Political parties would “push a narrow, self-interested agenda that would block the national interest” and “create a deadlocked and dysfunctional democracy” that would “leave citizens frustrated by inefficiency and ineffectiveness.”
Call me a cockeyed optimist, but I have found many things that have taken place on the political landscape in the last six months or so worthy of celebration.
There have been protests, many of them local, for banning the bomb, upholding women’s rights, protecting the immigrant and the refugee, saving the environment, and several other causes.
People are becoming actively engaged in the political process, working on special elections, running for office, or at least considering it. They are showing up at town halls when members of Congress come back to town.
A couple interviews on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah in June 2017, on successive days in June 2017, gave me encouragement. William J. Barber II is shifting the moral conversation about the poor, a group neither major candidate for President talked about last year. Among other things, Rev. Barber is the architect of the Forward Together Moral Monday Movement.
I was also taken by John Avlon. The Daily Beast’s Editor-in-Chief was promoting his new book “Washington’s Farewell: The Founding Father’s Warning to Future Generations.”
George Washington feared, he explained, that political parties would “push a narrow, self-interested agenda that would block the national interest” and “create a deadlocked and dysfunctional democracy” that would leave citizens “so frustrated by the inefficiency and ineffectiveness that it could open the door to a demagogue with authoritarian ambitions.”
And by demagogue, I mean “a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power.”
So on this Independence Day, it is important to note the words of another of our Founders, Alexander Hamilton: “Of those men who have overturned the liberty of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by playing an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.”
S.2943 – National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 includes in Section 1287, the GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT CENTER, which, some fear, will allow the government to decide what is ‘truth’
Homer and Harold – “Stories abound of present-day prosecutors who have lost their way, who do anything to win a conviction, who place politics above principle.” This is a fascinating story of the exact opposite
Work fact of the month: in Moldova, Moldovan is spoken by 58.8% (official; virtually the same as the Romanian language), Romanian 16.4%, Russian 16%, Ukrainian 3.8%, Gagauz 3.1% (a Turkish language), Bulgarian 1.1%, other 0.3%, unspecified 0.4%.
American Routes is a weekly two-hour public radio program produced in New Orleans, presenting a broad range of American music — blues and jazz, gospel and soul, old-time country and rockabilly, Cajun and zydeco, Tejano and Latin, roots rock and pop, avant-garde and classical. Now in our 15th year on the air, American Routes explores the shared musical and cultural threads in these American styles and genres of music — and how they are distinguished.
Ringo Starr & Carrie Fisher – You’re Sixteen taping session for the 1978 TV special “Ringo” – 1978 version with CF vocals here or here, the original 1973 version here
Comedy Central in the Post-TV Era: “What’s the difference between a segment on a TV show and the exact same segment on a YouTube channel? Tens of thousands of dollars.”
Comedy Central is running every Daily Show since the day Jon Stewart began, on January 11, 1999, in a 42-day marathon over on this site. It started on June 26.
If we want young black men to keep their pants up, we can’t then have them arrested for purchasing a belt.
It seems that, in the past few years, the narrative I’ve been hearing in certain circles that we no longer need Black History Month, because we’ve finally “made it.” Thus, being anti-racism means being anti-white. This past year in particular has been the greatest negation of that message, unfortunately.
There’s stop and frisk. Great video on this from The Daily Show laying out the issue. A pair of different comedy routines that I saw suggest that if those folks on Wall Street with their [shudder] briefcases were stopped and frisked to see if they were planning some economic crime, especially in the demeaning way it takes place – think the airport TSA, on steroids, only more rude – the policy would be off the books next week.
Reading the Floyd decision, “it seems clear that it was the stories of how Stop and Frisk and TAP operated on the ground to keep Black and Latino people under siege in their own homes, not the battle of the experts via statistics, that ultimately persuaded Judge Scheindlin about the complete irrationality of Stop and Frisk as implemented, and about the utter inability of the psyche of the NYPD to voluntarily accept its own racism, such that Stop and Frisk could be operated in a truly race-neutral fashion.”
Sometimes, it’s not the big stuff, it’s the little irritants that get under one’s skin. Gee, you don’t sound black on the radio by Ken Screven, former local news reporter. I’ve not been on the radio, but I have spent time on the phone a lot at FantaCo and now at the SBDC and I have seen that response when meeting people in person for the first time.
I picked that vintage cover to illustrate a greater point: it can’t just be black people concerned about black people’s issues. We all need to be conscious of discrimination where we find it, whether it be discrimination by race, gender or sexual orientation. And it’s even more effective when white people speak out against racism when they see it – like here, men confront sexism, and straights openly reject homophobia. It can’t just be THEIR problem, it must be OUR problem.
*** Great reads for the month from Departing the Text.
