Scar tissue is the map of a journey. Fresh wounds make the opening of a new one.
We sure are opening a lot of new journeys.
(Photo by Alexander Van Steenberge on Unsplash)
Category: Dark Times
Sunday Morning Reading
Big stuff is happening.
Something big is happening. Everywhere all at once. At a pace that seems like it’s uncontrollable. We can either try to keep up, or tune out. Those are the options. I choose to try and keep up, try and stay aware. Mostly just try. That’s one of the reason this Sunday Morning Reading column exists. To share some of the writing about some of things that I think keep me aware. Hope you agree.
I took the first sentence of the above paragraph from the excellent post from Matt Shumer. Yes, it’s called Something Big Is Happening. Because there are so many big things happening. As a spoiler, Matt’s post addresses Artificial Intelligence. Pay attention.
“Art begins when the words stop.” That’s a quote from the excellent Every Brushstroke Is A Philosophy In Motion by Natasha MH. It’s the text of a Valentine’s Day speech of hers. Read these first two pieces back to back. Connect the dots. Pay attention.
A Great Social Rewilding Is Coming. So says, David Todd McCarty. So say I as well.
Wonderful actor Bob Odenkirk tells us what his agenda will be in I Will Be Your Next President. He nails the moment. If he ran I’m sure he’d get votes. Probably mine. Can’t be much worse than what we’ve recently seen.
Mike Elgan writes Why There’s No ‘Screenless’ Revolution. I happen to agree that there won’t be one. Anyone still watching 3D TV?
Curtis McHale takes on Binary Bias, Cancel Culture, and the Death of Nuance. Sadly, it wasn’t a quick or a painless death.
There’s no question that journalism is in as big a mess as most everything else. David Brooks Sucks. This Is Who Should Replace Him by John Warner lays out the case for the first sentence. But read it for the links to those who he thinks should replace him.
The surveillance state is going to the dogs thanks to a Super Bowl ad. Mathew Ingram tells us about Building the Panopticon: The Doorbell Camera Version.
It’s been quite a cold winter, though it’s warming up a bit in these midwestern parts, but apparently this cold weather across most of the U.S. led to increased demand for firewood and just about anything that will burn. Neil Vigdor writes about it Shivering Americans Snap Up Firewood As Winter Grinds On.
And since this is Valentine’s Day weekend, I’ll close the circle with Catherynne M. Valente’s piece, On Valentine’s Day. There are indeed worse things to feast over.
(Photo by Egor Vikhrev on Unsplash)
f you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.
Sunday Morning Reading
Football, opera, dying newspapers and politics are on the menu
Somehow amidst all we’re living through in the dual state of America it’s the Sunday of the Super Bowl. A dual state that will feature dueling half time spectacles. Apparently we have nothing better to fight over. Go figure. Even so, there’s Sunday Morning Reading to share on a variety of topics amidst it all. I’m avoiding links on Artificial Intelligence this Sunday, because I shared a few in a post on that topic earlier. If you’re interested you can find that here. So, onward.
Kicking off, Jason Snell penned a post on Apple’s Long History With The Super Bowl. Call me old fashioned but when a sports contest becomes as much about the commercials and half-time shows, I don’t think anybody wins regardless of how many points anyone scores.
If football or sports aren’t your cup of tea, perhaps the arts are. Ronald Blum tells us about ‘Monster’s Paradise,’ Lampooning US President Donald Trump, Has World Premiere At Hamburg Opera. It’s inspired by Alfred Jarry’s play “Ubu Roi.” I imagine it will be quite some time, if ever, we see this on an American opera stage. Although I can dream of seeing it at the Kennedy Center, restored from Trump’s desecrations long after he’s gone. (This week’s image above is a publicity still from the Hamburg State Opera.)
Media attention on ICE atrocities may be fading at the moment, but ProPublica continues to do excellent investigative work on the subject even after the headlines fade. Check out The Real Story Behind The Midnight Immigration Raid On A Chicago Apartment Building by Melissa Sanchez and Jodi S. Cohen.
It’s tough to keep up with the avalanche of things rolling our way. That’s certainly been true with the torrent of news surrounding the partial release of the Epstein files. There’s so much information that I can’t imagine anyone trying to sum it all up, and yet, Elizabeth Lopatto might have come damn near close in her piece, How The Men In The Epstein Files Defeated #MeToo. It’s a bigger article with an even more powerful scope than the #MeToo in the headline suggests.
Also addressing the scope of that mess, Anand Giridharadas says It’s So Much Bigger Than Epstein. I agree.
JA Westenberg tackles The Coherence Premium. No real hints here beyond this quote: “When I say coherence, I mean something specific: the degree to which every part of an operation derives from the same understanding, the same model of reality and set of priorities and tradeoffs.”
Ashley Parker writes about The Murder of The Washington Post.
Meanwhile, David Todd McCarty suggests that The Return of The Local Newspaper may be the path to reclaiming power over information and securing democracy. It certainly might beat the ways we seem to be trying now
If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.
If There Are Better Angels, What Does That Make The Rest Of Us?
Dual or duelling realities?
Abraham Lincoln trying to find a middle ground and attempting to hold the Union together proclaimed in his 1861 inaugural address that the “better angels of our nature” would help the country persevere. James Madison, writing in Federalist 51 said “if men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
We’ve always looked to angels, either to save ourselves from ourselves, or excuse ourselves from those parts of humanity we know exist within or alongside us. The countless cartoons of angels and devils sitting on opposite shoulders illustrate this duality quite well. Even so, those who see the world as the brutal place it can be and act accordingly can just as often be found in pulpits praying to those better angels for guidance and protection.
Which begs the question, if there are “better angels” what does that make the rest of us? Are they divided into good, better, best ratings? To say they are all demons and devils is a shortcut that typically has led those holier than thou turning their own plowshares into swords of retribution just as sharp as those they hope to defeat.
So, I’m not a fan of the metaphor. First, it implies some sort of fairy tale-like savior(s) from beyond, heavenly or no, to right wrongs and dole out punishment, or caring and consoling those less fortunate. Second, depending on which religious texts you cling to, angels haven’t all been the “angels” we fantasize about and commercialize. Biblical texts, some still sworn by (Genesis), and some not (The Book of Enoch), talk about Angels sexually cavorting with humans, although just like anything else you can pick your side of that theological debate.
I’m sure many of those finding their relationships with Jeffrey Epstein, who are now the subject of scrutiny they thought they’d avoided, didn’t think twice in the moment about brushing off the better angels on their shoulders.
So, it’s no wonder we dwell in our duality. Sticking to the biblical for the moment, theoretically and theologically there was only one rule in the beginning. “Don’t eat the damn apple.” We’ve been adding and breaking rules ever since. Insert something about them made to be broken here.
It doesn’t matter which sphere of life you wander through, that duality is going to exist. I happen to believe that the vast majority of people start out to do something they think is a good thing, and then perhaps find their morality or their principals challenged along the they way. At that fork in the road, some choose a path that doesn’t comprise their belief systems, others the opposite.
That’s the test. There may be many gray areas in life, but that test is only pass/fail. Some may try to erase the result from their permanent record, but I think they call it permanent for a reason. Even if they can be redacted, deleted, or discarded.
On a more earthly level than spirituality, in sports there are those who play by the rules and those who will do anything it takes to win. There are admirers and fans of both. The same is true in business. The language often used in either competitive arena certainly isn’t always what I would call better angel-ish.
And then there’s politics. As my grandmother used to say, “politics is a dirty business for dirty people.” She nailed that one.
Good friend and fellow gadfly, David Todd McCarty, recently wrote about our America’s Dual State, more specifically about the dual state theory of Ernst Frankel wherein we exist in two different realities, the Normative State and the Prerogative State. As David distills it,
He called the first reality, the Normative State, where everything felt normal, and people were protected by laws and courts, and life functioned as before. The other, he called the Prerogative State, which was governed entirely by the Party, outside of the rule of law, existing in an arbitrary state of violent oppression.
Frankel was speaking about Nazi Germany, and today’s parallels have been far too easy to see or avoid. Except for those living in the Normative State, or those relishing in the performance of those pushing us towards the Prerogative State.
While I’m not a fan of the dueling angels on opposite shoulders metaphor in and of itself, pair it up with Frankel’s theory and I think those cartoons lift the animated dilemma closer to our own reality than most want to admit, but find themselves increasingly coming to terms with as those two realities increasingly converge.
I freely admit there are days when I’m hearing more from my darker angels than I want to. I like to think those thoughts come from a place of good I can return to once this is all over. But then I’m reminded of Madison more than I am of Lincoln.
(image from Alexander_P on Shutterstock)
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
A Question for Senate Democrats: Which Side Are You On?
Showing up is half the battle
Each time I try to lower my blood pressure a bit and calm down about the abhorrent political situation we’re living through in this country, something else pops and causes it to spike again. This time it’s the Democrats in the Senate.
It’s bad enough that we have to deal with the shit that’s continually dumped on us from the Trump regime, but when the Democrats have a chance to at least show up and threaten a fight they seem to forget that showing up is more than half the battle.
Both branches of Congress decided to split out DHS funding from the recently passed appropriations bills, leading to what most presume is a ridiculous two week timeline to debate changes for that appropriation. Call me skeptical, but I see that as another Lucy and the football moment just waiting to play out.
But it gets worse. The Democrats, according to this report from Politico, decided to strip from their demands a requirement banning ICE agents from polling sites.
If it seems feckless, that’s because it is.
At the very least include the requirement as a demand and make the GOP work to negotiate it away. Given words coming out of the White House about nationalizing voting and the pot stirring of its allies, you’d think they’d at least pay lip service to the threat. From a pure political standpoint I don’t understand the rationalization for this move given what we’ve seen with our own eyes and the words we’re hearing.
If Pete Seeger was alive today I’m sure he’d still be singing.
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
Sunday Morning Reading
Small Pieces Loosely Joined
Connecting the dots can be one helluva hard game when you have so many dots. The volume of dots and the plots might seem overwhelming, but, if you care to look, it’s easy to find the connective threads, thin though they may be. String them together and the picture becomes clearer. Take a look at the links shared in this Sunday Morning Reading column. If you can’t find the connections, I suggest you’re not even trying to look.
Dave Winer writes of Small Pieces Loosely Joined, what he considers the best description of the web. It fits for the web. It fits for most things.
JA Westenberg discusses Why Intelligence Is A Terrible Proxy For Wisdom. Smart.
Backseat Software. That’s how Mike Swanson sees the state of things with software that is constantly interrupting us. As he puts it, “the slow shift from software you operate as a tool to software as a channel that operates you.” Excellent read.
John Gruber thinks we should shift from calling the bad guys Nazis and facists, instead use The Names They Call Themselves. Come to think of it, not sure why it’s so hard to do so given the dictates of the brander-in-chief.
Good dots among the bad are easy to spot. Ava Berger tells the story of how A Red Hat, Inspired By A Symbol Of Resistance To Nazi Occupation, Gains Traction In Minnesota.
In the boiling battle that is Canada and the U.S., Cory Doctorow is elbows up with another of his speeches on enshittifcation. (I’m glad he publishes these.) Check out Disenshittification Nation.
If you’re looking for an antidote to all that’s flying around and at us, it’s tough. Gal Beckham says we can connect those dots through what we’re seeing in Minneapolis. She finds the right word to describe the activism, protests, political opposition, neighborism, and resistance. I won’t spoil it, but she threads them all together in There Is A Word For What Is Happening In Minneapolis.
David Todd McCarty suggests America is a dual state in Then They Came For Me.
Steven Levy says After Minneapolis, Tech CEOs Are Struggling To Stay Silent. Silence speaks volumes. So do actions. So too do “tepid free-floating empathy” memos that mean nothing. Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.
Joshua Panduro Preston tells the story of John Carter Of Minnesota: The “Convict Poet” Who Won His Freedom.
Pro football fans, especially those in Chicago know Charles ‘Peanut’ Tillman and the “peanut punch” well. Most don’t know that after his gridiron career he became a FBI agent. Even more don’t know that he walked away from that second career after the immigration raids started. Dan Pompeo connects the dots in After Charles Tillman Transformed Football, He Joined The FBI. Then The Immigration Raids Started.
(image from RA2016 on Shutterstock)
If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.
Minnesota by The Marsh Family
Haunting and defining with resonances of our past
As one who has been saying for quite some time that we need more of our musicians to stand up and sing about the moments we’re all living through, I’m glad to see that happening as other musicians are singing about the occupation and murders in Minneapolis.
I linked to Bruce Springsteen’s Streets of Minneapolis earlier this week and today I’m linking to the Marsh Family’s new effort, Minnesota. It’s an adaptation of San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair,) that kinda became the counterculture anthem of an earlier moment in American history. This new adaptation is just as simple, straightforward, and haunting. It’s also just as defining.
Share it.
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
A Dark Place
Damnable depravity
I’m in a dark place. We are in a dark place. Living with our eyes wide open in a darkness. No light needed to know what we plainly see. ICE thugs. Minneapolis. Journalists arrested. Public corruption. Wars. Corporate capitulation to evil. And “The Epstein Files.”
I have not written much about that entire depraved episode. I will today.
In what seems like a backhanded, boomeranging, and backfiring way to distract from all of the other despicable things this administration has been doing to distract us from the Epstein files, the Justice Department released about three million of those files today. Apparently there are millions more. But in some ways we’ve probably seen enough.
Or at least to my mind we probably have. At least enough to pass judgment. Some of the files, either mistakenly or on purpose, were leaked. They include descriptions of what horrible men did to young girls. I won’t post or describe the specifics, beyond saying how utterly depraved they are.
They’d get an XXX rating if those acts were included in a movie. If you want specifics you won’t find them in the government release of the files because the DOJ actually deleted the links to some of the worst, which do indeed finger the president of the United States as a participant. But I’m sure you can find them all over the Internet.
Let me say this. The fact that there are going to be people trying to brush past and brush over what we’ve long suspected but now seen makes those horrible acts of perversion almost pale in comparison. You have to be some sort of sick to try and rationalize it as anything other than evil. But I’m sure there will be too many willing to throw their souls under the bus they continue to ride on.
When and where I grew up, it was a small rural community, populated with many who had some of the same political and social leanings of those we call MAGA today. I don’t care how much of an exalted office anyone held, how much money they made, or what pulpit they preached from. If they were accused of the things mentioned in those files they would have been quietly disappeared from the earth, never to be heard from, and mostly not spoken of again.
If this crowd of criminals and pedophiles and their supporters keep talking about Making America Great Again, I assume they are referring to that period of time when I was growing up. There’s a large part of me that thinks in despicable cases like these that perhaps we should. If only to mete out punishment the way it was done then.
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
Treading Through the Storms
Rough weather on all fronts still ahead.
Those blobs on weather radar maps that blanketed vast amounts of the U.S this past weekend felt not just predictive, but also somewhat defining. The traditional red and blue color schemes signaling rough weather almost hinted at our political and social divisions, reminding those that pay attention that Mother Nature doesn’t pick sides when she chooses to show her wrath.
And she’s tossing a torrent in this, our winter of discontent. Weather, politics, culture and technology all seem to be conspiring to obscure our view in a swirling tempest that chills to the bone, while boiling the blood.
We’ve all seen movies where folks get lost in winter terrain during a storm and can’t find their bearings. It feels like we’re all in that movie, or maybe it’s a stultified streaming series, given how it just keeps stringing us along and clogging up the queue, long after we’ve figured out the formula.
But this is a tortuous tempest. Minneapolis murders. Booting Bovino (or not?) Now US owned TikTok being more ruthless censoring than the Chinese. The gun nuts prematurely treading all over their cherished 2nd amendment, only to retreat after the muzzle blew up in their faces with the shots they just fired. Tim Cook continuing to debase himself and Apple by attending the Melania premiere at the White House. ICE here, there, and everywhere including the Winter Olympics. Consumer confidence hitting a 12-year low. The Doomsday Clock moving closer to midnight. Greenland. Venezuela. Canada. Europe. Iran.
Billy Joel in his heyday would have a rough time chronicling all that’s currently swirling in this winter’s winds for a new version of We Didn’t Start the Fire.
I’m not sure if we’ve reached a tipping point, but it feels like we’re closer to it than we have been since these idiots started shredding all of the life preservers and poking holes in the rowboats on their version of the Titanic. (Thanks for that reference J.D. Vance.)
They wanted to flood the zone with shit so that we couldn’t keep up. By and large they’ve succeeded to this point, but you can sense that the smell may be shifting. There’s chaos all over, but there’s just as much chaos in their inner sanctums as they try to trim sails to survive the storms they’ve created. Small victories add up. Take the wins when they happen and build on that.
It’s up to us to keep the pressure on, because if you’re relying on any of those lifeboats or life preservers (Congress, media, the business community) we’re all going to freeze before we go under with them.
It’s not going to happen overnight. There will be setbacks. It’s One Battle After Another. (Talk about a prescient film release.)
No one knows how this is going to end. No one knows when it’s going to end. No one knows what will be once it does end. But certainly it will end.
Rough weather still ahead. Uncharted waters in a storm. No horizon in sight.
Bundle up. Buckle up. Trust your own compass. Follow the lead of the good folks from Minneapolis causing good trouble. As my friend, David Todd McCarty says, Stand Your Ground.
(Photo by Viktor Mogilat on Unsplash)
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
Cracks In The ICE Are Showing: Keep The Pressure Up
Winter irony alert
Here’s an update to this post from earlier today. It’s being reported that Greg Bovino has been relieved of duty and sent home. He has also reportedly lost access to his social media accounts. Let’s hope the reports are accurate, and even if not they add to the pressure. Pressure works. Keep it up.
After another weekend filled with horrendous news as most of the country weathered a massive winter storm that left snow and ice everywhere, it appears that are a few cracks starting to show in the ICE. To be honest, I’m actually surprised.
Word is that the latest murder in Minneapolis is giving quite a few so-called Republicans cold feet in Washington DC and elsewhere. The apparent leading candidate for the GOP nomination for governor of Minnesota has withdrawn his candidacy in the wake of what’s happening.
Apparently the White House is also putting on heavy socks and trying to tiptoe out from under the fallout. Or so the reporting says. The guy who passes for a president is sending in Tom Homan to try and clean up the mess, which I’m sure he’ll attempt to do for the right amount of cash in a Cava bag.
Heck, even a few GOP congressional critters are making noise. But I’m sure that will soften as the week goes on. I mean there’s a government they need to pretend to run.
And there’s the rub. The government is facing another potential partial shutdown at the end of the week. The House passed that legislation on to the Senate, with the help of seven Democrats voting for it, without whom the bill would have failed. Senators are hinting they’ll hold the line after this latest murder, but I wouldn’t count on it in the end.
I’m hoping the Senators and all of those who were out and about in horrendous weather protesting this weekend keep the pressure up to widen those cracks in the ICE were hearing before this cold snap ends and things begin melting. It would be both a positive for us all and also be quite ironic.
Will it stop things? I doubt it. There will probably be a doubling down. But in my opinion either way the heat needs to ratchet up and keep the pressure building.
I also encourage you to read this piece by Popehat called We Should Talk About The Morality of Political Violence.
I earnestly hope things pull back from the dangerous way they seem to be heading. I also earnestly hope those who can keep the pressure up will continue, so that the lives lost in Minnesota and elsewhere (there have been others less publicized) won’t have been lost in vain.
(Image from Emily Lauren on Unsplash.
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3 