Thought for the Day

[Stavros]

I saw this on Twitter and I don't even know what to say:

ACLU of Minnesota
@ACLUMN
BREAKING: Minneapolis City Council members have announced their intent to disband the Minneapolis Police Department and invest in community-led public safety.

I am not opposed to a review of policing, but would it not make sense to offer a debate on what the alternative is with details on financing, personnel, training, intentions and outcomes, before the decision is made to change the existing system?

The danger is that this kind of policy shift will be used by the President to warn against 'radical, ultra leftist' Democrats proposing dramatic changes to law enforcement with the results that 'the cure is worse than the disease'. That this is now the 'law and order President' ought to be the stick to beat him with, as a President who pardons criminals and his friends and backers, and then suggests the law be used to investigate why they were prosecuted in the first place! I can't recall any President other maybe than Nixon who so personalzed the US Justice System as if it was there to serve his personal interests. But I am sure his supporters on Fox News willl ignore the double standard and promote only one view of this crisis, yet another in the 'permanent crisis' that is the 45th Presidency.

Putin is convulsed in laughter. His apprentice just keeps on giving.

There was a short but fascinating programme BBC Radio 4 on Sunday night which asked why so many Black men are killed by law enforcement, and among a few answers, the miitary style training of police officers was cited as one which either creates or deepens a bias against Black people in general and Black men in particular, seeing every situation on the street in terms of confrontation rather than 'conflict resolution'. It is only half an hour, and I am not sure if it is available in the US, but the link is here-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b060zg8g

[broncofan]

I am not opposed to a review of policing, but would it not make sense to offer a debate on what the alternative is with details on financing, personnel, training, intentions and outcomes, before the decision is made to change the existing system?

The danger is that this kind of policy shift will be used by the President to warn against 'radical, ultra leftist' Democrats proposing dramatic changes to law enforcement with the results that 'the cure is worse than the disease'.

You're right that it's a gift to the President whose horrendous behavior was starting to really erode his support. He is hypocritical about law and order but like authoritarian figures wants to use the law as a tool when it suits him.

You're also right that we haven't gotten a lot of details but it can't be good. Because if it's not as radical and anarchic as it seems then why should it be billed that way? It will only convince some people who were walking away from Trump because he was tearing away at the fabric of society that the Democrats might do the same by taking such an extreme action.

The thing about this option is that it's the least creative solution to the problem. Instead of dealing with the misconduct and trying to increase both prevention and accountability, you go to the nuclear option that will erode trust in elected leaders even more. It's shouldn't fairly be attributed to the Democratic leadership at the national level imo but we know Republicans often don't play nice and voters aren't always perfectly informed. It's a really bad call.

[broncofan]

I'm not sure if anyone is interested in sharing but I'm just curious if anyone wants to say a few words about what precautions they're taking. We're at the point in the U.S. where we have fewer cases but there's still a risk in social interaction and things are opening up again. As I've said, there really aren't any new therapeutics if one gets sick but I can tell people are less afraid, or maybe everyone is getting a better sense of what is risky versus what is relatively low risk.

I work in an office and it is completely flexible when I have to come in as most of my work can be done remotely and my employer has no problem with that. I work with three other people in about 1200 square feet so there is plenty of space to distance. I've been going in now a couple of times a week and the people I work with have chosen to do the same. I still order groceries delivery because I figure why not if I can, and I haven't socialized at all... in person.

Also, when I order packages from amazon I let them sit for two days, then open them and wash my hands. Nothing too tough for me. Anyone been taking a few more risks than that? Obviously it depends on where you live how risky a particular behavior is.

[broncofan]

I intended to put my last post in the covid-19 thread. Ignore it and I'll repost it there.

[Stavros]

At a time when the US is being shaken by the death of another Black Man in the custody of Law Enforcement Officers, I note that the President intends to hold a public rally in Tusla, Oklahoma -the same city that witnessed according to Wikpedia -
" "the single worst incident of racial violence in American history."^. The attack, carried out on the ground and from private aircraft, destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the district—at that time the wealthiest black community in the United States, known as "Black Wall Street".
More than 800 people were admitted to hospitals and as many as 6,000 black residents were interned at large facilities, many for several days"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre

I believe the choice of Tulsa at this time is entirely, absolutely, completely, utterly and indeed unalterably coincidental, and as anyway I doubt the President had ever heard of the 'Greenwood Massacre' before, confirmation from Mr Miller or Mr Cotton will I am sure confirm the coincidence.

[blackchubby38]

At a time when the US is being shaken by the death of another Black Man in the custody of Law Enforcement Officers, I note that the President intends to hold a public rally in Tusla, Oklahoma -the same city that witnessed according to Wikpedia -
" "the single worst incident of racial violence in American history."^. The attack, carried out on the ground and from private aircraft, destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the district—at that time the wealthiest black community in the United States, known as "Black Wall Street".
More than 800 people were admitted to hospitals and as many as 6,000 black residents were interned at large facilities, many for several days"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre

I believe the choice of Tulsa at this time is entirely, absolutely, completely, utterly and indeed unalterably coincidental, and as anyway I doubt the President had ever heard of the 'Greenwood Massacre' before, confirmation from Mr Miller or Mr Cotton will I am sure confirm the coincidence.

I first learned of the Tulsa race massacre three years ago when I was watching a Smithsonian Channel series entitled America In Color. I think a majority of people on social media first learned about it when it was depicted last year on HBO's Watchmen. So I want to give him the benefit of doubt that the choice of Tulsa is a purely coincidental.

[Stavros]

In the case of the President, ignorance is the most obvious explanation. In the case of Stephen Miller, I doubt it, hence the provocation, the intention to provoke, above all, to insult. Has there ever been a Presidency so mired in insult and abuse? Why is there such a desperate need to humiiate? When he ridiculed Hilary Clinton as a 'skank' I expected public outrage, a 'national debate' on the public insult and abuse of women, or is it the case that Americans are now so used to this constant barrage of insult and abuse that it just gets dismissed 'oh, that's just Donald' -?
And let's admit it, when it comes to insulting Americans, be they white or black, male or female, 'you ain't seen nothin' yet'.

[Stavros]

My thought for today is about Monuments and Robert Lowell. I have been reading Lowell since 1970 or thereabouts, not long after he moved to the UK and read one of his poems on a BBC TV arts programme. Although I then bought Faber's Selected Poems, on my first trip to the US in 1971, I was in the book section of a large department store in Chicago whose name I forget, and bought Lord Weary's Castle and The Mills of the Kavanaughs, so I coud read him in the US where he was born, into that New England elite whose names (Lowell, Winslow, Stark) are carved on a monument to the Mayflower in Southampton in the UK.
I saw him give a recital at the Poetry International in the Queen Ellzabeth Hall in 1972 on the night Josip Brodsky gave his first recital on defecting from the USSR, it was all quite emotional in the way poetry sometimes can be. Lowell, tall, angular and nervous offered a needless explanation to Water, arms thrown out 'It was a Maine Lobster town..." but I can't recall what else he recited, but may have the programme in a box somewhere.

I offer this because For the Union Dead is one of his finest poems, and concerns, in part, the Bronze Relief in Boston of the 45th Regiment the back of which was partly vandalized last week, though the whole thing is now under restoration.

"The first documented African American regiment formed in the north was the Massachusetts 54^th Volunteer Infantry, instituted under Governor John Andrew in 1863. African American men came to enlist from every region of the north, and from as far away as the Caribbean. Robert Gould Shaw was the man Andrew chose to lead this regiment.
The Massachusetts 54^th Regiment became famous and solidified their place in history following the attack on Fort Wagner, South Carolina on July 18, 1863. At least 74 enlisted men and 3 officers were killed in that battle, and scores more were wounded. Colonel Shaw was one of those killed. Sergeant William H. Carney, who was severely injured in the battle, saved the regiment’s flag from being captured. He was the first African American to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. The 54^th Regiment also fought in an engagement on James Island, the Battle of Olustee, and at Honey Hill, South Carolina before their return to Boston in September 1865. Only 598 of the original 1,007 men who enlisted were there to take part in the final ceremonies on the Boston Common. In the last two years of the war, it is estimated that over 180,000 African Americans served in the Union forces and were instrumental to the Union’s victory."
https://www.nps.gov/boaf/learn/historyculture/shaw.htm

I don't know if this poem is a monument in itself, but does it still speak to an American public in these febrile times? And if so, what does it say?

For the Union Dead

The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.

Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled
to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.

My hand draws back. I often sigh still
for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,
I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized
fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage.

Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse,
shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.

Two months after marching through Boston,
half the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.

Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
Its Colonel is as lean
as a compass-needle.

He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
a greyhound's gentle tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure,
and suffocate for privacy.

He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man's lovely,
peculiar power to choose life and die—
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.

On a thousand small town New England greens,
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic.

The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year—
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns . . .

Shaw's father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son's body was thrown
and lost with his "niggers."

The ditch is nearer.
There are no statues for the last war here;
on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
shows Hiroshima boiling
over a Mosler Safe, the "Rock of Ages"
that survived the blast. Space is nearer.
When I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.

Colonel Shaw
is riding on his bubble,
he waits
for the blessèd break.

The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.

[fred41]

Finally some good news in the USA, during these turbulent times, by a common sense (at least to me) decision by the Supreme Court to protect LGBTQ employees. In a 6-3 decision, with the majority opinion written by Justice Neil Gorsuch :

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/15/863498848/supreme-court-delivers-major-victory-to-lgbtq-employees

[broncofan]

That is excellent news. For years it wasn't clear whether Title VII's ban on sex discrimination covered discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Your article provides Gorsuch's reasoning with respect to sexual orientation which is that a man who is attracted to men is being treated differently than a woman attracted to men.

Would his technical reasoning be that it's okay to not hire anyone attracted to men as long as both females and males are excluded? I'm not trying to be nitpicky but you can see that insisting on this disparate treatment paradigm is a little mechanical.

Either way, better the court has decided Title VII covers discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity because Congress was not moving. Some states have protections for lgbt employees but the article says about half do not and I think civil rights coverage can go a long way to eroding prejudices.