2017 archive
Spicing Things Up 0
Alfred Doblin meditates on the short tenure of Shaun Spicer. A snippet:
And a press secretary is only as good as the message he is selling.
“Sit Down and Shut Up” 0
Warning: Language.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Play politely.
Police said two men were playing around with a gun in a basement-level room when the gun accidentally went off, killing one of them.
Trumpling the Peace Corps 0
Gene Nichols recently visited his daughter, who is a Peace Corps volunteer currently working in Gambia. The experience prompted him to muse on the Peace Corps and the motivation of Peace Corps volunteers in the time of Trump. Here’s a bit:
To our president, they’re chumps. For him, the only reason to deal with a place like Gambia is to exploit its people and resources. Winners take. They use. They grow the bottom line. They produce bigger buildings, larger portfolios. All the world envies them. Character, selflessness and service aren’t part of the framework. They never enter the calculus. They never have.
Trumpling Science 0
A scientist speaks out to express his dismay at the Trump administration’s decision ot ignore facts. A snippet:
Follow the link for the scary part.
Palate Cleanser 0
When my family got our first stereo, a huge floor-standing console, South Pacific was one of the first albums we purchased. If you know the story, you know that one of its undercurrents is a protest against racism. The story points out that, to be a racist, you have to the carefully taught.
Tales of the Trumpling–Snapshots of Trickle-Down Trumpery 0
Still rising again after all these years . . . .
Since filing a lawsuit against the school district a few weeks ago, Jasmine and her family have been the target of a torrent of racist and hateful messages. Messages that are too sickening and hateful to be shared here.
Back in the 1960s, my Southern school district finally realized after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that segregation was done and began a show process of integration. There was one black student in the white high school, a senior, the first year; eleven black students joined it the next year as juniors; and so on–full merging of the black and white schools did not occur until I was in college.
I am certain that those students were carefully picked and all of them acquitted themselves well. There were no overt tensions at the school (of course, this wasn’t in Mississippi, either). By the time my brother graduated a few years after me, the valedictorian was a black girl. The students accepted it, because she had clearly earned it.
More to the point, the parents, the administration, and the community accepted it, though a small percentage of the white student body fled to two “seg academies” and were roundly resented by the students who remained in the public high school. I have long been grateful that the administration had the wisdom to admit defeat.
Trumpling the Rule of Law 0
Dick Polman reminds us that it can happen here and that, if it does, it’s our own damn fault for not paying attention, as a polity, to the politics. A snippet:
In a way I don’t even blame Trump, because he doesn’t know any better. A poseur with Louis XIV pretensions (“L’etat c’est moi,” said the French king – “I am the state”), Trump has no concept of checks and balances, no respect for America’s enduring democratic institutions, and he’s been dodging accountability his whole life. His one mode is attack; long-dead Roy Cohn, his thug mentor, appears to be dispensing advice via his tooth fillings.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Florida man phones in politeness:
The workers told the man they would move the trucks after the work was completed. The man then went inside his home and came back out with a gun and started shooting at the tires.
