Dark Times – Page 2 – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

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.

Different colored strands of yarn woven together into a strong strand. Shutterstock 504091696.

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.

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.

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.

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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)

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.

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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.

Sunday Morning Reading

Thoughts tumble down on a chilling weekend

I’m going to avoid the horrific news that continues out of Minneapolis (and the rest of the U.S.) for this week’s Sunday Morning Reading. But, then I guess I didn’t avoid it by saying that. Think of it as a wound too sore to touch rather than avoiding. Anyway, onto this week’s sharing.

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I’m going to kick this off with a blog post from Mathew Ingram called Why Blogging Is Better Than Social Media. Title says a lot of what I believe. I wish more believed it also.

I love watching those younger than I live the same lives, fears, and joys I did. Nothing ever changes. But it’s always entertaining and worth reflection. Check out Alex Baia’s I Thought I Would Have Accomplished A Lot More Today And Also By The Time I was Thirty-Five.

Gray Miller suggests You Should Put A Codex In Your Pocket Instead Of Your Phone. If you don’t know what a Codex is, read the piece.

Cory Doctorow in The Guardian says AI Companies Will Fail. We Can Salvage Something From the Wreckage. Salvaging things from wreckage is what we do. Avoid wrecking things not so much.

Speaking of wreckage, AI-Powered Disinformation Swarms Are Coming For Democracy says David Gilbert.

Follow that up with Brynn Tannehill’s piece ‘Trump Has Already Rigged The 2028 Presidential Election’: Us Defense Insider. You didn’t need AI to tell you that. Or insiders. All you had to do was pay attention.

We do seem to like and be drawn to adversity like so many moths. Funny how we know what happens to moths that fly too close, yet can’t predict own fate when we do the same. But if we break that cycle, there wouldn’t be anything to salvage. David Toddy McCarty says We Like It Hard.

Aaron Vegh blogs A Canadian’s Call To Arms, Being Totally Pissed Off At The State Of Computing In The 21st Century. I don’t think the Canadians are alone in their feelings. I know a number of Americans are as well.

I said I would stay away from this weekend’s events. I lied. Sota. Kinda. I admire those like Dan Sinker who are finding ways to do what they feel can in the face of this adversity. Check out his piece We Are All We Have.

(Image from Aga Putra on Unsplash

Try

Another shooting in Minneapolis

Following the general strikes in Minnesota yesterday and in the wake of yet another horrific shooting in Minneapolis this morning, this brilliant YouTube from Ana Marie Cox filtered through my feeds. Using Nemick’s speech from Andor as a eulogy for Renee Nicole Good, it’s powerful stuff.

Watch it the video below. Share it. Do so often. Because I think we’re going to be faced with more of this in the future.

History Is Often Unkind To Comparisons

Time to call a spade a spade

History is often unkind to comparisons. That’s nobody’s fault. No one can grasp the fullness of history well enough to appreciate and/or distinguish all of the references we use to shortcut how we view and label the mistakes we seem hell bent on repeating as we promise to never forget. It’s tougher still when we see children being kidnapped or chemical irritants sprayed at point blank range into someone’s eyes by government employees.

As an example, we conveniently shortcut our descriptions of the current administration’s abhorrent behavior masquerading as immigration enforcement. We call them Nazis. We liken their tactics to the Gestapo. In the face of the murders, kidnapping of children, brutalizing protestors, and lord knows what we don’t know about, I happen to agree with the comparison. It’s not just apt. It’s spot on.

But it’s incomplete.

Those comparisons actually cover up AND reveal a deeper history of sins that is not only particularly American, it’s what Hitler and his murderous henchmen adopted from us.

White Americans, in Hitler’s words, “gunned down the millions of Redskins to a few hundred thousand, and now kept the modest remnant under observation in a cage”

Hitler admired America’s appetite for America’s Manifest Destiny and how it justified the slaughter and displacement of Native Americans. His lawyers studied not only our laws regarding Native Americans, but also our Jim Crow laws, using them as references to draft the Nuremberg Laws that stripped Jews of Citizenship and prohibited interracial marriage.

The forces I think are evil want to erase much of American history, but even the forces that keep trying to array against them don’t recognize the Nazi labeling lineage as history we own a piece of.

The simple point I’m making is this: As we’re coming to grips with so much in these trying days let’s not look beyond ourselves and our own history to try and turn the monsters among us, who have always been among us, into something that removes our ownership of that history. In some ways, that’s the larger fight. We’re not fighting foes adopting some foreign tactics or playbook, we’re fighting our own peculiar history that we have never wanted to come to grips with. We’ve let it fester. Fought a war amongst ourselves over it and pretended we could turn the page, only to allow it to fester again and rise back up to haunt and hurt us all. Again.

Light In The Dark

In The Bleak Midwinter

The unceasing tumult of insane happenings continue rolling in, like a relentless pounding of waves threatening to drown us all. It’s enough to make you look for even the slightest glimmer of light in the darkness.

I’m not sure such a glimmer exists. To my way of thinking what’s happening can only continue to get worse until something, anything breaks in a way that no one is going to be able to control. It’s wretched enough that I find myself hoping that happens each morning.

The history of humankind proves that however this reaches a conclusion, that climax and its denouement will make its crescendo seem almost palpably tame by comparison. And, as we’ve proven and continue to prove, we’re certainly no smarter and no better than those who’ve screwed things up in the past.

Sorry for the bleakness. But it’s how I’m feeling things in the middle of this cold, darkening winter. These days remind me of the first stanza of Christina Rossetti’s poem, originally published in 1872 under the title A Christmas Carol.

In the bleak midwinter
frosty wind made moan,
earth stood hard as iron,
water like a stone:
snow had fallen,
snow on snow, snow on snow,
in the bleak midwinter,
long ago.

Although today does not feel so long ago.

(image taken by the author)