Political Violence

I'm opposed to political violence, with some exceptions, like the overthrow of an oppressive government by the people (the American Revolution). Last year I wrote a blog post shaking my head at the number of people saying that political violence "isn't who [Americans] are." Gosh, political violence has been with us for centuries, practiced by individuals and the government. Right now, we've basically got secret police rounding people up based on skin color and their ability to speak Spanish. That's government-sponsored political violence and the Supreme Court is letting the government get away with it.

Today, Charlie Kirk, a right-wing political figure, was assassinated during an appearance in Utah. I wanted to take note of a few things he said in the last few years.

In October, 2022, Rolling Stone quoted him as follows:

Republicans usually tout a “tough on crime” stance, but right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk thinks a man who is set to be charged with attempted homicide should be allowed out on bail.

“Why has he not been bailed out?” Kirk said Monday on his podcast of the man who allegedly beat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s husband Paul with a hammer last Friday. “By the way, if some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out, I bet his bail’s like thirty or forty thousand bucks.” With a smirk, he added: “Bail him out and then go ask him some questions.”

It sounds like he was okay with violence against Paul Pelosi. 

This past June, when Melissa Hortman, a Democratic politician, was assassinated in her home, along with her husband and their dog, the BBC noted the following:

In the wake of the attacks, several of Trump's top supporters and allies - including Utah Senator Mike Lee, Elon Musk, conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer and activist Charlie Kirk - attempted without evidence to link Walz and Democratic lawmakers to the killings.

Lastly, Kirk believed that some gun deaths were inevitable and the price you pay for having the Second Amendment:

"You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won't have a single gun death," Kirk said at a Turning Point USA Faith event on Wednesday, as reported by Media Matters for America. "That is nonsense. It's drivel. But I am—I think it's worth it.

"I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational. Nobody talks like this. They live in a complete alternate universe."

We have the First Amendment, giving people basically the right to say whatever drivel they want. Kirk certainly took advantage of it, and now he's a victim of political violence himself.

Democrats almost uniformly condemn political violence, regardless of the political beliefs of the target. Charlie Kirk did not.

The Nation's Birthday

Tomb of Charles Sumner

Mount Auburn Cemetery

Watertown, MA

April, 2025

Yesterday, on July 4, I went to a small protest at Ashby and College Ave. in Berkeley. It's hard to get excited about the nation's birthday at a time when the president, his cabinet, his other appointees, about half of Congress, and 2/3 of the Supreme Court are doing their best to destroy democracy in the United States. To boot, this country was founded on slavery as much as it was on the freedoms and principles described and defined in the foundational documents of the country.

When I got to the protest, a friend was reciting the Declaration of Independence. I followed with a recitation of the Gettysburg Address. The words of Abraham Lincoln are always worth reading and keeping in our hearts and minds. They are as relevant today as the day he wrote them.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Also worth reading: today, Jamelle Bouie had a conversation, in the NY Times, with Zaakir Tameez, a young lawyer who recently published a biography of Charles Sumner. Sumner is best remembered for having been beaten on the floor of the Senate by another member of Congress, but he was a prescient and brilliant opponent of slavery. You can read the conversation at this gift link.

The Big, Ugly, Kill-People Bill

A brief summation of what the budget bill does to the people of the United States, from What the Fuck Just Happened Today:

Senate Republicans passed Trump’s $3.3 trillion tax and spending bill by a 51-50 vote after JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote. The legislation makes Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent, expands deductions for high earners, adds new breaks for tips and overtime, lifts the SALT cap to $40,000, and raises the debt ceiling by $5 trillion. A Yale study found low-income Americans would lose $560 a year on average, while the wealthiest gain over $118,000. The bill cuts over $1 trillion from Medicaid and other health programs and makes major changes to SNAP, adding work rules and paperwork that experts say will drop at least 17 million from health coverage and push millions more off food aid. Vance, nevertheless, dismissed concerns over the health cuts, saying, “Everything else […] is immaterial compared to the ICE money.” The bill includes more than $290 billion for border enforcement, immigration detention, and ICE operations. It also eliminates the $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit after September and phases out renewable energy credits starting in 2028. Republicans struggled for 27 hours to pass the bill before securing Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s support with carveouts for Alaska, $50 billion for rural hospitals, and the removal of a solar and wind tax she opposed. Murkowski called the process “agonizing,” admitted she “struggled mightily with the cuts to Medicaid,” but said the bill “still needs work” — minutes after voting for it. Speaker Mike Johnson said the House would move quickly, but warned the Senate bill “went further than many of us preferred,” and several Republicans are threatening to vote no.

Between cuts to Medicaid (it's called different things in different states) and cuts to support for the Affordable Care Act, up to 17 million people will lose their health insurance and millions are going to lose food support; hundreds of thousands or millions of people will die. Goodness knows how many people will be rounded up and imprisoned in concentration camps - because that's what "immigrant detention" stands for. And remember: ICE is rounding up people for having the wrong skin color or tattoos they don't like or not having proof of citizenship on them. And they have disappeared people who are United States citizens.

As a queer Jewish person, I know what happens to queer people and Jews when fascists are in power: we're next.  The vice president, who cast the deciding vote here, said that basically nothing mattered other than the ICE/border enforcement/immigration detention money. You bet I'm scared.

See also Nicola Griffith, on her blog.

The First of Many?

Christian Tetzlaff

Photo: Georgia Bertazzi

Christian Tetzlaff has cancelled his upcoming performances in the United States, owing to the Trump administration's policies. That includes seven performances by the Tetzlaff Quartet–one was a San Francisco Performances appearance–and three concerto performances with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. He's on the Chicago Symphony schedule for 2025-26. I guess he will be their first program change.

I expect there will be more of these. News coverage:

• New York Times (gift link)
• The Violin Channel
• S.F. Chronicle
• Alex Ross

If you have a ticket to the cancelled SFP concert, you have the following options:

·         Apply the value of the tickets toward another performance

·         Convert the value of the ticket purchase into a tax-deductible donation to San Francisco Performances

·         Request a full refund for the ticket purchase 

  Patrons may contact SFP regarding their chosen option:

·         By email: tickets@sfperformances.org (preferred)

·         By phone: 415.677.0325 (Mon-Fri, 11am - 5pm)

International Women's Day

On International Women's Day, I can't do any better than point to composer Pauline Oliveros's 1970 NY Times essay on women composers. I am driven slightly mad by it, because what she said 55 years ago is still so true today. Take this, for example:

At last, the dying symphony and opera organizations may have to wake up to the fact that music of our time is necessary to draw audiences from the people under 30. The mass media, radio, TV and the press, could have greater influence in encouraging American music by ending the competition between music of the past and music of the present.

JFC, some things never change. Audience members who were under 30 in 1970 are now 55 and up. Then there's this:

The second trend is, of course, dependent on the first because of the cultural deprivation of women in the past. Critics do a great deal of damage by wishing to discover “greatness.” It does not matter that not all composers are great composers; it matters that this activity be encouraged among all the population, that we communicate with each other in non-destructive ways. Women composers are very often dismissed as minor or light weight talents on the basis of one work by critics who have never examined their scores or waited for later developments.

It's infinitely harder to get anywhere in classical music if you're a woman than if you're a man, from getting your music performed if you're a composer to getting into an orchestra or getting a principal position if you're an instrumentalist to getting a highly visible job if you're a conductor. Just think about how many top level orchestras in the U.S. have or about about to have women as their music directors: three (3). 

Those are the Atlanta Symphony, where Nathalie Stutzmann is music director; the Buffalo Philharmonic, an orchestra that seriously punches about its budget, where JoAnn Falletta has been music director for many years, following in the footsteps of Lukas Foss, MTT, and other fine conductors, and the New Jersey Philharmonic, where Xian Zhang is shortly moving to the Seattle Symphony. Do you think a woman will replace her? I suppose we can hope that one or more of the LA Phil, SFS, and Cleveland might hire women, not that I'm holding my breath over this.

And of course, you are way more likely to be harassed or raped than a man when you're in school or in a male-dominated organization like an orchestra.

Updated, March 9, because I forgot Stutzmann at Atlanta.

Josh Marshall on the Current Situation

Words of wisdom:

I’ve said this a number of times. We’re embarked on a vast battle over the future of the American Republic, in which the executive and much of the judiciary is acting outside the constitutional order. That battle is fundamentally over public opinion. We’re in a constitutional interregnum and we are trying to restore constitutional government. The courts are a tool. Federalism is a big, big tool, the significance and importance of which is getting too little discussion. But it’s really about public opinion. And that means it’s about politics. The American people will decide this. That’s what this is all about. Waiting on the courts is just a basic misunderstanding of the whole situation. 

We Saw What We Saw

I'm not going to embed any videos, because I don't want to inadvertently upset or traumatize anyone who would be hurt, upset, or traumatized from seeing a Nazi salute, but: if you saw what Elon Musk did during the inauguration and think it was a Nazi salute, you are complete right. You saw what you saw and interpreted it correctly. Neo-Nazis seeing it thought it was a nod to Naziism and Hitler. Germans, who have some experience with this, thought it was a Nazi salute. 

For anyone who might want to see the evidence, I will link to videos of Musk and of Hitler himself demonstrating this gesture. I suggest turning down the sound.

• Musk at the inauguration
• Hitler on May 1, 1936. This video contains many swastikas, film of Hitler, and film of crowds saluting him. Hitler's salute is about 35 seconds in.

Note that Musk is also playing footsie with Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany; AfD), the farthest-right of Germany's current political parties, so far right that it's Nazi-adjacent.

I've got a conclusion about Musk, myself. He's not hiding his Nazi sympathies from us. The United States and its allies fought a long and bloody war to rid Europe of Nazis. Naziism is anti-American and completely antithetical to the ideals, still not realized, of the United States, as expressed in our foundational documents. And this is the kind of person that the 47th president is associating himself with.

The Fires

Oakland, CA

September 9, 2020

I took the photo above in September, 2020. It's a view up the street from my house, showing a couple of rooftops, some trees, and the sky, which is eerily orange, turned that color by smoke from the fires then burning to north of us. The great city of Los Angeles, 350 miles to the south of me, has now been suffering for a week from major fires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena, and smaller fires in other locations. Fire warnings for tomorrow, at levels from elevated to extreme, have been issued for everywhere in the huge geographic triangle bounded by San Diego, Bakersfield, and Santa Maria. (Gift link; scroll down to find the map with that area.)

The losses so far, in human life, in homes, in art and music, in community and the built environment, are incalculable, and I fear they will only worsen. Alex Ross, who has an abiding love for the architecture of Los Angeles and the city's deep cultural history, has posts about lost architectural sites and about Villa Aurora, which still stood as of Saturday, January 11.

The fires are a consequence of global warming and the failure of governments worldwide to take action soon enough and with sufficient vigor. The risks have been known to some for fifty years or more, yet preserving the Earth and its people has taken a back seat to profit. One of this country's major parties acts as though climate change isn't real, though its leaders must know differently. They have managed to persuade numerous U.S. citizens that it's not real.

If you're writing about the fires and about the losses, I encourage careful fact-checking. A couple of days ago, the destruction of Belmont Music, housed in a building at Larry Schoenberg's home in Pacific Palisades, led to fears that the manuscripts of Verklärte Nacht and Pierrot Lunaire had been lost. The former manuscript is in the collection of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. and the latter is in the Morgan Library, New York City. 

According to the NY Times (gift link), Belmont Music lost its entire inventory of performing materials for Arnold Schoenberg's works, as well as digital backups that were housed on site, plus letters, memorabilia, and related material. It is a tremendous loss for the family, for performers, and for all who care about the composer. It is likely to affect performances for some time, as Mr. Schoenberg rebuilds the collection –– but the composer's original manuscripts are safe in archives and libraries around the world. The Arnold Schoenberg Center has a helpful online database of the composer's compositions and the locations of the manuscripts.

The effects of the fires will be felt for years and likely decades, owing to the scope of the destructions, the number of people affected, and the economic and cultural importance of Los Angeles. I recently started listening to the podcast Not Built for This, which is about United States infrastructure and climate change. The second episode is about the ripple effects of the Camp Fire (Paradise, CA) and its impact on those who lost homes and the city of Chico. The podcast is sobering and frankly terrifying, well worth listening to regardless of where you're located.

Can We Blame Prop. 13 for the LA Fires? (And So Much More?)

I think we can. 

Proposition 13 made it harder, much harder, to raise taxes of any kind in California, and limited property taxes and reassessments. Basically, taxation can't keep up with the population growth of the state or with its infrastructure needs.

Take this, for example, from the NY Times:

Traci Park, the Los Angeles City Council member whose district includes Pacific Palisades, said the city’s water systems were among several pieces of critically underfunded infrastructure.

“There are environmental catastrophes waiting to happen everywhere with our water mains,” she said, adding that some were a century old. “As our city has grown, we haven’t upgraded and expanded the infrastructure that we need to support it.”

Consider the crumbling schools and roads in much of California, including Oakland, where I live. Californians voted for it because they'd rather have cash than infrastructure and because of concern trolling about older people threatened with losing their homes because of high property taxes. Blanket limitations on taxes weren't the right way to deal with that particular issue, of course: a split property tax roll dividing up commercial and personal real estate, or even some kind of age-based cap, would have done it, but no.

The Biden-Harris administration is jumping in feet first with aid for the state and city, as it would for disasters anywhere in the country. They believe that we are all in this together. Don't expect the same from the incoming administration.

Of course, there are other issues with fires and fire safety:

Greg Pierce, a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies water resources and urban planning, echoed the concerns over water systems that are designed for urban fires, not fast-moving wildfires. But redesigning water systems to allow firefighters to take on a broad wildfire would be enormously expensive, he said.

A more fundamental question, he said, is whether it’s a good idea to rebuild neighborhoods adjacent to wildlands, an issue that has been broadly debated across the West as climate change increases the frequency and intensity of fires on what is known as the wildland-urban interface.

Babies. Babies! BABIES!

Die Frau ohne Schatten

San Francisco Opera

June, 2023

Johan Reuter (Barak) and Nina Stemme (Dyer's Wife)

Photo: Cory Weaver, Courtesy of San Francisco Opera

The Metropolitan Opera has revived the late Herbert Wernicke's production of Strauss and Hofmannsthal's monumental Die Frau ohne Schatten, giving me an opportunity to get up on a soapbox that's been waiting for me for roughly 18 months, since San Francisco Opera's magnificent staging of the same opera.

Back then, I had a couple of friends telling me, oh no, it's not about babies! They're just a metaphor! Look beyond the words of the libretto!

I'm here to tell you, they were wrong. There was a moment when I pointed out to one of them that the Spirit Messenger makes it quite clear with his first words, which happen to be the second speech in the opera, that Keikobad, the Empress's father, is monitoring her fertility, and he told me he'd never noticed that:

Not our master, not Keikobad but his messenger! Eleven of them have sought you out, a new one with each waning moon. The twelfth moon is down: the twelfth messenger stands before you.

That is, there's been a monthly visit from one of Keikobad's messengers. They're checking to see whether the Empress is pregnant.

I went through the libretto last year and compiled a list of references to babies and fertility in the libretto. Here it is, including the reference above:

1. Keikobad is monitoring the Empress’s fertility, as the Spirit Messenger says in Act 1.

2. Keikobad threatens to turn the Emperor to stone unless she obtains a shadow, though it’s hard to see what he has to do with the Empress’s lack of a shadow. Is it because they really like all of the sex they’re having?

3. The nurse says in Act 1 “He has not loosened the knot of your heart, no unborn babe stirs in your womb.”

4. Barak to the Dyer’s Wife: “If you give me children to cluster round the dishes each evening, I’ll see that none of them gets up hungry. I’ll applaud their appetites, and give thanks in my heart that it falls to me to fill their stomachs." (Touches her gently.) "When will you give me the children to feed?”

5. Dyer’s Wife to Barak: “Two-and-a-half years I’ve been your wife– and you have garnered no fruit from me and have not made a mother of me.”

6. Barak: “I don’t reproach you, my heart is content, and I will be patient and wait for the precious children which will come.”

7. The Nurse of the Dyer’s Wife: “Alas! And she is to bear his children, and waste her life here in obscurity!”

8. The Nurse and the Dyer’s Wife: “Have you wept tears of blood because you have borne no children yet to that block? Quickly, quickly, Do you yearn for them in your heart, night and day? Do you long for a troop of little dyers to trample through you into the world? Is your body to turn into a high road, your slim grace to be compacted under their feet? Are your breasts to droop and their glory to wither so soon?” WIFE “My soul has grown weary of motherhood before even tasting it. I live here in this house, and that man shall not come near me!”

9. Nurse: “Putting away motherhood for ever and aye from your body! And dismissing with that gesture of contempt the importunate babes that will not be born!”

10. CHILDREN’S VOICES through the fish: “Mother, mother, let us come home! The door is bolted, we can’t get in, it’s dark and we’re frightened! Mother, oh, alas!”

11. “.....Or call our dear father and tell him to open the door! Or call our dear father and tell him to open the door!”

12. Dyer’s wife, Act 2: ”I put away from my body the children as yet unborn, and my womb will not bear fruit to you or to any other man, for I have given myself to the winds and the night air, and am at home here and elsewhere, and as a sign of that I have sold my shadow: and the buyers are willing, and the price is glorious and its like will not be found!”

13. The Brothers: “She has sold it and prevented the unborn children coming from her body!”

14. Dyer’s wife, Act 3: “Placed in your care, so as to attend to you, serve, love and bow to you: see you! breathe you, live you! And give you children, best of men!”

15. Voices of Unborn Children, Act 3: (above, from the dome) "Listen, we will say: 'Father!' Listen, we will cry: 'Mother!' Come up here! No, come down here! All the steps lead to us!”

16. EMPEROR: “Those are unborn children, rushing down into life on the red wings of morning and coming to us, who were nearly lost; These strong ones hasten down to us, like starlight. You overcame yourself. Now heavenly messengers release the father and the children— the children yet unborn! They have discovered us, and come hastening down! (steps down from the bottom step”

17. Voices of Unborn Children, to the Wife: “Mother, your shadow! Look, how beautiful! Look at your husband crossing over to you!”

18. EMPRESS AND BARAK’S WIFE "Both casting shadows as we were chosen to do, both of us steeled in the flames of trial. Close to the threshold of death, to being murdered in order to murder, but now blessed with children, and we shall be mothers!" EMPEROR AND BARAK "Both casting shadows as they were chosen to do, both of them steeled in the flames of trial, but now blessed with children and chosen to be mothers!" (A curtain falls, concealing the four figures and the landscape from sight) VOICES OF THE UNBORN CHILDREN "Father, nothing more threatens you, look, Mother, that terror is already dispelled, that led you both astray. Was there ever a feast at which we were not secretly always the guests, and also the hosts! Brothers! Friends!"

The above doesn’t include Barak almost killing the Wife when he thinks that she has sold her shadow or the way that Keikobad blackmails the Empress into seeking a shadow by threatening to turn the Emperor to stone. 

It's really beyond me how you can read the above (not to mention seeing the opera) and not conclude that yes, this opera is, front and center, about having children, and how having children is necessary for women to be fully human.

These points didn't evade Joshua Kosman, who got up on his soapbox about Frau in July, 2022, a year prior to the SFO production, and they're not evading Zachary Woolfe, who reviewed the opera in the NY Times this week ("You might think a four-hour allegorical ode to pregnancy isn’t your thing. But I’m here to tell you: Just go."). I'm going to slightly argue with Woolfe's description of Barak as kindly. The text suggests that his Wife is basically a slave, that she's someone he paid for.

Nobody is denying that one of the central points of this opera is the Empress's transformation as she realizes that she cannot take the shadow from the Dyer's Wife, one of the great moments in all opera, but neither are they denying the opera's focus on fertility and babies. And Joshua Kosman was clear about how this opera lands at a moment when the right wing in the United States has not only gotten Roe v. Wade struck down, it is openly discussing restricting access to contraception, doing away with no-fault divorce, and so on. If somehow this isn't pretty clear to you after reading the above excerpts, well, read them a few more times.

 

Turnout Updates

Well, there are lots of analyses of what happened and how Trump got more votes than Harris. See the various pundits in the NY Times opinion pages; see Robert Reich; see electoral-vote.com's summary, see various other people. 

But here are the latest numbers, as of today:

2016  Clinton: 65,853,514*        Trump: 62,984,828

2020.  Biden:   81,283,50           Trump: 74,223,975

2024:  Harris:  71,263,166          Trump: 74,849,554 
Previously:      67,825,418                       72,521,905

The question still remains: Trump's numbers didn't rise appreciably from 2020. Harris is running 10 million votes under Biden in 2020. Where did those voters go? They did not all vote for Trump, obvously.

It's About the Turnout.

Like pretty much everyone I know, I'm heartbroken and enraged today. (If you're happy that Trump will be back in office, getting another shot at wrecking our system of government and our country, well, we have a problem. You may safely unfollow me here or on social media.)

I'll quote Matt at What the Fuck Just Happened Today about Trump:

Trump – the twice-impeached, multiply indicted, once-defeated former president – overcame 34 felony convictions, 88 criminal charges, accusations of insurrection as part of his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, civil lawsuit judgments totaling more than a half-billion dollars, allegations by his entire first-term cabinet that he’s unfit to serve, his openly fascist intentions, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, his failed response to the Covid-19 pandemic that led to more than 400,000 deaths from a virus he repeatedly claimed was “going to disappear,” his repeated overt acts of racism, at least 26 public accusations of rape, kissing, and groping without consent, his promises to prosecute his political opponents, and the threats encapsulated by the Project 2025 agenda, to become the nation’s 47th president. 

Yeah. He's manifestly unfit to hold any office, let alone the most important elective office in the world, one where he has the nuclear codes. And everybody knows who he is. 

Here's what I think happened:

2016  Clinton: 65,853,514*        Trump: 62,984,828

2020.  Biden:   81,283,50           Trump: 74,223,975

2024:  Harris:  67,825,418          Trump: 72,521,905

A couple of states are still being counted, but they won't make an appreciable difference in the above numbers.

1. Harris's total exceeded Clinton's in 2016 and for all I know would have been enough to win in 2016.
2. Trump's high water mark was in 2020.
3. Overall turnout is way way down this year versus 2020. Biden got seven million votes more than Trump in 2020 and nearly fourteen million more than Harris this year. What. The Fuck. Happened. Everyone thinks Harris had a great ground name, a huge swell of enthusiasm, and the rage of women behind her. She also raised a cool billion dollars in three months. Who didn't vote? Who didn't care enough to turn out and keep Donald Trump out of office?

We'll know, I guess, when there are crosstabs and analysis of the vote.

* Please quote these vote totals any time someone tells you how unpopular HRC was as a candidate. So unpopular that three million more people wanted her as president than wanted Trump.

VOTE.

 

Zimmerman, E. M. & Shaw, A. H. (1915) Votes for Women: Suffrage Rallying Song. Zimmerman, M., comp [Philadelphia, Pa.: E.M. Zimmerman, ©] [Notated Music] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2017562229/.

Tomorrow is an incredibly consequential election in the United States. Make sure that you get out and vote. And keep in mind that some members of one party think that it would be just fine to take away women's right to vote, along with our bodily autonomy.

Happy Birthday, Jimmy Carter!

Jimmy Carter, 2014

Photo courtesy of The Carter Center

Jimmy Carter, 39th president of the United States, turns 100 today. He is surely among the most decent people to ever occupy the big chair. His post-presidency life has been, with his late wife Rosalynn, one of great humanitarian achievement. Happy birthday, best wishes, and may you live to cast a vote for Kamala Harris for president.

 

Political Violence

In the wake of the July assassination attempt against Donald Trump, I was amazed by the number of statements from public figures along the lines of "this isn't who we are." It's as though they'd completely memory-holed giant swaths of American history. To give you a sample:

• If the institution of slavery wasn't political violence, I don't know what is. Kidnapping free people, forcing them into servitude, making them property, forcibly breaking up families, committing rape, beating them, and abusing them in so many other ways, all on account of their skin color.
• If driving the Native Americans from their lands wasn't political violence, I don't know what is.
• Four U.S. presidents have been assassinated.
• There have been numerous assassination attempts that different presidents survived.
• Here's a handy list of all successful assassinations of American politicians, including presidents.
• Racial violence: there has been lots.

Apparently someone shot at Trump again today, and again they missed. As a friend remarked last night over dinner before The Handmaid's Tale, there's no scenario where assassinating Trump is a good thing. Campaign against him, speak out against him, campaign for the people and values you care about, vote against him. That's the way to keep him out of office.

Misinformed

 

Bayreuth Festspielhaus

August, 2015

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Associate Justice Samuel Alito, when he's not busy making things up about constitutional law and taking away women's rights, hangs out with right-wingers from more than one country. The NY Times has an article about his visit to Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis (gift link), a notorious German conservative. He reported $900 in tickets to musical events on his most recent disclosure form....and the tickets seem to have been to the Bayreuth Wagner Festival.

The justice is somewhat misinformed about how difficult it is to attend the Bayreuth Festival these days:

More details have emerged about the justice’s trip to the princess’s castle, including an interview with him by Christian Eckl, the editor in chief of a newspaper in Regensburg, who recognized the justice from reporting in The Times about the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. (Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion in the case.)

In the 32-second video, Justice Alito, with a beard and wearing a dark pinstriped blazer, spoke to an off-camera interviewer. The justice said the castle, seen in the background, was “amazing” and that he was looking forward to going to the Bayreuth Festival to see Wagner’s operas.

“I will enjoy it,” Justice Alito said. “A friend of mine has waited his whole life to get tickets to go, and so it’s quite a privilege to be able to go.”

Justice Alito did not say in the video which friend he was referring to, and he did not disclose any additional names on his annual financial form.

When I went to the festival in 2015, I'd gotten my tickets through my local Wagner Society, where I'd been a member for quite a few years without having attended. But the friend who went with me got her tickets on the festival web site in May of that year...five minutes after I told her I was going. You no longer have to spend years on a waiting list to get tickets.

It Doesn't Have To Be This Way.

From the NY Times:

There have been about 70 shootings at K-12 schools in Georgia between early 1970 and June 2022, according to data compiled by the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security. But none were as deadly as Wednesday’s attack at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga., which killed four and injured nine others.

The United States is essentially the only country with such lax gun controls and with such high levels of gun violence. We can choose to live our lives differently. 

The Quality of NY Times Reporting

I see a lot of complaining, much of it righteous, about the quality of NY Times reporting on politics and particularly the presidential election. There was that full-court press to get Biden to step aside; there's the constant normalizing of Trump's behavior and speeches even when he is outrageous and incoherent. And there there are specific stories that leave me pounding the table.

For example, take Jennifer Medina's story of August 22, Are Voters Ready to Elect a Woman? Democrats Say They Have No Doubt (gift link). Well, gosh. Medina goes into all kinds of twists and turns about why or why not this year is different from 2016.

What she doesn't mention: Hillary Clinton got three million votes more than Donald Trump. Americans were ready to elect a woman eight years ago. It's only the ridiculous and undemocratic Electoral College that kept her out of office. In any other country, she would have been elected president.

The Real Reason Things are Going So Well for the Democrats.

On July 6, I bought a "Dems in Disarray" t-shirt.

I did, really! But seriously, it has been amazing to see how fast the Democrats have come together behind Kamala Harris and just-announced VP candidate Tim Walz (pronounced walls, not waltz, and there go all of my good musical jokes), and how much money has been thrown at the campaign. ($300 million?!?!) It is just over two weeks since Biden stepped down.

Harris and Walz go together well, and as someone on xTwitter said, "It's the fun aunt/supportive Dad ticket versus the creepy uncles you can't be left alone with ticket." Right she is, although I might have said the Mamaleh/supportive Dad ticket! The Emhoffs are very, very clear that Harris is one of Ella and Cole's parents.

I missed her speech today, but caught his, and nearly fell on the floor when he said the word "couch." The two of them will just shred the creepy uncles if they debate.

The Veepstakes

Here we go: within about two days, we'll know who Kamala Harris is naming as her running mate. The candidates are, apparently, Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY), Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), and Gov. Tim Walz (DFL-MN). Note that those names are in alphabetical order. I do not have a personal favorite among them.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw both letters to the NY Times (gift link) and posts on Facebook supporting the notion that Harris should choose a Republican as her running mate. The names I saw included Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Lisa Murkowski, Larry Hogan, and Mitt Romney.

And what I have to say to my fellow Democrats is: Get a grip. And after you have gotten a grip, take a look at the platforms each of those people espoused during their political careers. They are Republicans through and through; anti-abortion, pro-military, anti-Voting Rights Act, anti-transgender rights, anti-diversity, anti-social spending, and on and on. You really don't want someone with those politics one illness, accident, or assassination from the presidency, not if you're a Democrat. Just stop with fantasies of some kind of bipartisan unity ticket.

I get that there are things to appreciate, and even admire, about each of them. Kinzinger and Cheney gave up their political careers because they recognized that January 6, 2021 was an attempted coup and they recognized that Donald Trump is a danger to democracy and to the whole world. That took guts, and yes, I do admire them for it. I'm grateful to them, even. It's good that there are a few Republicans who publicly recognize just how bad Trump is and the lengths to which he is willing to go. 

Romney has roughly half a spine, and it's true that he has done a few good things, including the universal health bill he signed when he was governor of Massachusetts. I own that Hogan and Murkowski are to the left of the others, but none of them are Democrats and they don't share the values of the  Democratic Party. We should never, ever, offer them the vice presidency or do anything to help them get elected to public office.