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.”
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.
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)).
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.
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.
And not a moment too soon…
When the painful conversation you need is too heavy for your closest friends to bear, you need to have that conversation with yourself.
You have no choice but to bear whatever the fucking thing is, so discuss it as calmly as you can with yourself. You may surprise yourself with how gentle you can be with your raw and tender feelings.
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.
The mask mandate on the New York City subway is a bit squishy right now, they kind of recommend you wear a mask, but nobody will really make a fuss. It’s usually about 50% in each car wearing masks. Somehow this lady’s face on the A train the other night seemed to say it all to me, as I huffed into my mask.
Heather Cox Richardson on strongman wannabe Ron DeathSantis:
This destructive storm highlights the distance between reality and the ideology that calls for getting rid of the federal government.
As a newly elected congress member in 2013, now-governor of Florida Ron DeSantis was one of the 67 House Republicans who voted against a $9.7 billion federal flood insurance assistance package for the victims of Hurricane Sandy in New York and New Jersey. Now, with Florida on the ropes, DeSantis asked President Joe Biden for an emergency declaration to free up federal money and federal help even before the storm hit, and said Tuesday, “We all need to work together, regardless of party lines.”
Heather then describes the hugely successful Republican push since Reagan to move wealth increasingly toward the already very wealthy and away from the average American
There is a direct correlation between growing economic inequality and the growing popularity of authoritarianism. Scholars of authoritarian systems note that a population that feels economically, religiously, or culturally dispossessed is an easy target for an authoritarian who promises to bring back a mythological world in which its members were powerful.
But, having lifted strongmen into power, they learn that they were only tools to put in place someone whose decisions are absolute and who is no longer bound by the law.
Got to work hard to get out the vote and make sure this Trump wannabe DeathSantis, overruling the will of Florida voters regarding former felons voting, with his armed “election integrity” goons intimidating voters, still loses reelection as Florida gauleiter [1] by a million votes.
[1] A Gauleiter was a regional leader of the Nazi Party who served as the head of a Gau or Reichsgau. Gauleiter was the third-highest rank in the Nazi political leadership, subordinate only to Reichsleiter and to the Führer himself. The position was effectively abolished with the fall of the Nazi regime on 8 May 1945.
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