in 1963. But while this and other rhetoric responds to the occasion, there are lines, such as the ones I quoted above, that transcend the occasion as well.

 At the age of 23, Amanda Gorman is the youngest poet ever to read for a presidential Inauguration. Aflame and unafraid, she triumphed.   Because her presentation is as important as the written words, a video of her Inaugural performance is included below.  The final written version of this poem will be published in a book in September.  That book is already a best seller.