What history remembers, and why

The incomparable Heather Cox Richardson, doing what she does best:

On October 8, 1871, dry conditions and strong winds drove deadly fires through the Midwest. The Peshtigo Fire in northeastern Wisconsin and parts of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula burned more than 1.2 million acres and 17 towns, claiming between 1,500 and 2,500 lives. The Great Chicago Fire burned 3.3 square miles of the city, destroying the wooden structures that made up the relatively new town, killed about 300 people, and left more than 100,000 people homeless.

The Peshtigo Fire is the deadliest wildfire in U.S. history.

The Chicago Fire is the one people remember.

The difference is in part because Chicago was a city, of course, easy for newspapers to cover, while the Pestigo fire killed people in lumber camps and small towns. But the Great Chicago Fire also told a political story that fit into an emerging narrative about the danger of organized labor.

It was not clear, coming out of the Civil War, how Republicans would stand with regard to workers. After all, the U.S. government had fought the war to protect the right of every man to enjoy the fruits of his own labor. But immediately after the war, workers had started organizing to demand adjustments to the wartime financial policies that favored men with money. By 1866 the Democratic Party had begun to listen to them, and leaders called for rewriting the terms of the Civil War debt, which had been generous to investors in the days when they were a risky investment. After the war, with the U.S. secure, the calculations changed, and Democrats charged that investors had gotten too good a deal.

Republicans were horrified at the idea of changing the terms of a debt already incurred, and added to the Fourteenth Amendment the clause saying, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

They were also concerned when more than 60,000 people came together in August 1866 to launch the National Labor Union, calling for the government to level the playing field between workers and their employers. They asked for an eight-hour day, an end to monopolies, and cooperation between Black and white workers. In 1867, in what was almost certainly a misquoted comment, stories spread that Republican lawmaker Benjamin Franklin Wade of Ohio had told an audience in Kansas that “property is not equally divided, and a more equal distribution of capital must be wrought out.”

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-8-2022?r=74gv9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

MAGA = Nazi

Friends have long chided me for saying the rabid, lying, authoritarian fact-deniers of the current Republican party are Nazis.  “Everything reminds you of Hitler!  Everyone’s a Nazi to you,” they often say.   Well, not everything.   But every lying sociopath who mobilizes the visceral hatreds of millions for his own self-serving ends, and is indifferent to mass suffering and countless deaths, tends to remind me of old Herr Hitler.  Every faithful follower of a lying sociopath, while also a victim of that leader, is a fucking Nazi.

I know a lot about Nazis, their motivations, techniques and ultimate aims, having studied them for years in class and in my reading.  Many of the top Nazis were very much like our Kevin McCarthy, Mitch, Lyin’ Ted, Little Marco, Perjury Taylor Green, Clarence and Ginni Thomas, people without any real core beliefs about anything but power.  Power is an end to itself to ambitious people and as Robert Caro pointed out in his excellent essay on power (sadly available only through Bezos’s paid service…) you can judge what a person believed the whole time they were climbing to power (Caro says “cloiming” in his  wonderful NY accent) by what they do once they have it.   

Like, in the case of our radicalized, lockstep Republicans, shutting down a government they controlled to pressure the country into submitting to something the vast majority didn’t want.   Like repeating angry, divisive lies disproved over and over again to mobilize the rage of their aggrieved base.  Like pointing a loaded gun at the Capitol and pulling the trigger to prevent the peaceful transition of power.   Like many ugly things they have shown no hesitation whatsoever to do.  Amid the silence of the Republican “moderates”, as afraid to speak the truth as the many in government who are already hounded by literal lynch mobs, who live in fear of stochastic, lone wolf terrorism from people goaded to deadly violence by insane lies spread by our own home grown white nationalist reality TV avatar of totalitarianism and those who march behind him.

Let’s just recap the latest united stand these Nazi motherfuckers continue to take behind anything that will hurt the Democrats chances, based on their actual successes, of keeping the House and gaining an actual, useable majority in the Senate.  As Jared’s pal MBS in Saudi Arabia squeezes the world oil supply to drive up inflation and hurt that communist dupe Biden and his radical socialist party in the approaching election.

Fucking F POTUS has, not surprisingly, continued to lie about the documents he stole from the government when he was dragged kicking and sulking from the White House.   He lied over and over, as he did to Mueller, about cooperating with the government.  Recall that his new AG Bagpiper Barr emphasized on live TV that his boy had cooperated fully with Mueller’s investigation, although Trump did not cooperate with the fake witch hunt at all, in fact, only obstructed it.  As to that obstruction, Mueller wrote that while he could not charge Trumpie while in office, he also could not exonerate him for obstructing his investigation.  It was, according to Eagle Scout Mueller, a matter for Congress, the DOJ and the courts, once POTUS was F POTUS.  About those stolen documents:

We were cooperating fully.  We didn’t lie, we never lied, we never lie.  The DOJ lies, to help Biden. We turned over everything.  They planted shit.  I declassified the shit before they could plant it.  I’m the rubber you’re the glue, scumbag.  We did nothing wrong.  We own those papers, and even if we don’t, we still do.  No backsies.  Finders keepers, losers weepers.  Executive Privilege, Attorney/Client Privilege, White Wealth Delay Tactic Privilege, Fuck your Mother Privilege.  Muhammed Bin Salman, one of the best people, a reformer, a visionary, gave Jared two billion as a small downpayment on what some of my documents are worth to him.   Putin, fine man, also, great customer.  What, am I not supposed to make money?  Jared and Ivanka made over $600,000,000 while public servants on the government payroll.  What am I, chopped liver?  I get to make money, too.   I’ve got mad bills to pay.

Anyone who thinks F POTUS would not sell top secret documents, has not already monetized those valuable papers he stole going on two years ago, probably also believes there are two parties who both do good things and bad things, who are roughly equivalent and equally corrupted by the big money donors.  Leaving the corrupting big money donors aside (and the legal unlimited use of dark money was a GOP initiative and great game-changing achievement that gave us MAGA), one party is trying its best to serve the needs of the vast majority of Americans.  The other is, I’m sad to say, the Nazi party, its only platform regaining unchallengeable power, behind an infallible, though often irrational, leader.  It is that stark, boys and girls.

The argument against the increasingly clear MAGA = Nazi argument:  Trump built not one single death camp!  Only one person that we know of was executed by federal agents who shot him on sight and claimed they were there to arrest him and that he resisted (that one unarmed antifa guy outside of Portland)!   Trump and Barr only executed one severely mentally ill prisoner on federal death row, and the bitch deserved it, no matter how extensive her daily cocktail of psychoactive drugs!  His government passed no law directly against the fucking so-called minorities, unless you consider the many new, restrictive voting laws in states where MAGA controls the legislatures.  There is no plan to invalidate future elections, unless you consider all the purity-tested MAGA election deniers who are campaigning on the promise to invalidate, as fraudulent, any election won by a non MAGA candidate.  Unless you consider the 6-3 MAGA Supreme Court poised to rule on a carefully constructed case designed to give a fig leaf of “originalism” to the pulled-out-of-somebody’s-ass “theory” of the Independent State Legislature, the most powerful sovereign bodies in America, whose actions are unreviewable by any court anywhere once SCOTUS bangs its 6-3 gavel.

Hitler had more time to make his mark on history.  It took him over a year in power before The Night of the Long Knives when he executed untrusted allies and hated enemies all over Germany.  It took five years before Kristalnacht, the Nazis’ first organized nationwide pogrom against Jews.  It was only after that he began secretly gassing “useless eaters” whose “lives were unworthy of life” in mental hospitals.  Six, almost seven years before he began the war of national self-defense the Jews forced him to wage to rescue the Aryans from destruction.   He hired violent criminals to oversee his war against partisans and Jews in countries he overran, and they did atrocious things, but it was eight long years before he started the mechanized mass murder machine in earnest and initiated that crowning Nazi achievement — historically efficient genocide.

So, F POTUS simply has not had time, in just one term, to make this country into Charles Koch’s wet dream (Koch’s dad built the oil refinery that produced the high octane fuel for the Nazi luftwaffe).   A country where the super rich can do whatever they want, in the name of liberty and freedom from majoritarian tyranny and government coercion, while everyone else is forced to do whatever they can to stay alive, subject to the whims of the best among us, guys like Koch, Murdoch, Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Gates, et al.   Not all Nazis, perhaps, but the next best thing — the biggest beneficiaries of a Nazi social structure.  In that society, if you are not one of the condemned classes, you go along to get along, privileges protected as long as you play ball, take your windfall profits and stay quiet on “social issues”.  It’s been that way since the first tough guy imposed his will on a tribe of half apes thousands of years ago.  It was that way during all twelve years of the Thousand Year Reich.

Vote like your democracy depends on it, because it does.   I’m writing postcards to “swing voters” in Pennsylvania.  Contact tinicumtogether@gmail.com to get some postcards and a succinct script to write on ’em.  Take action, no matter how small it may seem, elections can turn on very few votes in a given precinct or district.   Any good history of the Nazi era will convince you that we are way, way too close to it happening here to fall into enervated depression about it.  Take action, friends.   Otherwise, see you at one of the MAGA camps, coming soon to an anarchist jurisdiction near you, if the Nazis take over.

Good line, Biden

Heather Cox Richardson ended today’s Letter from an American with this snappy retort from far left radical socialist Joe Biden:

Today Biden named the Republicans who voted against the infrastructure law and then asked for money. Biden said, “I was surprised to see so many socialists in the Republican caucus.”

Pathos

The last surviving friendship from my childhood, dating back to when we were best friends at eight, is no more.   Both old friends are still alive, but one is too, what used to be called neurotic, to remain friends with the other.  There were specific issues that became unbearable to me, a series of unsuccessful attempts over the course of a few years to talk them through, and hurt, mutual silence for several years after that.   The most terrible death is the stubborn death in life of a once close relationship while both parties and their loved ones are alive for the shimmering moment we are given to breathe here.

Thinking about this estrangement, and my old friend’s basic decency and true inability to see his own role in angry conflict (he fancies himself so gentle, reasonable, meek) I decided to call and break the ice.  I sent him a text.   He wrote back that he was delighted to hear from me and it was only a few days before he was able to clear a 45 minute block on his busy schedule for us to talk.

During our talk I told him of a friend’s psychiatrist’s indisputable insight that our lives take place in a vast school where we either learn or don’t move out of sometimes crippling childhood pain.   Here are a few of his rules:

12. A lesson is repeated until it is learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can then go on to the next lesson.

13. People always do the best they can. If they are doing poorly, it is because they have not learned the lessons that will enable them to do better.


14. If you forget what you have learned, a refresher course will be presented to you.   You will take it.

15. Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

One lesson I learned, I said, is that unless a friendship ends in violent, damaging attacks, it can probably be resumed.   My friendship with this guy ended in more or less mutual mildness.  Though we were both hurt and angry at each other, neither of us mauled the other at the end.  This, I told my old friend, was an encouraging sign going forward.  He agreed, told me he had to go, but that next time he’d tell me the revelations he’d had since last we talked.  I told him I looked forward to it.

We spoke once again, briefly, a month or so later.  He had no idea what revelations he could have been talking about, but it was great to be talking to each other again.  Last I heard from him.  

He has taken spiritual refuge with the Chabad community where the rabbi is wise and compassionate.   He prays every morning and studies the holy books.  I guess it didn’t occur to him that we should speak during the ten days of making amends when Jews are supposed to try to heal all past hurts and move forward in a better way.   True, I could have called him, but the idea of how hard it would have been to schedule must have made me put it off, especially while I am trying to save another old friendship that is not doing very well on its respirator.

Amicus brief from The Onion — America’s finest news source

A guy posted a harshly satirical, arguably not very funny, send up of his local police force on Facebook, a post he later took down.   He was arrested and locked up, later released, the charges dropped.  He sued the police department in federal court for retaliatory arrest in violation of his First Amendment right to say pretty much anything he fucking chooses.  Key to his suit is that parody, even if it is crap, even if it is disgusting, fly-covered crap with no redeeming value as humor, has long been protected by the Supreme Court.  The amateur parodist lost and appealed. 

The appellate court ruled, with the arrogance of those defending the absolute prerogatives of law enforcement no matter what (except when they are libtard cucks protecting an illegitimate Congress)  “There’s no recognized right to be free from a retaliatory arrest that is supported by probable cause.” The appeal is now under review as a possible Supreme Court case.  The Onion weighed in with probably the best amicus brief ever written.

The entire brief, which begins with The Onion’s origin story as a humble paper in 1756 growing to the world’s most influential website with 4.3 trillion daily visitors and 350,000 employees, is on the Supreme Court website.  It is brilliant, funny, cutting, mocking and so sensible it will bring tears to your eyes for several reasons.  It is the most readable and entertaining legal filling you will ever encounter.   https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/20221003125252896_35295545_1-22.10.03%20-%20Novak-Parma%20-%20Onion%20Amicus%20Brief.pdf

Here are a few of their more serious points.

Parodists can take apart an authoritarian’s cult of personality, point out the rhetorical tricks that politicians use to mislead their constituents, and even undercut a government institution’s real-world attempts at propaganda. Farah, 736 F.3d at 536 (noting that the point of parody is to “censure the vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings of an individual or society”) (cleaned up). . .

. . . see also Golb v. Att’y Gen. of N.Y., 870 F.3d 89, 102 (2d Cir. 2017) (“[A] parody enjoys First Amendment protection notwithstanding that not everybody will get the joke.”). 

And the “reasonable reader” is “ ‘no dullard. He or she does not represent the lowest common denominator, but reasonable intelligence and learning. He or she can tell the difference between satire and sincerity.’ ” New Times, Inc. v. Isaacks, 146 S.W.3d 144, 157 (Tex. 2004) (quoting Patrick v. Sup. Ct., 27 Cal. Rptr. 2d 883, 887 (Ct. App. 1994)). “Nor is the reasonable person some totally humorless drudge who cannot perceive the presence of subtle invective.” Patrick, 27 Cal. Rptr. 2d at 887. Instead, the reasonable reader’s perspective “is more informed by an assessment of her well-considered view than by her immediate yet transitory reaction,” particularly “in light of the special characteristics of satire,” which leverage that transitory reaction for rhetorical effect. Farah, 736 F.3d at 536. 

The clincher, for me, subtle and sweet, is citing, toward the end, the powerful appellate court judge, Alex Kozinski, who was Boof Kavanaugh’s rabbi, steered him to his Supreme Court clerkship and maintained a listserve of pornographic jokes for his clerks and former clerks that he (and Boof) denied the existence of.  Kozinski later resigned from the federal bench for unrelated reasons (accusations from many women of gross sexual harassment, unwanted touching and forcible kissing).

“ ‘[T]he last thing we need, the last thing the First Amendment will tolerate, is a law that lets public figures keep people from mocking them.’ ” Cardtoons, L.C. v. Major League Baseball Players Ass’n, 95 F.3d 959, 972–73 (10th Cir. 1996) (quoting White v. Samsung Elecs. Am., Inc., 989 F.2d 1512, 1519 (9th Cir. 1993) (Kozinski, J., dissenting)). 

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/federal-judge-alex-kozinski-steps-down-after-accusations-of-sexual-misconduct

Love without right action

Love without right action is as useless as an expensive friendship card with a handwritten note expressing how important your love is.

Right action reassures those we love of our intentions. We take immediate steps when we see they’re hurt, to comfort them, to protect them.

Love that can’t listen patiently but jumps in to interrupt and object, defensive, deflecting, anticipating hurt, is not the kind of love that can heal anybody’s hurt.

You can declare your love with a torrent of heartfelt words, and with complete sincerity, but only love you demonstrate by compassionate action is worth more than an expensive Hallmark card and an impressively pricey token made of gold.

Note to a hurt friend who will not talk

Two old friends come to a painful impasse, each blaming the other for causing the hurt and extending their deepening  estrangement.  Everything that happens between them afterwards seems to confirm their view that the other person is a hurtful asshole, probably hurtful beyond redemption.   

This pain between them, and the corrosive blame they place on each other, will resolve either into eternal silence, that resolute death during life, or they can learn things they don’t really know how to do regarding friendship:  how to make amends, how to forgive, how to heal after an angry, traumatizing conflict.   

These lessons must be learned by both of them before there is any hope of fixing their mortally wounded friendship.  Silence, whatever comfort one may take in sheltering in it, may not be the best way to learn these difficult arts.

The world at war

We sometimes find ourselves in the middle of wars we don’t understand.  We can be under siege long before we even find out about the attempt to starve us into surrender.  Sometimes surrender is not enough, only by offering our lives will the blood debt be settled, if the enemy is implacable enough.  This has been going on for thousands of years, among Wise Apes, homo sapiens. 

At one time, within tribes, there were wise elders you could go to when you found yourself under attack by someone intent on destroying your good name and erasing you from society.  These elders would listen carefully, ask questions, pose other questions and broker peace, except when peace was impossible, in which case they’d render a judgment.   If you lyingly assassinated a fellow tribe member’s reputation you would be censured by the tribe, or sometimes sent packing.

Today we have a different system.  Nowadays we must rely on self-help.  Sometimes, we are told, we just have to suck it up if we find ourselves on the wrong end of somebody’s undying need to prevail, no matter what.   We either pretend everything is fine, or so much the worse for us if we still have the childish need to remain in pain, just because we were treated roughly, unfairly and told to suck it up and stop being a fucking baby.

Mel Brooks’s timeless truth about empathy comes to mind, when I think about others on the outskirts of the war, quietly taking the side of the righteous aggressor by taking no side:   Tragedy is when I break my fingernail.  Comedy is when you fall into a manhole and die.