Category: Politics

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Happy Presidents’ Day, President Carter

Presidential photo, Jimmy Carter. Shows Jimmy Carter in the 1970s.

Presidential photo, Jimmy Carter. Shows Jimmy Carter in the 1970s.I was sad to learn over the weekend that former president Jimmy Carter has entered hospice care. But I’m not surprised that President Carter is facing the end of his life the same way he’s behaved his entire life – with dignity and grace.

Carter was the first person I voted for for president, with an asterisk. The asterisk being that I was in middle school and I voted for Carter in a mock election. It’d be a few more cycles before I was actually old enough to cast an official ballot, which I did, with the same disappointing results.

He lost the mock election by about the same margin that he lost the actual election. Kids took cues from their parents about who to vote for, and parroted political ads and talking points when we discussed it in class. It was an early lesson for me in just how pervasive and toxic political ads and such could be.

He took office at a very difficult time. Post-Watergate, post-Vietnam, gas crisis, hostage crisis… disco… he was blamed or took the brunt of a lot of issues he had no hand in creating.

I have only vague memories of the headlines during his term, and Doonesbury’s commentary on his presidency as it happened. But I know my father was pro-Carter and seemed to approve of the job he was doing. Mostly. My dad was not one to give a pass to a politician just because he voted for them. I do know he voted for Carter twice, and wasn’t pleased that Reagan won.

But, I can say that Carter has been a model ex-president and seems to have dedicated his post-presidency life to helping people. He seems to embody the Christian values he champions, and that deserves respect. He seems like a kind, humble, decent person. Those are in short supply. He certainly stands in stark contrast to others who’ve held the office since.

Entering hospice care, publicly, is just one more way that President Carter is leading by example. I’m saddened by its necessity, but I deeply respect his decision to choose to end medical intervention to prolong life and instead receive hospice care to face end of life with dignity. I hope that will spark some conversations and planning for others, because it’s a tough road to navigate in any event but doubly so if you put off those discussions until they’re necessary.

I hope that his remaining days are pain-free and peaceful, and to see more like him in the White House before I reach the end of mine. Godspeed, President Carter.

(I couldn’t resist the cheap shot at disco, because it was a very 80s thing to do. In retrospect, I actually quite like a lot of disco music and it’s just one of many things I’d school younger me about if I had the chance to go back in time and have a conversation with him. Not the top of the list, but it’d be on the list.)

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The scorpion strikes: Still speaker-less after 11 votes

AI-generated image that depicts a skull in front of a quasi-capitol building.

Clearly nobody taught Kevin McCarthy and the rest of the establishment GOP the lesson of the frog and the scorpion.

It would be funny if it was a plot on a modern West Wing, but it just seems like a harbinger of more problems to come. After 11 tries, the U.S. House of Representatives has failed to appoint a speaker, due to in-fighting and extortion from the most extreme wing of an already extreme party.

A bloc of Republicans is blocking Kevin McCarthy from taking the gavel and moving on with the business of the House, because… well, they just seem to want to watch him twist in the wind and continue demanding concessions.

In a better world, the “mainstream” Republicans would reach a deal with Democrats and freeze this group completely out of power. No committee seats, no voice in legislation – sideline them for two years and primary them out.

We do not, it has to be said, occupy a better world. It’s lightly amusing watching McCarthy twist in the wind, and I hope voters remember this dysfunction in two years’ time when they have a chance to set the balance of power again.

If the GOP as a whole had any interest in power for anything other than power’s sake, they’d use this opportunity to reset and move away from the clown car caucus and try to start putting us back on a path to normal. It might mean sacrificing power for a few years without the extremists, but in the long-run they’re giving up power to the extremists anyway. If that’s not painfully obvious to McCarthy and the remainder of the party, they’ll have more opportunities to figure it out as time goes on.

Any scenario where this group walks out of holding the House hostage for the better part of a week (so far) with more they started is just inviting further disruption down the road. It’d be better for the GOP to hand the speaker’s gavel to the Dems than be beholden to Gaetz and company, because they absolutely will sting the rest of the GOP again and again and again to get what they want or just to gum up the works because it’s fun.

Pretending that they have any good intentions for running the government is dangerous. This is a golden opportunity to cut off their oxygen supply and reset, if only the GOP would take it.

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“Authenticity” is a trap

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY

The idea of “authenticity” and “selling out” when applied to artists, musicians, and other folks is largely bullshit. Worse, it’s a trap.

Let me back up a sec. The other day I was on the Twitters and noticed an exchange about how some artist wasn’t “authentic” anymore because they licensed their music for a commercial of some sort.

Now, I get it. Music is highly personal. We (potentially) attach all kinds of emotions to a piece of music. That spills over to emotional attachments to the artists themselves. A lot of people want to think that the art they are highly attached to is “pure” rather than a crass cash-grab.

Grab that cash (as ethically as possible…)

I wish we lived in a society where musicians, artists, open source contributors could do their thing without concern about money. We don’t. Since that’s the case, I’m emphatically in favor of people taking opportunities to convert their work to income. You know what happens when artists don’t make money from their art? It often inhibits their ability to make more art.

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEYIf a band isn’t making money, it’s hard to record and release more music. It’s hard to support open source development without finding a way to pay the developers and support the infrastructure, etc. As crappy as it is, just about everything costs money. (This includes people’s time. If a person’s art or contributions don’t bring in money, they have to find another way to support themselves. That’s time they can’t spend doing art or contributing.)

You might quibble with specific ways that people take cash for their work. Maybe licensing music to or working for Evil Corp is a line too far.

But the idea that anybody has to be “authentic” and “pure” is right there with the idea that people have to suffer for their art. And that’s just garbage.

We shouldn’t want people to suffer. We shouldn’t hold people to standards of scraping for a living in order to consider them “authentic.” I’m probably not going to buy an album full of songs about “Jeeves, get my my slippers” and “I got the blues, my private jet is in the shop” but I really want everybody to have financial stability. As boring and non-punk as that may sound.

It’s a trap!

Trying to achieve “authenticity” by rejecting licensing deals or whatever? It’s a trap. You don’t win any real benefits by appeasing the authenticity police, you only lose.

My music library is full of bands and artists that didn’t put out as much music as they could have, because of problems with money. Maybe it was a label messing them around because they didn’t sell enough copies. Because money, they didn’t have full control of their catalog. Maybe they were independent but couldn’t afford studio time. Maybe money problems impacted their life in other ways that futzed up their ability to record and release music.

Whatever. If a band can solve some of that by letting their music be used in a car commercial or vacation destination or deodorant, I don’t really care. If an author can write more because they sold the rights to a book that gets turned into a crappy movie, I don’t care. I still have the book. I still have the albums. And they’re getting to eat.

The Monkees were a cash-grab, studio creation. And, you know what? “Last Train to Clarksville” is still an amazing song. The list of musicians and artists who were “authentic” and ended up struggling and dying poor is too long to even get into.

I’m not saying fat stacks of cash should be the number one goal. But authenticity – which really translates to “be broke and not too popular” – is a bogus yardstick.

If I hear one of my favorite artists or bands is “selling out” by licensing their work for commercials or something, I’m just going to smile and say “good for them!”

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Unisex bathrooms aren’t the answer

One of the popular responses to the outcry over HB2 has been to suggest that unisex or single bathrooms are the “answer” or a “middle road” (or “common sense”) to avoid conflict over transgender folks using the bathroom that best fits their gender identity. Really, it’s a dodge that doesn’t solve anything socially, and is logistically and fiscally unrealistic.

First, I would love it if all public spaces had private, single-person bathrooms. Not because I’m in any way uncomfortable with transgender folks — but because I’ve never really loved public bathrooms to begin with. Who wouldn’t prefer to be alone when using the bathroom? (And don’t even get me started on urinals…) 

But that’s not the reality we have today. Retrofitting the facilities in businesses, schools, and other public spaces would be extremely expensive. Folks who compare ADA compliance to providing bathrooms for transgender folks are ignoring the fact that ADA compliance was about physically allowing people to use facilities, not about anyone’s “discomfort” over sharing a bathroom with someone who needs additional assistance.

Your “discomfort” is your problem

More importantly, giving in to the pressure to segregate transgender folks or force them to use facilities that are not suited to their gender identity holds us back from full acceptance of transgender people.

All of the “think of the children” and “we’ve got to protect our women” arguments are bunk. As many other folks have pointed out, women are far more at risk from heterosexual males that present and act as men.

The drummed-up scenario of sexual predators dressing up as women to stalk women in restrooms rings false for several reasons:

  • Transgender women are basically being labeled sexual predators without any supporting evidence — and, in fact, plenty of supporting evidence to suggest that transgender women are more at risk of being assaulted if forced to use a men’s room.
  • Sexual predators aren’t going to be stopped by a law that says they have to use the “right” bathroom any more than they’re currently being stopped by all of the existing laws against sexual assault now.
  • As has already happened, people trying to guess a person’s sex has led to false positives — that is, identifying someone born female as a transgender woman and attempting to have her arrested for using the “wrong bathroom.”
  • If everyone in the bathroom is behaving appropriately, there should be no issue. If they are not, then *that* is the issue, and the sex/gender of the person doesn’t really figure into it.

If you are still “uncomfortable” sharing a bathroom with someone who is transgender and using the facilities appropriate to their gender identity, then you are the one with a problem. That should not impact their life at all.

This is no different than people who wanted separate facilities for black folks, and in the long run I’m confident that transgender folks’ rights will prevail. Why is it so urgent, then, that we overturn HB2 and move forward on this now?

Why this needs to happen now

Some folks want to slow this down, and give people time to adjust to the idea of equal rights and acceptance for transgender people. Social change has, historically, been a slow process. Why can’t we just slow down a bit and assume that transgender acceptance will just happen just like other equal rights movements?

Because we’re talking about people’s lives, and asking for transgender folks to bear the brunt while some members of society get their heads straight is profoundly unfair and wrong.

Because society is already particularly hard on transgender people. Their suicide rate is much higher than average. They are sexually assaulted at a higher rate than anyone else. It’s harder for transgender folks to find jobs, and generally just to be accepted for who they are.

Put yourself in the shoes of a transgender man or woman, being told that they have to use the wrong facilities because other people are “uncomfortable” with their presence. Worse, imagine hearing the people who try to paint transgender people as sexual predators — and then to hear them being taken seriously!

Repealing HB2 won’t fix this overnight, but letting it stand is just wrong.

We should be strongly against HB2 and other laws that enable or cause discriminatory situations against transgender people. Segregating bathrooms just perpetuates the idea that a transgendered man or woman is less than anyone else. That it’s OK to be “uncomfortable” with another human being who has done nothing wrong but express the identity that they are comfortable with. It isn’t OK, and we shouldn’t be making laws that support it or defend ignorance.

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[Review] Contempt of Court: The Turn-of-the-Century Lynching that Launched a Hundred Years of Federalism

Book Cover: Contempt of Court

Book Cover: Contempt of CourtMore than 100 years ago in Chattanooga, Tennessee, a black man named Ed Johnson was dragged from his jail cell and taken to the Walnut Street Bridge and lynched. That Johnson was almost certainly innocent, and that he was already condemned to die by hanging, mattered not at all to the mob that wanted to see “justice” done swiftly, and resented the federal government’s intrusion into the state of Tennessee’s justice system.

Contempt of Court is a detailed account of the trial of Ed Johnson, the futile attempts at appealing to state and federal courts to save his life, and the subsequent decision that opened the door to federal oversight of state courts.

It would probably surprise many people today to learn that it was generally not believed that the Bill of Rights applied to the states. That is, it was not assumed that states had to abide by the Bill of Rights — courts held that the rights against unreasonable search and seizure, the rights against self-incrimination, etc., were protections against the federal government only. Thus, a man like Ed Johnson tried in state court had no protections or guarantees of a fair trial granted by the federal government.

Written by Mark Curriden and Leroy Phillips, Jr., Contempt of Court is an extremely well-written and researched account from the impact on the individuals involved in the trial and lynching, to the impact of the legal decisions on the rest of the country.

It is a sad fact that Johnson’s lynching was not unusual, excepting the resulting trial held by the United States Supreme Court that found the town sheriff and several members of the mob guilty of contempt of court. Curriden and Phillips take care to put Johnson’s case in context, lest the reader think that Johnson’s case received special attention because it was so horrific.

It was against the odds that Johnson’s appeal would be heard by the Supreme Court, and the contempt charges that the court levied against the sheriff and members of the mob were unique. The Supreme Court had not held a trial of the sort before, nor since.

The authors have done a masterful job of telling the story and making it engaging, without shying away from explaining the legal issues to the layperson. It paints a bleak picture of life in the 1900s south, and what it meant to a black person accused of a crime against a white person – or to be a white person who committed the sin of trying to defend a black man accused of a crime.

I give Contempt of Court very high marks on all counts. Its writing is solid and compelling. The book delivers on the promise of its title and topic, and it’s really something that anyone living in the U.S. should read.

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[Review] The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood

Cover image of The Corner by David Simon, Ed Burns

A few years ago, I came late to The Wire, but caught up quickly. Usually I’m not one to buy the hype for television series, but I had to admit that The Wire was every bit as powerful, funny, and eye-opening as its fans claimed. It’s a show that you tell friends “you need to watch this” rather than “you’ll really enjoy it,” because they really do need to watch it.

The Wire is necessary because it actually provides a glimpse into the reality of ground zero in the War on Drugs – a topic that any person (at least in the U.S.) should be well-educated on, but probably is not. And if The Wire is required watching, the book that preceded and inspired it should be required reading. It should be required reading, starting in jr. high if not sooner.

The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, by David Simon and Edward Burns, is as gripping and compelling as any work of fiction I’ve ever read. But it has the virtue of being a true story, and true journalism. Simon and Burns spent months getting to know the subjects in the book, then a solid year following their lives on the corner. Interviews, observation, and follow-ups after the year was over.

The Corner gives a first-hand look at what life is like for those living in the middle of one of the worst neighborhoods in the United States. It provides a look at what growing up in poverty is really like, and why it’s not just as simple as “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.” It might surprise people to learn that the corner that Simon and Burns chose is near the birthplace of H.L. Mencken, the sage of Baltimore. The world of Mencken and the world of teen drug slingers and desperate dope fiends are separated only by a few decades and less than a mile.

And The Corner tells the tale from the beginning. Simon and Burns cover the scope of Baltimore’s downfall, from the early 1900s when the McCullough family first settled into Baltimore, through four generations of McCulloughs. From stand-up citizen and family man, to his fallen son who essentially abandons his son to pursue his addiction, to a teen who plays at slinging drugs and fathers his own son while still too young to drive. This is how fast our cities decay.

You’ll find some hope, but not much, at the end of the book. The book is set in 1994, and published in 1997. More than a decade and a half later, we know how the story goes for many of the people in the book.

As a work of journalism, I’m simply in awe. We need so much more of this. I can’t say that I “loved” the book in the same way I enjoy a good book of fiction or entertaining non-fiction. After 500+ pages, I was ready to leave this world behind and only regretted that there isn’t more of Simon’s work out there to take on next. (Simon has only two books to his name, this and Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets.)  This book is a five out of five stars, perhaps six. It should certainly be required reading for anyone who aspires to have an opinion about the war on drugs or welfare policy in the United States.

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Thoughts on jury duty

Living in the city of St. Louis, the odds are that you’re going to be called for jury duty pretty frequently. From most of the folks I’ve talked to, it’s about every two years, if not more often.

I moved back to Missouri in June of 2010, and got my first summons for jury duty for July or August of 2012, so… that sounds about right. Because of work, I had to postpone jury duty, and wound up serving this past week. Here’s how it went. Trigger Warning I was assigned to a jury for a sexual assault case, so if discussion of the circumstances of a sexual assault are likely to upset you, you’ll want to skip this post. Continue reading “Thoughts on jury duty”