"In a historic decision, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has chosen Deb Haaland, a congressional representative from New Mexico and a Native American, to lead the Interior Department, an agency that for much of the nation’s history played a central role in the dislocation and abuse of Indigenous communities from coast to coast.
Mr. Biden’s transition team announced the decision Thursday. If confirmed by the Senate, Ms. Haaland would be the first Native American to lead a cabinet-level agency. She would oversee a sprawling department responsible for some 500 million acres of public lands, including national parks, oil and gas drilling sites and endangered species habitat.
Ms. Haaland would play a major role in implementing Mr. Biden’s promised climate change agenda. She would further be responsible for working to strengthen federal protections for vast swaths of territory that the Trump administration has opened up to drilling, mining, logging and construction.
Historians and tribal leaders said that her selection represented a watershed moment in the United States’ scarred history with its Native people.
“It’s momentous to see an Indian promoted out of the shadows of American history to a seat at the table in the White House,” said Elizabeth Kronk Warner, dean and professor of law at the University of Utah, and a citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie tribe of Chippewa Indians. “Tribes and the federal government have a relationship that goes back to the 18th century — but despite that relationship, we have never had an American Indian at this level of government.”
Ms. Haaland, a citizen of Laguna Pueblo, one of the country’s 574 federally recognized tribes, would helm the federal agency most responsible for the well-being of the nation’s 1.9 million Indigenous people."
Northrup Frye
as quoted from memory by one of his students, Margaret Atwood
During this time the New York Times published a story on its Spelling Bee puzzle. The Bee was a feature of the paper edition that followed the crossword to the digital edition, with spectacular results. It’s enormously popular. I learned what I should have assumed: that there are numerous social media sites in which a given day’s puzzle is discussed, clues given, complaints made.
The puzzles are created when seven letters are selected, including the one required to be in every word, and all possible words are generated by a computer. It is the job of the puzzle editor to select the words that the puzzle will accept. The idea is to include familiar words, including slang, plus a few more esoteric or technical words. Though the article didn’t admit it, the selection includes a hefty number of words that go unused except in word puzzles, from crosswords to Scrabble.
I learned from the article that there is a level higher than Genius, called Queen Bee, which requires getting all of the words for that puzzle (which may be fewer than 20 or more than 60.) This neither bothers nor tempts me because I disdain those questionable Scrabble words, and try to avoid them even when I remember one. Getting to Genius without them is my game within the game.
It’s also true that if one puzzle rejects a word (with the neutral message “not in word list”), all Spelling Bee puzzles will. I thought I’d made my peace with my own list of perfectly good words it won’t accept, until a recent puzzle didn’t recognize “immanent.” That’s disturbing.
And then there is the matter of the absence of one letter of the alphabet: S. No puzzle ever has S. I guessed the obvious rationale would be that many more words could be made simply by adding S at the end. That in fact may be why, but in the past few months I’ve noted the frequency of puzzles that include e and d among the letters, or i, n, and g. Both combinations create many new words from words already made.
But because of the four-letter rule (words must have a minimum of four letters), these suffixes often make words that otherwise wouldn’t qualify. What interests me is how many times it has taken me a long time to see the “ed” or “ing” possibility in a given seven letters.
One of the attractions of the games—which is also its greatest drawback—is that I never know how long one is going to take me to reach my Genius goal. It might take 15 minutes. But it can also throttle me for three hours, I am loathe to admit. Usually a big chunk of those hours is finding just a few words, or even just one. Since this has become a nightly ritual (almost always, right after midnight, when the new puzzle drops on the West Coast), a major change in duration can affect everything afterwards, including bedtimes.
And yes, it has occurred to me that doing the puzzle every day is more than a habit and suggests addiction, and that continuing it until I reach those levels suggests compulsion as well as a game. I’ve thought about quitting, especially after I reached a year straight.
And maybe I will, or maybe I’ll slack off now and then. But the basic pleasure of it recurs, which is the fun of making words. (The puzzle mostly doesn’t take proper names, but I like to make them anyway.) Words come to me that I haven’t heard or read in years, including a fair percentage that I couldn’t define. I could use most of them in a sentence, even if I didn’t know what I’d just said. (The truth is that in my writing, even when I use the precise right word I can’t necessarily define it. It means exactly what it means, right down to the sound.)
Now I want to work on the compulsion to finish in one sitting, when I know (as others also know) that returning to the puzzle after leaving it for awhile often results in seeing words that had eluded me. But the discipline to put it down is something I need to work on.
I am also sure doing the Bee relates to my writing, and even this blog. When I write and publish something here, I mostly have no idea of who reads it or what effect it has. The Spelling Bee has less possibility but more certainty. In my ongoing writing projects, or even discrete pieces, there is always the question of when is it really finished (and why.) The Spelling Bee has a minimum definition of finished—and a 24 hour life.
I also wonder whether I would have been so faithful for this long if there wasn’t a pandemic outside keeping me in, or if trying to absorb the ongoing shock and bewilderment of the news didn’t suggest a daily respite in a closed world of letters, and words yet to be formed. But here I am, and here I will be for months to come. Maybe this helps my writing projects or maybe it hurts them by distracting me. But I know my main job right now is to not get sick. If this helps, why not?
This is how it starts.
The attorney general of Texas sued four other states in the Supreme Court, demanding their 2020 election results be overturned, which in addition to sowing chaos within those states and in Congress (because, let us not forget, those ballots were for more offices than one), would deny Joe Biden enough electoral votes to be inaugurated. What seemed at first a public relations gambit and a nuisance suit by a politician looking for a preemptive pardon while being seriously investigated for federal crimes when all of his deputies accused him of corruption, quickly became a Trump loyalty test and a litmus test for a statistical majority of AlwaysTrumpers. Seventeen other Republican attorneys-general signed on, supported by 126 US House Republicans. (Trump requested the congressional signatures, and he made it clear he was checking the list to see who was naughty and who was nice.)
This inspired the first use of the S word when the four states being attacked issued their withering responses, with the attorney general of Pennsylvania calling the suit a "seditious abuse of the judicial process."
Eventually 20 states, mostly but not all with Democratic governors and administrations, joined to oppose the case. They and many commentators expressed shock that so many Republicans would join in denying the basis for elected representative government, otherwise known as democracy. But sedition?
Following the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court denying the suit brought by the attorney general of Texas that demanded essentially that the 2020 election be overturned. the chairman of the Texas Republican Party issued a statement suggesting that in response: "Perhaps law abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the Constitution."
Okay. Now that's sedition.
Even before this, Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) requested that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refuse to seat any members of the newly elected Congress in January who signed on to this suit. He specifically cited Section 3 of the 14th Amendment "written after the Civil War to bar from government any traitors who would seek to destroy the Union."
He said this applies to 126 Republicans who signed as supporters of the Texas suit. They included the Member who would likely become the Speaker if Republicans regain the majority. "Stated simply, the men and women who would act to tear the United States government apart cannot serve as Members of Congress." He called them " Members trying to overturn the election and make Donald Trump an unelected dictator."
So this is what I meant about the Civil War. Sedition is a loaded word and dodgy legal concept in a democracy, but when it involves issues that hark back to the War Between the States, it's clear, and it's a fighting word.
Do Republican party leaders seriously want to start a civil war? Probably not, at least not directly. They support Trump's dictatorship perpetuation effort because 1) it's a spectacular money-raiser, 2) they all want the fealty of the AlwaysTrumpers once Trump is off center stage, and 3) solidifying the idea that Joe Biden is not a legitimate President will make it much easier for Mitch McConnell etc. to undermine and paralyze the incoming administration, setting Republican up for congressional victories in 2022 which could easily win them both Houses.
But it's a dangerous game. History tells us that Hitler was first elected because of a lot of factions out for themselves, trying to knock each other off. They didn't started out enthralled with the Furher. But that's where they soon found themselves.
If they don't necessarily want two sets of states at war with each other, they are fine with two utterly different realities at war with each other, creating an ungovernable country is a time of obvious crisis, apart from the underlying meta-crisis which threatens civilization and life as we know it on the planet.
This particular circus could have been much worse. Resisting it took heroic election officials in the states, the state and federal courts on every level that have turned back some 60 cynical suits so far, the media that won't swallow this. Notably no Senators actually signed on, and several Republican Senators spoke against the suit (including one from Texas.)
But it's still pretty bad. Three-quarters of the Republicans in the US House, who were fine with the elections that elected them, joined the chief law enforcement officers of 18 states in demanding that the results of lawful elections be overturned, with no evidence behind their assertions, in a document that would get a high school sophomore flunked in Civics (if they still taught that), Composition, arithmetic (a mad assertion that Biden's victory was mathematically impossible) and even spelling. There must be law professors up on ledges all over academia.
There will likely be more cynical court cases filed and thrown out, and there may be a play to try to get Congress to challenge electors in early January. It takes only one Rep. and one Senator to start the process, which involves each house debating the challenges for two hours and then voting. It takes both Houses to support the challenge, and the Trumpeteers are unlikely to get even the Senate. (I count at least 4 Republican votes against.)
But that word is out there, and the idea is bigger than it's been, maybe since the Civil War. (The S word being Sedition or Secession, depending on which side are you on.) There may yet be violence around this. But even if this particular typhoon blows itself out, the damage is probably deeper and longer.
Some 405,000 Americans were killed in the four years of that war, the largest death toll of any American war before or since, except the Civil War. America is currently on track to see more than 405,000 Covid deaths in less than one year, by the end of 2020. We're at some 286,000 now, the equivalent in American deaths of 5 Vietnams.
Congress has currently allocated zero new dollars to addressing the Covid crisis or its economic and human effects. The President of the United States is AWOL. So are Republicans in Congress, and many Republican officeholders in the states.
This is America as 2020 ends.
Carlos Fuentes
President John F. Kennedy
His November 1963 Thanksgiving Message. He did not live to see that Thanksgiving. He was shot and killed on November 22, 1963.
Winter is here: the coronavirus winter. The much predicted and feared major surge is well underway, just about everywhere. That includes here in Humboldt County, which has recorded more new cases in the first two weeks of this month than all of last month. We have more than triple the number of active cases than we did just weeks ago. Like most of CA counties, our restrictions have become more stringent again. Elsewhere the impact is much worse, and because virus begets virus it will get worse still, as winter deepens across the country.
But the contours of the covid crisis may well have changed in recent days, with promising announcements of very effective vaccines, which may immunize for up to a few years. The vaccines have not finished final trials nor been approved, and even if all goes well it will be months yet before any vaccine becomes widely available. At best, expectations are that front line health workers could be getting their first immunization shots before the end of 2020 (both vaccines require two shots, about 3 weeks apart.) But the rest of us likely won't get them until spring, perhaps March or April.
Tbere's additional good news Tuesday in the approval of an at-home covid test. But I wouldn't count on that being available before the Biden administration, since the current government seems incapable of organized effort.
Here on the isolated North Coast, most of our covid infections come from people traveling into or out of Humboldt, attending large gatherings indoors there or here, and usually both. Some of them infect others before they know they are infected. In this we are a somewhat simpler microcosm. There is so much virus around now in many places that simply gathering is enough to start a superspreader event. As the covid crisis spirals out of control, more casual contact may be enough for infection.
How bad the winter becomes, and the level of devastation by spring, will partly depend on how many people behave, especially in the upcoming holidays. The way this country faced the covid crisis in its first months was so hopeful, but that's long past now. We'll see how many people can forgo Thanksgiving gatherings. Much will depend on that.
The news this winter--however it is subsumed by gaudier goings-on--will be of health care workers in crisis, hospitals in crisis, and many more covid dead. I don't think anybody needs this blog to keep informed on these matters, though I will check in from time to time on the current state of things. But it's safe to say it is a time of mourning. There isn't much more that I can do. I am in the high risk senior group. Except for one visit to my doctor's office, I have not set foot in a building other than my home since March. I expect to be here until next March. So Thanksgiving will not be much of a question for me.
Others, especially seniors, will also be staying home. It will be as if we are snowed in for the winter, more or less. We will--and I will--be thinking of other things, doing other things, looking to engage with other things, such as the work of our age, which includes reintegrating the past, especially now that the urgency of the election is over and the results will play out (so far, much as I expected), outside our doors.
So as I move on to other things here, I must first affirm that I am not otherwise ignoring the unfolding and largely tragic events around me, especially this deadly phase of the covid crisis. It is going to be the worst so far, though perhaps also the worst period of the covid crisis altogether when it is finally over. I will bear witness, even if I don't have much to say about it, just as there is little I can do about it except to stay out of its way, and avoid adding to the suffering.
Our winter rains have begun, a hopeful if uncertain sign. They complicate our lives--chiefly now our dog walks--but they nourish the spring. The flowers, W.S. Merwin writes, are "forms of water"---
see how they wake without a question
even though the whole world is burning.
So we had a barely literate, incompetent sociopath on display for four years, completely without ethics or empathy, and transparently concerned only with himself. He presided over a non-response to a pandemic that has killed more Americans than any recent war plus acts of terrorism that so inflamed the country that it gave away some of its freedoms, and still stands in airport lines with belts and shoes in hand, or it would if flying didn't infect you. He allowed the economy to sink into untold depths, persecuted brown immigrants and children, all of which is still causing immense suffering and will have lasting effects for at least a generation. He lacerated civic norms, robbed the federal treasury and his own followers, made a mockery of the law, and severely wounded the institutions of governance. He is an obvious con man and grifter, a convicted thief (if only in civil cases so far), a serial liar who makes absurd claims without even bothering to organize credible evidence, and a loudmouth lout. He made the White House the tragic laughingstock of the world for four years. He was the 21st century Richard III. And he got 70 million votes. The party that supported him remains a powerful and destructive force.
So what would it take? We had the most powerful and widespread wild fires in history, more hurricanes than the alphabet has letters, and oppressive and killing weather caused by the climate crisis, plus a global pandemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of Americans and disrupting the economy and society for most people. This wasn’t enough?
We had a coalition of races, of the youngest and oldest voters, of women generally, with the unprecedented support of prominent Republicans of the recent past. This wasn’t enough?
We had a cartoon psychopath as president, who brought ruin, incompetence and corruption so obvious, racist hate so stark and simplistic, and this wasn’t enough? To repudiate him completely, as well as all those moral cowards who followed and enabled him?
Then what would be enough?
Maybe there’s time. Time for some other catastrophe to force recognition of the need to foresee before disaster, or even see a disaster for what it is. Time for demography to reshape the political landscape. Time for a new America. But maybe it’s not just my time to see it that’s running out.
