“Let’s go, Brandon!”

 

President Biden was on the line at the NORAD Santa Tracker call and spoke with children who had called in to find out where Santa was. He and the First Lady were having short chats with them. One fellow was Jared Schmeck of Oregon, a fan of the former President Trump, who ended his time with the President by saying “Let’s Go, Brandon.”

Schmeck claims “’he didn’t intend his parting message to be vulgar.” But “The phrase ‘Let’s Go, Brandon’ has become a conservative dig at the Democratic president, a code for ‘F--- Joe Biden,’” so it’s hard to see how Schmeck could have been confused into thinking he was NOT delivering a vulgar insult to the President. Schmeck’s wife admitted online that her husband had indeed used a vulgarity against the President.

Schmeck called his remark a “joke,” and listed a series of policy disagreements with the President, but what he actually said was an insult and no one understands where the humor in his statement is. Schmeck also, of course, claims the election was “stolen” from The Former Guy.

Schmeck claims he was “utilizing my freedom of speech,” which is fine, but freedom cuts both ways. You’re free to use a vulgarity with anyone you choose, but others are free to disparage you for doing so.

I of course liked Joy-Ann Reid’s response tweet, but was very impressed with this one:

"Confession: I find it in poor taste to tell the President of the United States 'Let's go Brandon' when the man just wanted to wish you Merry Christmas. Good manners should still matter," conservative blogger and radio host Erick Erickson wrote in a series of tweets.

Fox News had a defensive-sounding headline for the angry liberal response, but appropriately stuck to reporting what liberals said.

Mehdi Hasan said:

“Encouraged by senior elected Republicans who pretend to otherwise care about ‘civility’ and who are never asked by the press to justify their indulgence of this childish and offensive slogan.”

Problem is, it’s one thing when you’re explicitly stating a political position like “Free the Hanoi 5!” or somesuch. Then people can recognize your earnestness and people can take your politics seriously. But when you use a vulgar slur, you’re just a vulgar jackass.

Update: Fox News does damage control.

Fox News called out their C-Team to run interference for the son of a Navy SEAL who thought it would be cute to insult the president so he could get a viral Instagram post. It was pathetic and so is Jared Schmeck.

Two examples that the Fox crew used. Yes, Robert DeNiro got up in front of an audience and said "Fuck Trump." He knew he was being transgressive and improper and his audience knew it too. No, Kathy Griffin did NOT meet with any approval for posting a picture of herself with Trump's "severed head." Her career as a stand-up comedian was dead for several years as a direct result.  

And again, I'm completely and utterly baffled by the assertion that Schmeck was attempting to make some sort of joke. There is simply nothing funny about his attempt. 

Answer to a piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

This was published in the Inky on 12 November:

Dems lie if they say that critical race theory not taught in schools

Let's parse a paragraph of Thiessen's commentary of this last Friday ("Dems lie if they say that critical race theory not taught in schools"):

For the Marxists, the bourgeoisie were the oppressors. For the Nazis, the Jews were the oppressors. And today, in 21st century America, critical race theory teaches that Whites are the oppressors.

In Marx's day, the "bourgeoisie," the businessmen who ran the factories and sold commercial goods were in complete control of the state. The politicians all represented the businessmen. Is that true today? Not so much. Many other groups have gained quite a bit of political power.

In Germany before World War II, Jewish people were certainly prominent in the government and the culture at large, but by no means did they hold a commanding position. 

White people in opposition to Black people certainly had a regional advantage. In the South, they completely controlled the politics of the region. In the North, the political power of the abolitionists grew and grew until the Civil War broke out. Today, the descendants of the abolitionists hold a grip on the levers of political power, but yes, the racists have made great gains. 

The panic over Critical Race Theory is easy to understand. If you're not guilty of harboring racial animus, then you have no problem with CRT being taught.   

Latest on Palestinians

 Generally, we've heard about military-grade attacks on the Palestinian civilians of Gaza (Gaza has been run by Hamas since 2005) as various cutely-named “Operations.” Operation "Summer Rains" in 2006, Operation "Autumn Clouds" that same year, Operation "Hot Winter" in 2008, etc. But the conflict in May 2021 has never received a name. The
difference was that Israel didn’t expect Gaza to decide to join the conflicts going on around Jerusalem.

Sheikh Jarrah had six Palestinian families living in it. According to an Israeli law that we have seen many variations on over the decades since 1948, those families had to pay rent or otherwise acknowledge that Jewish Israelis were entitled to live there owing to the neighborhood having been previously occupied by Jewish families. This would be a
reasonably fair rule, but it's an entirely one-sided rule. Palestinians can't make any similar claims. The Palestinians of Sheikh Jarrah refused to make even symbolic concessions. despite the Israeli Supreme Court ruling against them.

In a struggle that was going on at the same time and very close by, Israel was also trying to prevent Palestinians from 1948-occupied areas of Israel to attend a ceremony in the old city of Jerusalem at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Hamas of Gaza decided to ally themselves with the residents of Sheikh Jarrah by demanding Israel withdraw from there and from the Temple Mount complex. They launched a barrage of rockets after Israel refused to budge. The one-sided battle (May 10 to 17) resulted in enormous damage to Gaza. Hamas launched 4,360 rockets towards Israel. As the rockets were small and unaimed, 12 Israeli civilians, including two children died.

The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which provide direct relief and works programs for Palestinian refugees, discovered after Israeli bombs hit one of its schools, that Hamas had dug a tunnel underneath the school. The tunnel did not begin or end on the school grounds, but apparently just traveled underneath it. The tunnel was unknown to
civilians, meaning it was dug for military purposes. 

The war cost Gaza over 260 people, including 66 children and 41 women, and exacerbated previous traumas in particular among children. The World Bank estimated that up to US$380 million in physical damage and US$190 million in economic losses were caused.Recovery needs have been estimated up to US$485 million during the first 24 months. They also estimated that Gaza's GDP would contract by 0.3% in 2021 compared to an estimated 2.5% annual growth before the conflict.

Four high-rise building in Gaza City were also destroyed. Israel warned inhabitants just before the strikes, so they had the chance to escape. Allegedly, the buildings were being used for military purposes, but there were several news agencies housed in one of them. One would think that reporters would have kept an eye out for people whose very presence
would be a danger to them. A quick search showed no updates, no Israeli defense of the attacks, meaning no one has provided evidence that any of the buildings contained any legitimate military targets.

A term that has been used for the political post-war time has been “habbet Ayyar” (May outburst). Palestinians inside Israel and Israel-occupied territory since 1948, with residents closing roads, throwing Molotov cocktails and putting up Palestinian flags in place of Israeli
ones. On May 12, Israel declared a state of emergency in Lydd for the first time since 1966 and imposed a curfew on the city as the war on Gaza began to unfold. Over 2,000 Palestinians had been arrested from then until early June. Palestinians were led by regular people within their own communities.

A very serious result of the May conflict was that Congress wanted to send Israel $1 billion for the Iron Dome missile defense system that defends against Palestinian short-range rockets. For the first time ever, members of Congress refused to vote for a shipment of military goods to Israel The vote was very small, but was an ominous first. Currently, the
appropriation isn’t passed yet, Senator Bernie Sanders Is insisting that the Iron Dome appropriation be coupled with humanitarian aid for Palestinians. 

Senator Robert Menendez, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, usually a strong supporter of Israel, says he’s “troubled” by reports of “innocent civilians” suffering at the hands of Israeli forces this past May. He assured Israel that he still supports them, but his statement is unusual and worth noting.

Turning to the question of Israel’s laws that permit Israel to seize properties that used to
belong to Jewish people, but do not permit Palestinians to seize properties that used to belong to Palestinians, we need to ask: “Is it antisemitic to protest such laws?” By protesting such an imbalanced judicial system, are we being insensitive to the Israeli need to survive as a Jewish state that’s surrounded by Arab states?

The NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) B'Tselem says Israel is practicing Apartheid. Human Rights Watch agrees. Both the Jewish Israeli population and the Palestinians who live within the boundaries of both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories number 6.8 million each. If we insist that Israel must give equal right to Palestinians, then
isn’t that asking that Israel no longer be a Jewish state? Would such a demand be antisemitic as we’d be asking Israelis to give up something very precious to them or would it simply be asking for justice? After all, living under Apartheid is something no people would voluntarily do.

The Jewish comedian Sarah Silverman recently noted that progressives hardly ever mention Hamas. She identifies Hamas as a “terrorist” group and had some harsh words for them.

My own view on that is that I don’t think Israel draws any real distinction between Hamas, which runs Gaza, and Fatah, the Palestinian group that runs the West Bank. Both are under tight blockade by Israel, nothing and no one gets in or out without going through an Israeli
military checkpoint. Israel feels no obligation to let anything in that they have not approved. One could make the argument that since we’d like to see Palestinians have more unrestricted commerce with the outside world, that we’d “really” like to see the destruction of Israel and thereby, maybe we’re really just antisemitic. 

Our idea is that we need to draw a distinction between wanting to annihilate the Jewish race, y’know “Drive them into the sea” (that is, being antisemitic) and between being critical of the policies of the state of Israel, that is, criticizing Israel as though it were a regular country.

Truth and the Trumpers

Very interesting. “Republicans' trust in national news outlets drops by half in just five years” This piece details how liberals still have “some” or “a lot” of trust in the media, but for Republicans, that trust went down very quickly from 70% to 35% from 2016 to 2021.

Why might that be? The Netflix series “How to Become a Tyrant” provides an answer. In episode 4, the series points out that an effective tyrant must “Control the Truth.” He (They’re always a “he”) must control the past (The George Orwell novel 1984 showed us in great detail how that’s done) and he must, like a domestic abuser, “Plays mind games, such as when he denies requests he has made previously or when he undercuts her sense of reality.”

A dictator must have people believe that he is the only source of truth. That only he can be believed. That no other source is worthy of any trust.

Now, does this mean I or liberal friends of mine trust the media implicitly? No, we apply critical tests to distinguish truth from falsehood. There are certainly faults and problems with the media. CNN seems to believe that Afghanistan, the Texas “snitch” law on abortion and the economy are all “crises” for President Biden right now. They are, of course, nothing of the kind. But CNN has to get “clicks” on its websites and eyeballs on its TV show, so they’re desperate to make the news more dramatic than it actually is. .

Former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan says “It was not rigged. It was not stolen," Ryan told WISN 12 in a rare interview on Monday. "Donald Trump lost the election. Joe Biden won..." But here we are, 10 months after the 2020 election that Joe Biden won by about 7 million votes and “Two-thirds of Republicans still think the 2020 election was rigged.”

What is their proof? The “Kraken” lawyers, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani and others, are on the verge of losing their licenses to practice law, their lies were so clearly and egregiously false. The brainwashing appears to have worked.

Political quotes that really shouldn’t be made public

 

Political quotes that really shouldn’t be made public

awful @MeetThePress premise this morning: we're "divided" over Covid and masks! we're not: 70% have a shot. 70% support masks.

Eric Boehlert

The problem with the crush of COVID-19 patients using up most of the available ICU beds* and crowding out emergency facilities is that it’s all so unnecessary.

*Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Florida and Arkansas are nearly out of ICU beds as Covid-19 cases surge across the US — particularly among unvaccinated Americans.

CNN

Here are the ICU beds that are occupied just by Covid patients in each of 14 states. Now, if you’re vaccinated and catch even the dreaded Delta Variant of the coronavirus, it might still result in some unpleasantness, but you’re unlikely even to have to go to the hospital.

To say that Americans are “divided” is to suggest that both sides have good reason to feel the way they do. That, for instance, taking Ivermectin, a cow de-wormer that yes, people can safely take under some very specific circumstances, but that the FDA says please don’t use it for Covid, is a reasonable and rational choice. It isn’t. It’ completely insane to think that the vaccines that the US went to great length to produce and to safety-test and to test for efficacy is less safe or effective than a quack cure pushed by Fox News and other conservative commenters.

There’s also a problem with a claim that anti-choicers/forced birthers make, that the new Texas “snitch” law “...bans abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which is usually after about six weeks of pregnancy, before many women are even aware they are pregnant."

As the C&L piece points out, a six week-old embryo (It won’t become a fetus for another month) doesn’t actually have a heart!

The rhythmic sound that can be heard is "a group of cells with electrical activity. That's what the heartbeat is at that stage of gestation … We are in no way talking about any kind of cardiovascular system." That's all from Jennifer Kerns, an ob-gyn at University of California, San Francisco and director of research in obstetrics and gynecology

There’s absolutely no question that the people who came up with the term did so consciously and deliberately, with malice and forethought. But why mainstream news reporters keep mindlessly repeating that “fetuses” have a heartbeat after six weeks is a real puzzle. This is a claim that fails a very simple true/false test.

Another recent problem is that the Texas “snitch” law didn’t just suddenly pop up out of the blue. The law was passed back in May. The course it took to the Supreme Court was publicly documented. Yet, the Supreme Court decision landed like a bombshell because, apparently, the press was so wholly and completely absorbed in the withdrawal from Afghanistan (a legitimate and worthwhile story) that it just didn’t have any time or attention to spare for the gutting of a Supreme Court ruling that’s been in effect since 1973. The press played catch-up with a number of pieces after the ruling was made, but there was absolutely no need for it to have been such a surprise.

Why does this happen? Why does the press constantly use right-wing talking points that are completely bonkers or ignore a clearly important issue that will obviously have a great impact? My own personal theory is that media people like to run stories through people they feel are outside experts, who are always free to chat and who provide authoritative-sounding quotes. In other words, reporters have right-wing “friends” who have cultivated close relationships with them and who assure them that a fetal heartbeat at six weeks is a real thing and who discourage putting out pieces on something like the Texas “snitch” law that will make right-wingers look bad (Fox News apparently realized how unpopular the new law was as they didn’t mention it for quite awhile). Reporters don’t need to stop talking with right-wing “friends.” What reporters need to do is to get friends on the “other side of the aisle” who can provide corrections and equally authoritative-sounding quotes.

Glenn Greenwald's latest J'accuse

First off, we certainly should “want to see the evidence about whether NSA spied on Carlson's emails..." I agree.

But to simply presume that the NSA is guilty is not a journalistic standard we should support.

Greenwood's two examples are 1. Julian Assange, the Wikileaks guy. Were we seeing "the prosecution of a journalist" or were we seeing an asset getting caught while serving a foreign power? Assange crossed the line between being a journalist and between being an asset when he released Democratic emails right at the beginning of the 2016 Democratic Convention. By deliberately and consciously acting to affect politics, he lost the presumption that he was simply a journalist when he did that.

And 2. "NSA leaked Flynn's conversations with a Russian official!" A. If the NSA caught such a conversation, that's because they were spying on the Russian official and Flynn took the initiative of contacting that official. The NSA is certainly not going to stop listening simply because an American official has entered the picture. In fact, they should perk up their ears and should pay even closer attention, which is apparently what they did.

B. I am very much aware of the 1980 "October Surprise," which was an example of what happens when an incoming presidential administration takes the initiative to contact a foreign adversary and starts conducting negotiations without going through the incumbent administration. The accusation is that Reagan's people talked with Iran about the hostages that were taken by the Iranians in 1979. The assertion is that Iran's leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, agreed and waited until Reagan was actually inaugurated before releasing the hostages. In return, Iran received weapons which they used against Iraq.

So, in no way, shape or form should we consider Flynn's actions to be innocent or harmless. We have historical precedent that says we should be immediately and deeply suspicious when an incoming administration starts playing the lone cowboy before taking office.

Are the liberal media guilty of never taking risks or are they simply more responsible and more willing to base their stories on actual evidence? Because Tucker stating that “some nameless guy I ran into said he saw my emails!“ is not exactly what I would consider compelling evidence.

What’s the status on Critical Race Theory?

 

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has a surefire method of detecting when Critical Race Theory (CRT) is being taught. She identifies a course given by the National Children's Museum as containing the 1619 Project, a set of essays that described the contributions to American history made by slaves and by the institution of slavery. So the definition of CRT is pretty elastic, the meaning is broad and vague.

Further definitions are given by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, with them identifying “the civil rights movement, the KKK, the Versailles Treaty, Nazis, NATO/the Cold War, 20th century Africa & Asia…“ as all indicating a suspect agenda. In other words, CRT is what separates a school course on American history from a children’s bed-time story.

A Republican Congressman decides he’s

...against a bill to remove Confederate statues from the Capitol because it's "animated by the Critical Race Theory concepts of structural racism, microaggressions, and a United States based solely on white supremacy."

This is apropos of:

Today, the House voted in favor of removing all treasonous confederate statues from our US Capitol. 120 GQP Republicans voted against removing them, thus cementing once again that they are indeed the party of white supremacy terrorism.

Occam’s Razor

 

The idea of Occam’s Razor is to examine a theory. If the theory is relatively simple and straightforward, it’s more likely to be correct than if it’s really complicated. This was a piece in my local paper, today’s Philadelphia Inquirer (The Inquirer doesn’t like posting the author’s pieces because it attracts too many partisan commenters, so I have to use the AEI site to get an online version of the editorial). The editorialist comes up with what I feel is an overly complex theory.

He feels that President Biden wore a mask to his address to the Joint Session of Congress on the 28^th of last month. Biden also instructed the people at the address to socially distance from each other. But, the editorialist says, everyone there was vaccinated! It must be some sort of conspiracy to create an atmosphere of crisis!

Hmm. Or, perhaps, it could be that the COVID-19 crisis isn’t quite over yet. As we see in these two charts at the top, we’re doing well, but we’re not doing that well! It really isn’t time to break out the champagne just yet. In which case, Biden may be modeling the sort of behavior he’d like to see the rest of us adopt so that we can get out of the crisis faster!

The second theory presented is that Biden wants to spend a humongous amount of money and thereby needs to create a sense of crisis in order to justify that.

Hmm. Or, perhaps Democrats have wanted to spend a lot of money on infrastructure and other items for a long time and Republicans have been standing in the way. Check out how many filibusters they’ve deployed against the legislation that Democrats would like to pass. Filibuster motions filed per two-year periods remained in first the single, then the double digits until the 2007-2008 session. It’s been at least 100 per session since then. Maybe there’s a big backlog of legislation that Democrats would like to pass!

I tend to favor the second, simpler theory in both cases!

President’s response to 2nd impeachment

 

President Trump probably didn’t write out this whole document. My guess is that he ranted and snarled into some sort of recording device, probably banging the table every now and then to really make a point, and then some minions typed it all up and made sure everything was spell-checked and arranged into some coherent order.

A great deal of it re-litigates his first impeachment. Lots of details I take issue with, but this is an especially interesting one.

Fortunately, there was a transcript of the conversation taken, and you know from the transcript (which was immediately made available) that the paragraph in question was perfect.

Actually, it wasn’t a transcript that was made available. It was an informal summary. The documents that described the call to Ukraine President Zelensky were not made public. They were instead placed on a super-duper top secret server.

White House lawyers allegedly buried records of the call in a highly classified “super secret” server reserved for information regarding covert operations and other sensitive intelligence actions.

To my knowledge, the documents that were stored there have never been made public. The information that was released on the “perfect” call was 1. not released until after people were tipped off on the call by the whistleblower and 2. the summary was quite enough to caused shock and outrage across the country. I mean, why would someone who made a “perfect” call not wish to share all of the details with the world?

This is a big problem with the whole assertion that the President was innocent. The document asserts that Special Counsel Robert Mueller didn’t find any evidence, that the whole case against Trump was a matter of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Actually, Mueller found a great deal of Obstruction of Justice. Trump was very energetically hiding whatever he could. Again, not the action one would expect from an innocent man.

More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials.

Nothing prevented the Trump Administration from publishing information on their own that would have exonerated them. When the Republican-led Senate refused to allow much in the way of testimony, the Trump Administration could have used a wide variety of forums in which they could have presented their case. It’s hardly the fault of the Democratic Party that Trump refused to do so.

A few claims by the off-going, one-term President:

7 million new jobs; the lowest-ever unemployment for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans

Yes, Barack Obama left the economy in good shape at the beginning of 2017.

more than 170 new federal judges and two Supreme Court Justices

Actually, it was three Justices, but this record has far more to do with the energetic Republican Senate. The President was pretty much just a bystander in that process.

the elimination of the individual mandate

Theoretically, this was supposed to cause the collapse of the ACA/Obamacare. The ACA has survived quite nicely, thank you very much.

the first decline in prescription drug prices in half a century

Which had to do with the ACA. Actions taken by the Trump Administration had nothing to do with that decline.

criminal justice reform

This had far more to do with the House and Senate than it did with the President. There’s little indication that he did much more than to sign the final document.

a defeated ISIS caliphate

This happened because the military insisted that the President needed to simply maintain the Obama policy and ISIS would be defeated. Trump did not change the policy and ISIS was eventually defeated.

the replacement of the disastrous NAFTA trade deal with the wonderful USMCA (Mexico and Canada)

Trump made a few minor changes to NAFTA and then proclaimed that the “all-new” policy was a success.

withdrawal from the terrible Iran Nuclear Deal

An extremely stupid and unproductive policy that has not produced any positive results. By increasing trade with China, Iran has made up quite a bit of their economic losses.

cancellation of the unfair and costly Paris Climate Accord

Again, an extremely stupid and short-sighted policy that has exacerbated climate change.

recognition of Israel’s capital, opening the American Embassy in Jerusalem

A stupid and short-sighted policy that has infuriated Palestinians and has put peace with them further out of reach.

a colossal reduction in illegal border crossings, the ending of Catch-and-Release, and the building of the Southern Border Wall

What most people will remember about the reduction of immigrants coming to the US from Mexico, Central and South America will be “kids in cages” and the degradation of international laws on asylum. No one will remember any positive impacts. They’ll just remember the horrible cruelty.

Is it true that “[The Democratic Party] simply cannot compete with our record” or is it that the Trump Administration built a very modest and forgettable record that will quickly be overtaken by the incoming Biden Administration?

Side note: The First Lady Melania Trump wrote a piece that had an extremely odd list in it:

Paragraph four: “Most recently, my heart goes out to: Air Force Veteran, Ashli Babbit, Benjamin Philips, Kevin Greeson, Rosanne Boyland, and Capitol Police Officers, Brian Sicknick and Howard Liebengood. I pray for their families comfort and strength during this difficult time.” Note that the woman who was shot by police as she was part of a violent group attempting to enter a secured area comes first on this list. Interesting choice there.

The Capitol Police Officers are listed last. This can’t be attributed to her lack of proficiency in English. Raises a question as to who Melania thought were the heroes in the violent invasion and occupation of the Capitol.

What happened?

 

In January 2017, the Republican Party had all three branches in their hands, the House, the Senate and the Presidency. Now, in January 2021, all three are now in the hands of the Democrats. Why? What happened?

One of the issues that propelled Barack Obama into office in 2008 and that people showed a great deal of concern about, was health care. About 15% of Americans couldn’t get health care insurance because of “preexisting conditions.” Ever since at least the Truman Administration, capitalist health care insurance couldn’t deal with clients who were sure to cost the insurance companies more money in payments than they’d get from the client in premiums.

Obama stopped trying to square the circle and just made the ACA/Obamacare a public system where insurance companies would still make a profit, but not as much as they would have preferred to make. How did the Republican Party handle this during the time when the had the “Trifecta?” According to the Senate Minority Leader in 2017:

Only 20% of Americans support Republican plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act without offering a replacement. The majority of Americans want to see the law implemented as is or improved.

After seven years to come up with a replacement for the ACA, the GOP came up with a plan that was worse than nothing.

"I do not support the new plan," Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, told reporters. "A better approach would be...to begin hearings focused on the problems in the ACA, and let’s try to get bipartisan support to fix those egregious flaws."

Not sure the flaws in the ACA were “egregious,” but Collins clearly advocated for a more sensible approach than to repeal the ACA and to install a pre-ACA type of health care system.

In October of 2020, President Trump tried to put out an executive order that would replace the ACA. Essentially, he listed a lot of fine, wonderful, desirable goals without saying how those goals would be reached.

So that whole issue was a complete bust for the GOP.

How did the party do on the immigration issue?

The Trump administration was more hostile to immigration and immigrants than any administration in decades, making it harder for people to visit, live or work in the United States and seeking to reduce the number illegally entering the country.

…

People were denied the opportunity to apply for asylum and returned to dangerous conditions at home. Children were traumatized by being separated from their families. Trump’s signature border wall went up in environmentally sensitive areas.

Trump’s policy was marked by great cruelty. The Trump Administration tightened up asylum requirements.

The regulation raises additional obstacles to passing a preliminary screening at the border, eliminates multiple long-established grounds for granting asylum, and allows immigration judges to deny people their day in court by rejecting applications without a hearing. The regulation denies protection to nearly all who pass through more than one country on their way to the U.S.

The former First Lady, Michelle Obama, slammed the Trump Administration for, among other things, an awful immigration policy.

She said the last four years had been difficult to explain to America's children.

"They see our leaders labelling fellow citizens enemies of the state, while emboldening torch-bearing white supremacists.

"They watch in horror as children are torn from their families and thrown into cages, and pepper spray and rubber bullets are used on peaceful protests for a photo op."

Again, the last administration took on a policy that had escaped solution for a while, but its solutions were catastrophically worse than had they done nothing.

That last reference was to an event that will forever color views of the Trump Administration. Peaceful protesters were occupying Lafayette Square, right in front of the White House.

Last summer, peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters were met with rubber bullets and tear gas outside the White House to clear the way for President Donald Trump’s photo-op with military leaders and a Bible at a nearby church.

Basically, the President treated American protesters as though they were foreign enemies. Instead of simply sending a few people out to the square to clear the way and rope off a path to the St. John’s Episcopal Church, the President and his people strolled through after tear gas and massed police had violently cleared the way. It didn’t help that this occurred only a week after the brutal murder of George Floyd by four policemen in Minnesota.

Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, died May 25 after an encounter with Minneapolis Police in which former officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly eight minutes as Floyd pleaded for air. Floyd's final moments were captured on video, and his death led to rioting and fires in the city as well as widespread protests against police brutality and racism.

What the church photo op showed was that the President wasn’t particularly concerned about Floyd or even the general issue of police brutality, one way or the other.

A big example of tone-deafness on Trump’s part was the awarding of a Medal of Freedom to the radio talker Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh is popular with right-wingers. With the general public? Ehh, not so much. Obama’s awards were to people like Bill and Melinda Gates and the comedian Ellen DeGeneres. Obama’s choices were perhaps not to everyone’s liking, but they weren’t as in-your-face partisan as Trump’s choices were.

So, I agree that I’ve highlighted some of the very worst policies of the Trump Administration, with the Republican House and Senate often just playing a supporting role, but I don’t think there’s much mystery as to why Democrats have successfully taken over three branches of our government.

The House under Speaker Nancy Pelosi passed a total of nearly 400 bills by November 2019 that were then largely ignored by the Senate and the President, meaning that there was a demand for legislation that the other two branches simply weren’t addressing.

Response to "10 Best of Trump"

 This was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer today, though the Inky like to not post Thiessen's work online as that would open it up to too much blowback, so it's online here. Here are my responses: 

10. Yes, Trump inherited a good economy.

9. Yes, Trump improved on his own performance from 2016. But the younger George Bush did better with non-white voters than Trump did.

8. Yep, he joined the anti-choicers in person. Other Republican presidents kept their distance. This is really cool if you're an anti-choicer. 

7. True, the "Blue Wave" focused on Trump and didn't do any damage to down-ballot races.

6. "He shut down travel from China" - Contrary to the off-going President's telling, this was completely non-controversial at the time and remains so today. 

"held Beijing responsible for the pandemic" & "Trump correctly blamed the Chinese regime for unleashing the virus" - It may be satisfying to some to blame China for the coronavirus. China is indeed responsible for hiding and evading some responsibility for a natural disaster that started within their borders, but evidence is that the coronavirus spread across the world well before China was even aware of it.  

"and cracked down on China’s intellectual property theft." Again, this is a completely non-controversial policy objective. 

5. "[Trump] took out Iran’s terrorist Quds force leader Qasem Soleimani." This was an extremely stupid move that resulted in completely unnecessary hostilities. There was no evidence that Soleimani was up to anything in particular and his aerial assassination gave Iran a martyr that gives them a legitimate reason to attack American interests. Was deterrence "restored"? Hardly. The US flew B-52s above the Persian Gulf within the past week precisely because they feared that Iran would try to avenge Soleimani's death.

4. "He put Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court." Which is cool if you're a right-winger. That also meant Republicans made complete hash of their justifications for not seating Merrick Garland four years earlier. We can't blame Trump for that, that was the doing of Republican senators.

3. "[Trump] transformed the Middle East with the Abraham Accords." These accords did nothing significant to affect relations between Israel and Arab countries. These were arms-selling accords with countries that wee not hostile to Israel in the first place. As the columnist suggests, the Palestinians were simply ignored.

2. Yes, the CARES Act was passed on Trump's watch. As with the getting of a new Supreme Court Justice seated, the off-going President was pretty much just a bystander to the CARES Act. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had vastly more to do with that than he did. 

1. "[Trump] launched Operation Warp Speed." True. The operation gave laboratory groups money to pursue a vaccine, which they did. But when it came to the operation actually doing something on its own, y'know, to do more than just hand out money to other organizations, when OWS was called upon to get vaccines into the arms of Americans, it proved to be like every other Trump activity, a pathetic and dismal failure. Among other things, no one in OWS remembered to account for the Anti-Vaxxer Movement. There is no national public relations strategy to counter the Anti-Vaxxers.

Right-wing Letters to the Editor

Friend of mine said the Los Angeles Times devoted their entire editorial page to what they felt were under-represented right-wing views. It's worth it to go through them to know what the other side is thinking. Naturally, I had lots of objections tat I've posted here. 

In answer to Cecil Stalnaker, my objection to Trump has primarily been that he simply can't do the job. He's incompetent. he's also evil, but the fact that he brings nothing to the table in terms of answers to the problems that Americans are concerned about is my primary objection to him. 

To Deborah McMicking, okay. Where is your proof that Trump fans are not "racists, misogynists, white supremacists and more"?

To Brian J. Goldenfeld, but the “Russian collusion” was real! It was based on solid, verifiable facts! Remember, the Senate did not dispute anything that was brought up during impeachment. 

To Steve Murray, yeah, I don't have anywhere near as much faith that charter schools are worth taking time and money and attention away from traditional schools. I just don't think that capitalist rules concerning the purchasing of couches. cars and clothes apply to schooling. 

To Greg Winters, yeah, the Philadelphia Inquirer does what you suggest a lot. It features conservative writers and rarely prints rebuttals to them that readers send in.

To Joe Blackman, does private enterprise have a great deal to contribute to the battle against climate change? Yes. Absolutely. Problem is, it isn't enough. Had the fight against climate change been truly joined in the 1970s, when people first suspected that too much carbon was having a bad effect, we could have afforded to allow free enterprise to set the pace. But the battle now needs to move faster and more decisively. It needs the federal government to throw all of its considerable weight into the field. 

Asian and European countries have showed without question (Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries formed a good controlled experiment on this) that masks and discouraging large gatherings of people that were dining, drinking and/or singing together is extremely effective in preventing the spread of the coronavirus. Other things are important, but nothing is more important than survival. 

We determine who a racist is by their words and actions, not by those other factors. 

Trump supporters are wrong on the facts and the science. Period. Full stop.

Yes, I do understand what my opponents are saying. They're very often just plain wrong.

To Elaine Vanoff, I'm sorry, but "Contrary to many people’s opinions, this president has a sense of humor." Really? Seriously? Can you supply any examples from the past four years? Heck, from any of his public statements from the past 20 years? Can you name anything he said that wasn't cruel or vicious or hateful? All of his "humor" consists of insults. 

To John Lynn, I apologize that the left has not defined its positions carefully enough, but seriously, if you're puzzled by the statement "defunding the police," please don't expect Fox News host Sean Hannity to explain it to you. Representative AOC has explained what it really means. It really helps to look up what people really mean in their own words rather than to rely on opponents of theirs. 

Aughh! The stupid! It burns!

 Mercedes Schlapp tells us what the President means. 

1:00 minute mark: Utter and complete revisionist horse$#@%! The President did ***nothing*** to encourage the productions of needed equipment for fighting the coronavirus!

1:20: It was HARDLY the unique inspiration of the President to press for a rapid cure!

1:30: Again, this is why liberals consider the President to have been completely unqualified for his job from the outset! Why did he need to get sick in order to understand how serious COVID-19 was?!?!?!

1:50: What’s the alternative to “being in lockdown?” Duh! 3% of the people who get the coronavirus DIE!!! About 20% need to be hospitalized. This is no joke, people!

2:05: Uh yeah, actually. Staying indoors and not taking unnecessary risks DOES work! That’s why all of the other advanced nations are in much better shape than we are!

Parsing a Tweet from the off-going President

 Trump tweeted: 

For years the Dems have been preaching how unsafe and rigged our elections have been. Now they are saying what a wonderful job the Trump Administration did in making 2020 the most secure election ever. Actually this is true, except for what the Democrats did. Rigged Election!

To which I'd answer:

1. Democrats were worried because the Senate and the Trump Administration both refused to pass bills that would make elections more secure.

2. It was wonderful that people within the administration, who were obviously not aided by the President, were able to build upon the strength of an already-robust system to produce good results.

3. There's no evidence that Democrats rigged the election. The margins are far too large to be explained by any wort of rigging.

Letter to the Editor 10 November

 

 

The letter-writer writes to the Philadelphia Inquirer to express her support for President Trump.

First, she learns from a relative of hers that the relative opposed Trump strictly due to his personality. I agree that this is a really stupid reason to oppose a politician. The younger George Bush was reputed to be a really cool guy to have a beer with. I have no doubt that he would be. Problem is, he ignored warnings about 9-11, launched the completely unnecessary Iraq War, left people stranded after Hurricane Katrina and opposed efforts to work against climate change. Does being a cool guy to have a beer with make up for any of that? Hardly.

She feels businesses are never over-budget. Erm, consumers and businesses both take out bank loans for cars, houses, equipment, paying employees when a business first starts up, etc. That’s exactly how deficit spending works. The government gives itself a loan by selling bonds and pays those bonds off. If she were really serious about how terrible deficit spending was, she would have opposed Trump’s 2017 tax cut that exploded the deficit!

Did he care and try hard to solve national problems? Hardly. A reporter noticed that he couldn’t specify what he had done about COVID-19 during the months of February and March. That’s because he spent that time pretty much just sitting around and twiddling his thumbs, playing golf, conducting rallies and firing people who had crossed him during his impeachment. Obama spent eight years playing 306 golf games. Trump has spent half that time playing, at this point, 297.

The hospital ship USNS Comfort (T-AH-20) was indeed sent to New York City on 30 March, long after it was clear that there was a worldwide pandemic that required a “All Hands on Deck” approach and as NYC was reaching its peak caseload.

Was President Trump informing us in the daily briefings or would actual scientists giving us detailed facts and figures have done a better job? Was it helpful for Trump to have speculated that for people to have injected themselves with bleach? Or would he have been better off actually attending the meetings of the scientists that happened before each briefing?

Will we “again, be the laughingstock of the world” when Biden takes over? Or did the laughing start under Trump?

Answer to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

 

The Post-Gazette tries to defend the President’s record. They repeat the same, tired old yada-yada about there having been a “boom,” but really, job creation levels have not been terrible, but weren’t spectacular, either.

The piece then talks about lowest Black unemployment, which was clearly due to Obama’s policies.

It talks of trade relations. I don’t follow that closely, but knew that soybeans were the biggest issue for a while. How’s that doing? Oops! “YTD: U.S soybean sales to China lowest in 5 years”

Sending jobs overseas. What has he actually done about that?!?!? Moving the debate is all very fine and well, but actually getting something done on the issue will require focus and attention to detail, neither of which he’s known for.

Being a Democrat, I’m not the slightest bit impressed with his putting “originalists” onto the Supreme Court. Amy Coney Barrett is only “best” if you ignore her extremely rushed confirmation and how completely out of step she is with Americans in general.

Energy? Well, yeah, energy has been going great if you regard burning more fossil fuels as good. That’s obviously NOT good if you know anything about the science of climate change.

This is really sad:

Has Mr. Trump handled the pandemic perfectly? No. But no one masters a pandemic. And the president was and is right that we must not cower before the disease and we have to keep America open and working.

Actually, most of the countries on the planet have handled the pandemic far better than Trump has. The very first thing we desperately needed to do, and which the US miserably failed to do, was to produce Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). This failure is especially sad as producing equipment for wars has been a specialty of the US Government going back at least to the Civil War.

And yes, I agree with and endorse this sentiment 100%!

He is not a unifier. He often acts like the president of his base, not the whole country. He has done nothing to lessen our divisions and has, in fact, often deepened them.

This is probably the single most important job any president can have. To move the country in a direction that’s healthy for all Americans. The people, united, have a wisdom that exceeds that of any one individual or party. The president can move out ahead and can slowly bring people along. See Barack Obama and gays in the military. By moving slowly but purposefully, he repealed the Clinton-era “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and instituted full equality. Trump can’t do anything like that because he simply isn’t disciplined enough to pull it off.

How has Trump done at turning people against DACA or the Dreamers? Not so hot.

In fact, the poll indicates that wide swaths of registered voters support Dreamers regardless of gender, education, income, ethnicity, religion and ideology. That includes 68 percent of Republicans, 71 percent of conservatives and 64 percent of those who approve of the job Trump is doing.

From the very beginning of his presidency, Trump has opposed the Dreamers. At this late date, he clearly hasn’t brought anyone along with him.

The Post-Gazette has a lot of criticisms of Biden, but all of that is based on sheer guesswork and their peering into a crystal ball.

Color me extremely unimpressed! Vote out Trump and put in Biden!

Closing arguments against re-electing Donald Trump as President

PBS put out an episode of Frontline that’s a bit less than an hour on how Donald Trump has handled the COVID-19 pandemic. PBS is less partisan then the media I normally consume, so I recommend it for people who are more middle-of-the-road than I am. The episode blames President Obama for not leaving the US as prepared as he could have. I found all of their arguments on that score to be reasonable and well-documented.

They had a Rear Admiral who was in charge of the  FEMA Supply Chain Stabilization Task Force who was, wow, he sounded straight out of the Vietnam War "Five O'Clock Follies," and just kept repeating that everything was fine and everybody was well-supplied. The report makes it clear that neither assertion was true.

What particularly infuriated me was when the President had a "meeting" with regular doctors (Around the 30 minute mark in the episode). With Trump sitting down, everybody else standing and everyone facing the camera (Trump had to crane his neck back to talk to people), it was crystal clear that the "meeting" was intended to be nothing more than a quick photo-op. The President clearly had no interest in getting input from the field.

One of the weaknesses of the episode is that it nowhere mentions that the US shipped off large quantities of supplies that we urgently needed here at home. Nothing wrong with helping out other countries, as long as we have a fully-functioning supply chain that’s busy cranking out enough supplies for both US domestic needs and for what foreigners need. This Twitter thread details the large quantities of supplies that were sent off to other countries in March. Apparently, the Trump Administration ceased to do this at the end of March, but it’s just amazing that they had so little concern for what our own domestic needs were.

The result of all of these shortages of basic equipment and of the President slacking off on the wearing of masks is that we’re now heading for a third peak of infections! Every other country just had one. They might be headed for another wave of infections, but the US never stopped getting a high rate of infections, so our ”wave” just keeps getting higher and higher.

The President admitted on October 15th that he owes around $400 million. This is extremely serious. When agencies investigate people for security clearances, one of the first things they look at is whether the person is financially secure. If they’re not, they’re open to being blackmailed! This, in light of the fact that the President has tried extremely hard, throughout his presidency, to keep his income tax returns a secret. CNBC:

Since entering the White House, Mr. Trump has broken with tradition set by his predecessors by not only refusing to release his tax returns but by waging a legal battle to keep them hidden.

What else is he hiding, even after the NY Times revealed many years worth of tax returns? Point 3 in the CNBC report says that Trump has lost $315 million on his golf courses since 2000. The United States has an extreme security risk in that the President owes so much money and that the US still doesn’t have a complete picture of his finances.  

Amazingly, there are still people who are skeptical that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. The Republican-led Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that Russia intervened from 2014 to 2017. Is Russia still meddling? Well, if the Trump Administration is trying to show that Russia isn’t meddling, it’s taking actions that increase Democratic suspicions rather than to disprove them.

A blog reports that: “The Presidency of the United States Has Been Penetrated By Russian Intelligence: The US Intelligence Community Determined That Rudy Giuliani Was the Target of a Russian Intelligence To Use Him To Influence The President & the President Was Informed of That Finding In December 2019!”

How has the President been on dealing with three foreign countries? Sure, Europeans may disdain him and think he’s uncouth and disloyal to NATO, but hey, he’s been effectively dealing with Venezuela, Iran and North Korea, right?

Trump has been trying to conduct a “regime change” in Venezuela for quite a while now.  Juan Guaido – president of the National Assembly who is recognized as Venezuela’s legitimate leader by more than 50 countries, has been trying to overthrow Venezuela’s de facto president, Nicolas Maduro since January 2019. The latest attempt was in early May. Venezuela is undergoing a massive humanitarian crisis with a 94% poverty rate, but Hollywood fantasies expressed in initiatives like Operation Gedeon give the government legitimacy and encourage Venezuelans to “rally ‘round the flag” in opposition to the imperialist US.

The “Maximum Pressure” campaign against Iran has been similarly unsuccessful.

While many ordinary Iranians are suffering, the economy is not in total free fall, as many in Washington hoped for. Instead, the country has shown signs of economic recovery, with domestic production and employment increasing. According to Iran’s Central Bank chief Abdolnaser Hemmati, Iran’s nonoil gross domestic product grew by 1.1 percent last year. Prominent Iranian economist Saeed Laylaz also contends that Iran’s economy can weather the coronavirus pandemic and may experience growth this year despite the virus.

For years, the Trump Administration has taken the view that Iran was about to collapse and surrender any day. Clearly, that’s not going to happen.

How has the US been doing with North Korea? It’s hardly Trump’s fault that North Korea threatens the US with nuclear weapons. They’ve been doing that under many leaders for many years. ArmsControl.org refers many time to “denuclearization.” But has North Korea agreed to a definition of the term? It’s impossible to engage in any serious negotiations unless both parties agree to terms that are critical to the issue that’s under discussion. Apparently, according to NK, that term means that everybody in the entire world must decommission their nuclear arms all at once. The US is, of course, highly unlikely to ever agree to this. In July of this year, North Korea declared that denuclearization “is not possible at this point in time.” So, despite President Trump making many cheerful declarations, diplomacy with NK isn’t any further advanced than it was when Trump entered office.

There are many other issues we could discuss, including the President’s apparent belief that he’s free to discuss wacky theories like what QAnon brings up as though he’s just some private citizen that no one takes seriously, but he is taken seriously by many millions of people as they, quite reasonably, believe that he has access to the best and most current information.

My view is that he’s accomplished nothing of note in the last 3-plus years and that his record simply does not justify giving him another term.  

Update: The former star of Cheers, Kirstie Alley, weighs in on the election:

Kirstie Alley

@kirstiealley

· 9h

I’m voting for @realDonaldTrump because he’s NOT a politician. I voted for him 4 years ago for this reason and shall vote for him again for this reason. He gets things done quickly and he will turn the economy around quickly. There you have it folks there you have it

1. Agree. Trump is an utterly incompetent politician. 2. "He gets things done..." Erm, ah, no. No, he doesn't. He can't get things done at all. See the above essay. 3. "he will turn the economy around..." For the same reason he can't apply "Law 'N' Order," no, he can't turn the economy around because he's responsible for the horrible shape that it's in today. Nothing is going to change after a successful election.

President Trump and the coronavirus

 This, to me, is the Trump Administration's worst failure. 

Was Trump responsible for the existence of COVID-19? No, and neither was China (Which is why it's racist to call it the "China virus").

Was he responsible for it spreading to the US? No, it spread everywhere. Even though the route from China to the US was partially blocked, evidence has shown that it was Italy was the main portal that the coronavirus came from. 

The REAL problem is pointed out in this piece: "...hospitals were pleading for masks, gloves, and other personal protective equipment to safeguard their medical staff." 

The piece goes on to document the Trump Administrations faith in the free market. But the free market was simply not the answer, as producing equipment is something that the federal government has done extremely well for well over a century. 

As the piece explains, the need for the federal government to take the lead was obvious. This is something that, over the past several months, has gotten better. But this, and other problems the piece points to ("With just 4% of the world’s population, we now account for 20% of global deaths from the virus."), shows that Trump is simply incapable of doing the job of President. 

The free market was simply incapable of doing the job of supplying America's hospitals with what was needed and The President deserves every curse and insult he's gotten for not recognizing this.

Update I: The Press Secretary condemned the Vanity Fair story and is heavily criticized by commenters on Twitter. 

Update II: From a Vanity Fair story about the Pentagon being allocated $1 billion to fight the pandemic by producing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE - gowns, masks, gloves, etc.) and then deciding to spend it on other things.  

Meanwhile, U.S. health officials say there are still significant funding gaps in the country’s pandemic response, with CDC director Robert Redfield warning a Senate panel last week that states urgently need about $6 billion for vaccine distribution. There is still a severe shortage of N95 masks at multiple U.S. hospitals. 

Conversation on occupation of the South in the late 1860s

Had a lengthy and interesting conversation on Facebook with someone who described himself as an amateur historian and appeared to be suggesting that Black people weren’t ready for emancipation in 1865.

He was initially upset by my posting a piece saying that Black Lives Matter people drove off a group of white supremacists, or in his telling, patriotic Georgians who were defending their heritage.

We discussed whether the Civil War was really all about slavery. I replied that yes, it was. As evidence, I supplied a link to the declarations of various Southern states in 1861 that made it very clear that, yes, slavery was the issue that was uppermost in their minds when the war commenced.

We got into a discussion about Black people in the South who died in the years immediately after they were freed from slavery.

Former slaves were left without any livelihood or means of support. They simply moved into the woods and lived a stone-age hunter-gatherer existence. According to a speech given by the Governor of Mississippi, it resulted in the death of one million blacks - dwarfing the combined deaths of Union and Confederate soldiers.

I first encountered this in one of Sierra Club founder John Muir's adventure books. He met such a family while on his thousand-mile walk from Indiana to Florida. His description is appalling.

He supplied a link to a piece that confirmed this after I searched around and found an author who confirmed that yes, perhaps a million Black people died during Reconstruction. He appeared to hint and suggest that Black people just weren’t ready for freedom by suggesting that it was the Emancipation Proclamation that killed them.

My own theory is taken from Carl von Clausewitz, who wrote On War. He lived from 1780 to 1831. The book was published after he died. He was a Prussian general in the Napoleonic wars. Basic idea of the book was that war is politics by another means. What this tells us is that the occupation that follows the fighting can be just as important to victory as the battlefield combat is.

Let’s start with the idea of “40 acres and a mule.” The single most profitable investment a Southerner could make was land and slaves. How much money were Southern landowners putting into land and slaves?

Since planters needed ever more funds to invest in land and labor, they drew on global capital markets; without access to the resources of New York and London, the expansion of slave agriculture in the American South would have been all but impossible.

So then, all of the sudden in 1865, all of the labor that plantation owners had purchased as an investment, walked off the job. Contracts are based on mutual advantage. Slaves weren’t getting any advantage, so there was no reason for them to stay on the job once the force that had been keeping them there was removed.

So the popular idea was to simply confiscate those plots of 40 acres from Southern landowners. That would most likely have required more force than Northerners were willing to deploy. When people who have lost a fortune are pressed further, they’ll strike back.

Now, if I were the George Marshall of the Lincoln Administration (See Marshall Plan of 1948) and was put in charge of planning the post-war reconstruction of the South, I’d give each freed slave money enough to purchase “40 acres and a mule.” That way, Southern landowners would get something out of the deal, even though they’d lose land and might switch to paying laborers as opposed to simply forcing them into working. If the former slave wanted to put money into industry instead, the US was starting up a really expansive phase of the Industrial Revolution, so there were plenty of opportunities there.

Why couldn’t the US do that? Lincoln was assassinated and Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s vice-President, took over. Back in those days, the idea of getting a President and a Vice-President who were on the same page philosophically, the way Harry Truman agreed with Franklin Delano Roosevelt or that Lyndon Johnson agreed with John F. Kennedy, hadn’t really been developed yet. Andrew Johnson didn’t regard Black people as deserving of full civil rights.

Most importantly, Johnson's strong commitment to obstructing political and civil rights for blacks is principally responsible for the failure of Reconstruction to solve the race problem in the South and perhaps in America as well.

So, while the deaths of about a million Black people during Reconstruction is a really terrible thing, it’s not clear there was any obvious solution that the country was willing to accept.