The Sorensen Monologues
Junk Jargon
Obviously we can’t ignore the creep of fascist ideology, as it leads to real people being threatened and harmed. But we can become aware of these narratives and contextualize them, and understand how they are part of a hateful, abnormal agenda rather than just another point of view. I recently came across a good post on Kottke.org which quoted a Heather Cox Richardson essay on a U.S. Army pamphlet from 1943 on fighting fascism in America.
It is “vitally important” to learn to spot native fascists, the government said, “even though they adopt names and slogans with popular appeal, drape themselves with the American flag, and attempt to carry out their program in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy.”
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Corporate Suffrage
This eyebrow-raising story came to my attention via Common Cause, which has been fighting a bill that would allow LLCs and other corporate entities that own property in Seaford, Delaware to vote in that city’s municipal elections even if the business owners are non-residents. Adding to the extremely problematic nature of this proposal is the fact that only 300-600 voters typically participate in local elections, and this bill would make 200 LLCs and other “artificial entities” eligible, more than enough to affect the outcome. I consider this a sign of the times, part of the larger juggernaut of corporate interests steamrolling actual human beings.
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Negotiating to Nowhere
Trump demolished the budget with tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, and R’s raised the ceiling three times without a peep. And yet, after saying they wouldn’t negotiate over the debt ceiling, it appears the Dems are very much negotiating. Biden has been insisting that these are parallel budget negotiations, but they are, as Joan McCarter of Daily Kos notes, actually about the debt limit. Could this be merely a strategy to appear bipartisan before the Dems unilaterally invoke the 14th Amendment, as many legal scholars argue they are Constitutionally authorized to do? Perhaps. But given Obama’s precedent of caving to extortion in 2011 and the Dems’ long history of squishiness on all matters, I’m not holding my breath.
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Return of the Selective ‘Free Speech’ Warrior
There’s a certain cadre of pundits who get a lot of mileage out of posing as open-minded defenders of ideas and debate, but in reality they are stuck in the right-wing narrative that the threat is from the left rather than overwhelmingly from the right. It should now be obvious to anyone with half a cortex that the right’s screeching about “wokeness” and free speech is disingenuous, part of a larger strategy to impose their own radical ideology on America and undo all social progress of the 20th century. Creating a moral panic about public schools and universities is all part of the plan. Somehow these useful idiots (as depicted by the above cartoon character) tend to overlook the fact that today’s GOP is openly looking to the illiberal dictatorship of Hungary as a model. Orban has seized control of that country’s universities and cultural institutions to promote what he calls “Christian” values and “national identity.”
For more on the subject, I highly recommend this excellent essay from Dave Karpf.
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Sun’s Out, Guns Out
It seems we have crossed some sort of threshold — a critical mass of gun ownership, paranoia, and anger that is spilling over into ordinary life at every turn. For all the rhetoric around the Second Amendment invoking “liberty,” guns are limiting our freedom. So many situations now involve a small but plausible risk that someone could lose their temper and start firing at you.
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The Perks of Child Labor
According to this well-reported piece in the Washington Post, a right-wing think tank based in Florida called the Foundation for Government Accountability has been pushing to dismantle regulations that protect kids from working long hours and dangerous jobs. The FGA is funded by some of the biggest Republican donors.
Via Daily Kos, the bill that just passed the Iowa Senate is nothing short of appalling:
The new would-be law “allows 14-year-olds to work six-hour night shifts, allows 15-year-olds to work in plants on assembly lines moving items up to 50 pounds, and allows 16 and 17-year-olds to serve alcohol,” reported Iowa’s Who13 …
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The Unimaginable Lives of Earlier Generations
I know the postwar years weren’t easy for everybody, but lower housing and education costs seemed to create more opportunities to build a stable middle-class life, or at least pursue artistic dreams on a lean budget. I don’t envy kids starting out today.
A few weeks ago I saw a toot on Mastodon linking to an article about the life of Philip Glass, marveling at how he supported himself working various jobs in NYC while he established his music career, and noting how difficult that would be in today’s Manhattan. Hence the second panel of the cartoon, although that character is not supposed to be anyone in particular.
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Tips for Dems to Avoid Expulsion
Justin Jones was fortunately reinstated by the Nashville Metro council as I was drawing this cartoon. It looks like Justin Pearson will also be reinstated this week. Their expulsion from the Tennessee legislature was a radically antidemocratic move from Republicans, yet you might not know it given some headlines that appeared last week. According to this excellent TPM article by Kate Riga, the AP went with the laughably anodyne “Amid polarization, minority party lawmakers face penalties.”
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Dirty Fuel, Clean Conscience
A few recent stories got me thinking about the oil industry this week, leading me to actually wonder how fossil fuel CEOs can stand to live with themselves given that the world is burning up in front of their faces, much as their own scientists predicted decades ago. Perhaps the most notable news was the “final warning” from climate scientists in the IPCC report that said we are on track to use up our carbon budget by 2030.
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You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby!
I’ve been thinking for a while about how certain tech moguls who believe they’re on the cutting edge of human “progress” have absolutely retrograde ideas when it comes to gender (and race, for that matter). One aspect of this phenomenon is the “pronatalist” movement, embraced by billionaires and other wealthy weirdos who are trying to have as many babies as possible in an effort to repopulate the human race with their superior genes. Politicians like JD Vance — backed by Thiel — have openly called for a return to extremely traditional gender roles. Meanwhile, the tradwife movement is booming on TikTok.
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Big Grocer is Watching
I recently read an article about Kroger’s lucrative data business, which noted that the company had collected “35+ petabytes of first-party customer data.” This is 66 percent larger than the Library of Congress’s entire digital collection. The data is sold to third-party brands and advertisers seeking highly detailed information on customer behavior. Kroger has admitted that facial recognition cameras are also used in “select locations.” Albertsons has also been known to use facial recognition technology, along with many other major retailers. What they are doing with this biometric information remains unclear. We do know that using them for security can lead to false positives exacerbated by built-in biases (an NYU student famously sued Apple a few years ago for wrongly identifying him as a thief).
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Iraq War Memories
March of 2003 was a terrible time to be politically aware in the US. To anyone paying close attention to the Bush administration and the neocons’ agenda (spelled out by the Project for the New American Century), it was obvious from the beginning that the invasion of Iraq was a war of choice that had nothing to do with 9/11. It was also obvious that the Bush-Cheney-Rove White House was not exactly trustworthy, and should not have been given the benefit of the doubt. But in those days, much of American media fell into lockstep behind them, not wanting to be seen as unpatriotic in a time of WAR!
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