Culture isn't a box to be checked on the questionnaire of humanity; it's a process you join, in living a life with others. —Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity
Greetings from the far left coast where I am set to take flight next week, bound for Tulsa and the Tulsa Runner 20th anniversary celebration to enjoy family time with Trani, Candace, and Holly the bunny killer, catch up with Tulsa friends, and check out the Bob Dylan Center.
Debt Deal. Roll Call 243 | Bill Number: H. R. 3746 (Fiscal Responsibility Act)
Republican: 149 Yes; 71 No; 2 Not Voting (Jim Banks, IN; Lauren Boebert, CO)
Democrat: 165 Yes; 46 No; 2 Not Voting (Angie Craig, MN; Deborah K. Ross, NC)
Total: 314 Yes; 117 No; 4 Not Voting
I will go along with the "it could have been worse" chorus. Factions on both sides of the aisle have been vocal about their objections. Much in the bill is objectionable, but the consequences of those provisions pale next to what is at stake with default. The precedent ensures that Republicans will continue to use the threat of default to pursue policies that will harm many people by cutting social programs with the specious rationale that they are addressing the federal debt.
There was considerable posturing among the comrades who framed their votes in terms of principled opposition to work requirements, cuts in programs to address climate change, etc., as if people and programs affected would not suffer more from the effects of default. I hoped for better from Pramila Jayapal and Ro Khanna; as for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, I have all but given up hope. This is hyperbole but it reflects how strongly I feel about their posturing: In effect these progressives stood with the House blockhead caucus to vote for default.
Rep. Debbie Dingell of Michigan speaks for many Democrats profoundly unhappy about provisions in the McCarthy-Biden debt deal who are nonetheless willing to face up to the gravity of the moment. On Tuesday she concluded an interview with Geoff Bennett at the PBS NewsHour with this summation:
So, to a person, I know that everybody in the Democratic Caucus knows default is not OK.
…everybody is waiting to see how many Republicans are going to vote for this bill…a lot of people are just very unhappy about where we are…we're down to a finish line…where the consequences are so real if we don't raise the debt ceiling.
So I think there are a lot of unhappy people who know that we have got to protect our country. (Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell discusses her concerns with the debt deal, May 30, 2023)
Rep. Troy Carter (Dem-La.) expressed the sentiment of many Democrats after the vote: "“I have mixed emotions because, on one hand, I think that what our colleagues are doing is punitive and just bad for a country. But I also recognize the importance of protecting the full faith and credit of my country” (Jordain Carney, House passes bipartisan debt deal, sending it to Senate, Politico, May 31, 2023).
Now on to the Senate, where Lindsey Graham, for whom no amount of defense spending will ever be enough, libertarian Rand Paul, and Mike Lee from Utah threaten to gum up the works with their own posturing.
I had intended to write about the PEN America incident where "The 'Writers in Exile' panel at PEN’s big annual World Voices festival…was scrubbed at the last minute after two Ukrainian writers appearing on a different panel the same day refused to participate if the festival included Russians—any Russians." Cathy Young beat me to it with thoughtful comentary on a complex situation. She followed it up two days later with a call to stand with Russians who stand against Putin in a column about controversy at Georgetown University's School fo Foreign Service, where the graduation ceremony included a "'call for freedom' for imprisoned Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny and for other political prisoners around the world." Daria (“Dasha”) Navalnaya, a junior psychology major at Stanford University with a record of antiwar activism, was invited to speak on behalf of her father.
This led to a protest organized by a handful of Ukrainian and Georgian graduate students who, like many other Ukrainians, regard Navalny as a Russian imperialist in deceptive liberal packaging. A number of other students, including several prominent in the student government, joined in asking Georgetown’s leadership to reconsider the invitation.
The school stood firm:
"We do not disinvite speakers on the Georgetown campus, and we don’t dissuade speakers from speaking," School of Foreign Service Dean Joel Hellman told Politico. Two more keynote speakers were added to make the lineup more diverse…Otherwise, however, Navalnaya’s appearance went ahead as planned.
Young concludes:
Ultimately, Georgetown took the right approach to the issue, reassuring the Ukrainian and Georgian protesters that their concerns were being heard and giving them the opportunity to publicly express their point of view without silencing the Russian speaker. Cancellations that target anti-Putin Russians in the West pale next to the tragedy of the war—but they should still be opposed for reasons both moral and practical: moral because freedom of expression matters; practical because such cancellations help the Russian propaganda machine far more than some Russian dissidents’ badly worded criticisms of Ukrainian nationalism.
Recommended reading:
The DEI spending of 2020 and 2021 was a signal sent from executives to workers that the bosses are good people who value DEI, a signal executives sent because many workers valued it…At best, they symbolized something like “We care and we’re willing to spend money to prove it.” But don’t results matter more than intention?
A more jaded appraisal is that many kinds of DEI spending symbolize not a real commitment to diversity or inclusion, let alone equity, but rather the instinctive talent that college-educated Americans have for directing resources to our class in ways that make us feel good.
In that telling, the DEI-consulting industry is social-justice progressivism’s analogue to trickle-down economics: Unrigorous trainings are held, mostly for college graduates with full-time jobs and health insurance, as if by changing us, the marginalized will somehow benefit. But in fact, the poor, or the marginalized, or people of color, or descendants of slaves, would benefit far more from a fraction of the DEI industry’s profits.
New at Portable Bohemia Substack:
Jordan Neely’s Death Was Tragic, Too Many Responses to It Just Deplorable, May 19, 2023. A few times a week I check out the National Review website to get a sense of what is raising hackles among the conservative cognoscenti.…read more>>
This Running Life, May 21, 2023. The day began with such promise. It was a lovely morning out here on the left coast when I set out on my Saturday run at 6:30. I spotted a bicyclist before I got to the end of the block. Baristas were bustling…read more>>
Tulsa and a Good Faith Effort to Grapple with History and Divisions That Plague the Country, May 26, 2023. Judy Woodruff returned to Tulsa, where she was born in 1946, for an episode in her America at the Crossroads series for PBS NewsHour. Her focus is on the city’s efforts to come to terms with the legacy of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921…read more>>
Keep the faith.
Stand with Ukraine.
yr obdt svt
