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Be Moved

If you build it, will they take them? Trains, that is, super, high-speed and just regular intra-city transit. And Buses. Buses! But before even the lowest-frills fancy stuff, fix the bridges:

Most, if not all, Americans support the idea that bridges shouldn’t collapse as you drive over them, yet there are 44,741 bridges in the United States that are rated “poor” by the Federal Highway Administration. Nearly 45,000! That’s out of about 616,000, meaning that about 1 in 14 bridges indexed in the United States receive the government’s lowest rating.
But wait! It gets worse. The three ratings used — good, fair, poor — are simply reflections of the lowest rating a bridge gets on the condition of its deck, superstructure or substructure. (If you think of a standard highway bridge, the deck is what you drive on, the superstructure is what supports the deck and the substructure is what holds up the rest of it.) Those values are assessed on a zero-to-nine scale, with the average score for all three components being about 6.5 nationally.

There’s handy searchable map at that link where you can see the bridges in your area that need maintenance. Yikes! There‘s a are multiple tons of them.

It’s also important that the Biden Infrastructure bill includes, among many other things, no money for expanding roads. Stop expanding already uncross-able roads and intersections. The BIKE is the answer, not the ambulance. This is one of the subtle keys to the shift in transit. And I’ve written previously about taking Amtrak below Richmond, VA. The trains themselves are very dated, but it’s the rickety tracks beneath them that feel like such a hazard. It’s a disgrace, and like the state of the postal system, it’s decline by design. It’s been left in purposeful, deliberate disrepair.

So there’s plenty to fix, and feel good about while we’re doing it. Not feel triumphant – it’s not necessary. Just responsible for taking care of our sh*t and making it useful. Buy yourself a nice pen with what’s left over and write someone a letter. You might get one back. Write the next one on the train. Feel romantic, be moved.

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The President Show

Look what you can do instead of hosting The President Show:

Second, the rescue bill has quietly become an infrastructure bill. It devotes $350 billion to supporting state and local governments. These funds, initially proposed to plug COVID-19-created holes in public budgets, in many cases now exceed those holes. So the Senate has allowed states, cities, and counties to spend that money on improving services such as water, sewage, and broadband. Because many water systems are vulnerable to climate change and must be adapted, this is de facto climate funding. The bill also contains $31 billion for tribal governments and Indigenous communities, including line items for new infrastructure, housing, and language preservation.

Downtown in our quaint little burg, one of the main streets in the central business district has been a mess for about three months, with sidewalks and the street alternately under massive excavation as sewers, power and water lines are replaced and updated. It’s a huge mess on a one way street in a tiny downtown and it’s not apparent when it will be completed. But that’s how badly needed it was, likely long overdue precisely because it’s such a hassle. Some of what is being replaced was likely original – whatever that might mean in this context. There’s a reason people/governments don’t want to do this. It’s hugely disruptive and expensive. But also absolutely necessary. There are likely 10,000 places this needs doing. So fix them, get started. And robots can’t do this work, btw. More boring accomplishments, please.

And then let’s dance to this music.

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Call Them What They Are

Pass the COVID-19 relief bill without Republicans, show and tell (over and over) the public how important the bill was, make republican candidates whine about in the mid-terms.

Merrick Garland ftw. His shameless interlocutors on the R/Q/T side are on halfway down the path to defending white supremacy, contradictory examples of the concept though they, and all defenders thereof, may be. Let them go all the way or turn back on their own.

And Neera Tanden, at least she punches up and at times sideways. Count this blog and its owner as objectively #pro-aggressivewomen:

There is no polite way to capture what Republicans in power have done and continue to do. Tanden can be fairly accused of many things, but she cannot be accused of being soft on the party that just gave us four years of Trump’s misrule, culminating in the attack on the US Capitol last month. With regard to Republicans, at least, she has consistently told the truth, and it’s very revealing that telling the truth is the one thing she’s done that’s a dealbreaker for a majority of the Senate.


Video – the early word from Hurley/Watt/Boone

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THE QUESTION

With apologies to Henri Alleg*, do self-identifying Republicans (elected and otherwise) embrace “American fascism” based on white supremacy, irrationality, ignorance, xenophobia, antisemitism, violence, and anger and dehumanization?

Those who haven’t, need to decide. It’s a pretty easy question, and for all those who have answered in the affirmative, they should be treated as such.

Recommended reading. Sartre’s introduction is important, the book itself, harrowing.

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And… scene

With the Washington Monument in the background, President-elect Joe Biden with his wife Jill Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris with her husband Doug Emhoff during a COVID-19 memorial, Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Today, who we are gives way to who we would like to be. That violent scene on Jan.6, that’s us in every way – armed, ignorant and preferring to follow rather than think. There’s no back in the bottle for the white supremacist urge. It must be watched, left out in the sun, allowed to finally wither and die.

The new administration gives voice and presence to wisdom, empathy, courage and humility. We pitched in to make it happen, and we’ll have to continue to do a little bit of that everyday even though we aren’t obliged by new atrocities to pay attention every second. Get used to that, remember it’s a luxury, and use the time better than we quite know how, better than we have. The constitution is not magic, and the bald eagle has no special powers. Those are yours.

Get back in the game. Push back. Don’t put up with nonsense, and reserve the benefit of the doubt for only when it’s absolutely warranted. Make, share, give, help, and mask up until we can plant big kisses everywhere.

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Where it goes, Nobody knows

We will soon say the same for 2020, but not before the assholes get take one more chance opportunity to blow it all the way out:

If you consider (ridiculous, but consider it generously for the sake of discussion) the “risk” of doing just a little bit “too much” for poor and middle class people (a check that phases out starting at $75K is that), versus the risk of doing too little or, quite soon, absolutely nothing more, and consider how people are lining up on that choice… Well, they would prefer plunging the economy into a deeper recession and the misery of millions of people on the off chance people might realize government is actually capable of doing things for them.
The people complaining about a $2000 check (and, I know, this was likely never going to happen, but the people complaining about it are so frightened of the possibility that they won’t even let it be used as a rhetorical club) are going to be responsible for what is coming, as is everyone who puts up even minor roadblocks to the few options that are available.
…
People who never met a tax cut for rich people they don’t like have the nerve to lie and claim a $2000 check that phases out benefits wealthy people too much.

Green means everything when you don’t have much, but acquires a different sort of power if you are rich(er) enough to believe in its all-encompassing corrupting influence on the poor. How, indeed.

GOParty orthodoxy: Deficits are immoral, but moral deficits, properly timed, can be convenient.

Just GO already.

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Legitimacy Crises

Republicans have gone from one lie to the next to others yet again, working ever so vainly to find some way to spare Trump the truth about his demise. In sewing all their pants together at the waist, few seem capable of running away or getting out of the boat as it takes on more and more water. Lord Saletan explains:

Having stoked this distrust, the president and his allies are now exploiting it. They argue that the fraud must be real since so many people believe in it, and that even if it can’t be proved, widespread disbelief in the results makes the election illegitimate. On Fox News, Republican poll numbers have become a routine substitute for evidence. Trump points to them as proof that “the election was rigged.” His campaign advisers, including Lara Trump, also cite these numbers. Last week, Sen. Ted Cruz said the Supreme Court should intervene because “39 percent of Americans right now believe this last election was rigged.” In Georgia, Sen. Kelly Loeffler demanded that the secretary of state resign because “Georgians have lost faith in our elections.” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, noting the “distrust” felt by “millions of people,” refused to say that Trump should accept the verdict of the Electoral College.

A proportion of the country believes that Democrats, or other unseen forces, are taking away their freedom, liberty, and whatever else. But it’s Republicans themselves that are doing most of the heavy lifting here. How much gullibility compartmentalization does it take to keep believing that poverty and pollution both are natural? To believe that society and the commonwealth are intrinsically evil, that social justice goes against Christ? That an all-seeing omnipotent benevolence shines upon all but draws the line at national borders, skin color, gender, or sexual orientation? It must be exhausting. But they can’t take even an hour off or else liberal democracy will prevail and the temerity to count people and their votes will leave all the militia babies to cry in the night.

It all seems like such a necessary precursor to what they are most afraid of that some may assume after the fact they were complicit.

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For I can raise no money by vile means*

Nobody has more contempt for Republican voters than professional Republicans:

The Trump campaign has been unrelenting in recent days with its all-caps, bold font, exclamation-point-ridden fundraising appeals: “THE DEMOCRATS WANT TO STEAL THIS ELECTION!” “We can’t allow the Left-wing MOB to undermine our election.”

They urge supporters to make donations to President Donald Trump’s election integrity defense, to ensure he has the “resources” he needs to keep the election from being “stolen.”
…
In the fine print of the fundraising blasts, it lays out that 60 percent of the contributions will first go to the new PAC, up to the maximum contribution of $5,000. The remaining 40 percent goes to the RNC up to the maximum $35,500. If that first 60 percent of the donation exceeds $5,000 the remnants go to the campaign’s “recount account”; if the 40 percent exceeds the $35,500 RNC maximum, only then does it go to the RNC’s legal defense fund.

That story was three weeks ago. By now they have raised more than $170m and it’s difficult to characterize as anything other than a nice haul. It can also be a struggle to sympathize with the donors, as it has always been:

The new NRA disclosures appear to constitute a formal admission of financial mismanagement, which the gun group had denied under months of mounting pressure. In August, following a lengthy investigation, Letitia James, the Attorney General of New York, filed a civil suit seeking to dissolve the organization, alleging the NRA had grown rotten from “a culture of self-dealing, mismanagement, and negligent oversight.” To James’s mind, LaPierre’s repayment represents a drop in the bucket. She told the Post that the $300,000 is “just a fraction of the millions he personally profited from,” and she accused LaPierre and his deputies of having raided “NRA coffers to fund lavish lifestyles that included private jets, pricey vacations, expensive meals and no-show contracts.” The Wall Street Journal recently reported that LaPierre is being investigated by the IRS for “possible criminal tax fraud related to his personal taxes.” LaPierre declined to comment to the Post.

We might call this Green brutality, because nothing reveals the vulnerable like the willingness to sell their fears back to them.

* For I can raise no money by vile means.
By heaven, I had rather coin my heart
And drop my blood for drachmas

Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act IV, Scene III

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Kangaroo Democracy

Republican office holders and the people who support them do not want a functional country, much less a functional constitutional democracy. We can keep asking them if this is their final answer, they will keep voting for con men and flimflam artists.

The country they want, indeed the country they made sure we would have four years ago, had 148,302 COVID-19 cases two days ago, more then 130,000 each of the two days prior. This is what they wanted, this is what we have.

Now what do they want? Go back to normal, Pandemic be gone, don’t steal the election they lost, celebrate your positive test… the idiocy knows no bounds. It does know an end. We are at the beginning of that end now with Trump’s countdown to disinfection at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The people in our lives who seek to continue to be part of this dysfunctional cohort – wanting it all to continue, wanting some of it (the mask parts) to end – what do we do with them? Ignoring this malignancy does not work; ignoring their part in it may keep the peace at the holidays… but we won’t have the usual Thanksgiving this year. They made sure of that. This current episode was avoidable, they made sure we didn’t, no siree. There is a direct consequence to selling out your vote and your country to a racist ignoramus not interested in anything outside of his personal benefit. This is one of them; unfortunately, there are also many more.

We can take heart in the events of the last week, but we’ve got to remember all of them. Republican voters have put us all in their boat, even if it feels like we finally have enough oars in the water to row to a better shore. Remember this effort, all the work it takes, and that they want it to fail. Unless or until they prove otherwise, they must be considered a danger to themselves. They must be considered in favor of a country that ignores recognized standards of law and justice, one that holds no standing outside of fearful, closed minds. They have warned us. They want a kangaroo republic – to leap over the facts and people they don’t like, to live a fantasy yesteryear, reciting incantations to conjure divine rights.

Meanwhile, let’s get more oars in the water. Everybody row.

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More than a feeling

Brooklyn: A Personal Memoir
With the Lost Photographs of David Attie
by Truman Capote
Let this be the last election in which Republicans are allowed to vote against people voting. To win office, you must be required to win more votes, rather than suppress or decrease the number of voters. The only way to be prepared to govern – not reinforce your advantages, not reward your nests or feather your friends, however the saying goes. Unfettered capitalism has done more to undermine capitalist systems than an army of Engelses and a brigade of Marxes. Speaking of whom, To the Finland Station:

“To the Finland Station” is different. The structure is simple: the decline of the bourgeois revolutionary tradition after the French Revolution, as Wilson sees it reflected in the writings of Jules Michelet, Ernest Renan, Hippolyte Taine, and Anatole France; the emergence of revolutionary socialism, seen through the writings of Saint-Simon, the communitarians Charles Fourier and Robert Owen, and Marx and Engels; the triumph of Communism, illustrated by the careers of Lenin and Trotsky. There are things Wilson minimized that would have complicated this narrative: the persistence of a non-Communist socialist ideal in Western Europe; the liberal tradition in Russian politics (to which Nabokov’s father belonged); the success and failure of the Mensheviks, of whom Wilson did not make much. And, of course, if the book were being written now, the vicious side of Marxist and Leninist thought, mostly a subtext in Wilson’s account, would guide the narrative, and the story would touch down in Siberia or Berlin rather than at the Finland Station.

But we don’t read “To the Finland Station” as a book about the Russian Revolution anymore. What draws us now is the subtitle: “A Study in the Writing and Acting of History.” History is the true subject of Wilson’s book, and what he evokes is what it felt like to believe—as Vico and Michelet, Fourier and Saint-Simon, Hegel and Marx, Lenin and Trotsky all believed—that history holds the key to the meaning of life. The evocation is successful because when Wilson began writing “To the Finland Station” he believed in history, too. He thought that history had a design, and that the Depression was an event fully comprehensible within the context of that design: it was the long-predicted collapse of the capitalist order. “To the Finland Station” is valuable as a window on the nineteenth century, but it is also a poignant artifact of the nineteen-thirties, a time when many people thought that history was something you could get on the right side or the wrong side of. It was an idea indistinguishable from faith, and Marx was one of its prophets.

It’s a dirty foul that American school kids don’t learn about Jules Michelet. We must get beyond this aversion to learning about certain histories, be it socialism or the 1619 project, whatever. The less you know, well, the less you know and suddenly another Trump falls off the turnip truck yesterday and the corporate types get summoned to the cut of his jib, obscuring the more accurate assessments, ‘something just ain’t right with that boy.’

Image by David Attie, 1959, from the NYRB