Only a mediocre person is always at his best. ―W. Somerset Maugham
Greetings from the Far Left Coast after a week of atmospheric rivers, bomb cyclones, Pacific NW hammered by massive storms along the coast, disruption of a Portland school board meeting by unmasked anti-vaccine blockheads, and reports of illegal cannabis cultivation in Southern Oregon.
The good news front. Here in Portland 'twas breezy and damp but nothing to fret about. My neighborhood was spared power outages reportedly suffered in parts of the city.
The Oregon Health Authority reported that 80 percent of Oregonians eighteen and older have received at least one dose of vaccine against Covid-19 (OHA news release, October 28).
The rest of it. President Biden declared victory last week and split for Europe. Congressional progressives screeched, "Whoa, Nelly!" and once again torpedoed a major vote, leaving Nancy Pelosi holding a bag of unsavory content she does not deserve to have dumped on her.
Abigail Spanberger, Democratic representative from Virginia, where passage of the infrastructure bill could have given Terry McAuliffe a much needed boost it in the governor's race, summed it up:
I think it’s wholly apparent that today was not a success…
Because people choose to be obstructionists, we’re not delivering these things to my state or to the rest of the country…I guess we’ll just wait because apparently failing roads and bridges can just wait in the minds of some people. (Heather Cayyle, Sarah Ferris, Olivia Beavers, Dems limp out of another stumble-ending month, Politico, October 29, 2021)
As of this writing there are more vague utterances about progress, coming together, a vote or votes tomorrow or later in the week. Nothing we have not heard before.
As Adam Driver says to Bill Murray in The Dead Don't Die, "Aw, man, this isn't gonna end well." You know, zombies.
The Bulwark is a news website launched in 2018 by a contingent of Never Trump conservatives. I cite it so often because it is one of the best sources for commentary and analysis on the scene. Three recent columns and an open letter have my attention today.
Mona Charen brings us back to Virginia and the McAuliffe campaign (Will Critical Race Theory Sink McAuliffe?). McAuliffe's two-prong strategy has been to link opponent Glen Youngkinn to Trump and to plead for congressional Democrats to pass something, almost anything, that he can point to as an accomplishment.
Charen writes that painting Trump's face on Youngkin "hasn't stuck, partly because voters are too forgiving, but also because Youngkin’s affect—mild, non-combative—is so disarming." Democratic dysfunction in Congress does not help, passage of the infrastructure might have had some effect at the margins in a close race, but that is not why McAuliffe is in trouble.
There is no getting around the foul shadow Trump casts over the landscape. His presence cannot be ignored, but it will take more than talking about Trump for Democrats to win in swing districts and states they need if they are to have any chance to maintain a majority in Congress and keep the White House in 2024. Democrats need coherent and convincing messages about the economy, crime, and education, where voters express legitimate concerns. Youngkin has effectively played up these concerns while dog whistling to the base.
During the primary, Youngkin declined to say that Biden was the legitimately elected president and not the pretender who had stolen the presidency through fraud. Worse, he promised that so-called "election integrity" would be his highest priority, thus giving credence to the stolen election myth.
In a politically healthy country, forcefully repudiating the dangerous lie about the 2020 election would be the price of admission to respectable politics. Serious candidates would elbow their way to the microphones to denounce the violence of January 6 and the falsehood that provoked it. But in our world, endorsing the lie and minimizing the violent attack on the Congress are demanded of Republican candidates.
So here we are. Voters don’t hold candidates to high standards, nor do they recognize threats to democratic legitimacy, and so the Virginia race is too close to call. (Charen)
Crafting persuasive messages on crime and education will entail squaring some circles. It will not be easy. Take crime. We need to provide police with appropriate manpower, tools, and public support to deal with crime, especially but not exclusively the violent sort, while upgrading hiring standards, demanding accountability, and reining in the power of police unions to protect violent psychopaths, racists, and others who do not possess qualities and skills that should be expected of police officers. Rethinking and reforming how we provide for public safety and coming to grips with inequities in the criminal justice system rooted in race and class are part of the package. Among other things. Then wordsmith it so you can fit everything into a tweet or on a yard sign or bumper sticker or even into an NPR segment.
Education. It is just barely possible that not every parent agitated about what is taught in schools is an overt or closet racist who wants to deny the dark side of American history and some pretty dark stuff that is still with us. It is not good enough to respond to complaints about critical race theory (CRT) by blithely pointing out that CRT is not taught in public schools, that it is rather an academic legal doctrine studied in law school classes and graduate seminars, and moving on to the next topic.
Misinformation abounds. On one side critical race theory "has come to stand for virtually any discussion of race that annoys or offends" (Charlie Sykes, Why Ban?). It is an epithet of demonization from which there is no appeal, used in much the same manner as commie, fascist, racist.
On the other it represents revealed truth handed down from on high to the authors of the 1619 Project and further articulated in Ibram Kendi's gospel of antiracism. Well-intentioned but also misinformed people believe that critical race theory is just "actual American history." That is as far wide of the mark as specious claims that critical race theory teaches kids to feel ashamed for being white.
Absent from almost every discussion I am have seen reported are details about what exactly is being taught. There are dark and troubling aspects of the American story that has been downplayed or neglected altogether. Reasonable people can differ as to how these subjects should be taken up in public schools. That they should at last be part of the curriculum should not be up for debate.
The subject is a minefield even for teachers who approach history and culture in a rigorous, thoughtful, and historically accurate manner. Politicians, educators, journalists, and pundits—and the rest of us for that matter—will do well to be more attentive to distinctions between what falls within a general consensus among reputable scholars and the dubious polemics that dominate public discourse.
Bearing in mind: That general consensus among scholars should always be subject to critique, disputation, and revision. There is no one, single, true account of what happened in history. Facts can be slippery things. Interpretation and perspective are inescapable. But this does not mean that just anything goes.
More about my views on the 1619 Project and related topics:
In an interview at Politico: The Recast, John McWhorter argues that if we are going to have a Democratic Party that can win anything,
We have to bring in the views of people who are not leftist, but just liberals. And sometimes socially conservative. That would seem to be the only way because otherwise this country is going to be run by people who are bat-shit, crazy, ignorant fools, i.e., what has happened to most of the Republican Party. (Brakkton Booker, Diving into 'woke racism' with John McWhorter, October 29, 2021)
It is an interesting interview. McWhorter makes no bones about the antipathy between him and a pair of prominent writers whose views he does not share: "Ta-Nehisi Coates and I are not friends and it goes way back. He does not respect me. And as far as Kendi … he has nothing but the deepest contempt for me." Anyone who has read this far can probably guess that I plant my flag in McWhorter's camp.
Two more recommended reads from The Bulwark:
So what’s the real story? Is “cancel culture,” as many progressives claim, a “moral panic” stoked by the right and credulously endorsed by the centrist media? Is it a distinct and troubling phenomenon on the left, a pattern on both sides of the culture wars, or just part of the ordinary workings of culture and critique? How novel is it—have things always been like this, or has it gotten particularly bad in recent years? And just what does it include?
It’s worth remembering that while the pro-Trump rioters mobbed the Capitol, Trump-enthusiast Jim Jordan attempted to move “the ladies” away from harm. He reportedly extended a hand to [Liz] Cheney and said, "Let me help you." She "smacked his hand away and told him, 'Get away from me. You f—ing did this.'"
Which is exactly how all the bullies ought to be treated.
An Open Letter in Defense of Democracy authored by Todd Gitlin, Jeffrey C. Isaac, and William Kristol was published simultaneously by The Bulwark and The New Republic on October 27. The letter is cosigned by an array of distinguished figures with diverse views and perspectives. This may amount to little more than an honorable gesture. It is nonetheless heartening. Among the cosigners:
- Max Boot, Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations
- Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor and Professor of Linguistics Emeritus, MIT
- David Cole, National Legal Director, ACLU
- John McWhorter, Professor of Linguistics, Columbia University
- Katha Pollitt, Writer
- Charlie Sykes, Founder and Editor at Large, The Bulwark
- Michael Tomasky, Editor, The New Republic
- Sean Wilentz, George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History, Princeton University
I never tire of interviews with Fiona Hill. Here she is with Margaret Hoover on PBS Firing Line:
Margaret Hoover: You have said, Dr. Hill, quote, ‘I am really worried about Biden,’ with respect to the promises that he made to reinvigorate democracy in the United States and around the world.
What should the Biden administration be doing that they’re not?
Fiona Hill: Well, the real challenge for Biden himself and for the administration is to pull the Democratic Party around behind them.
I mean, I really, you know, hope that people who are in the Democratic Party in Congress, that their minds get concentrated by the real peril and challenge here, because this is a time, in fact, for all Americans, no matter who they are, to put all of these divisions aside, to stop thinking of things in terms of a win or a, you know, defeat for your team over another, you know, your team narrowly defined, be it blue or red, and think about the United States and the real risks to our democracy.And that’s the real challenge for Biden.
I think Biden himself gets it, but I’m not so sure that the people — all the people around him, are on the same page at this point.
If I ever said anything positive about the Lincoln Project, I hereby retract it. In case you missed it, these anti-Trump Republican blockheads showed up at a Youngkin rally posing as white supremacists, dressed in white shirts, khaki pants, sunglasses, and holding tiki torches. Their rationale according to a spokesperson for the group is that Trump Republicans go low, so they will go lower. I join the McAuliffe campaign and progressives who denounced the stunt. This stuff is garbage.
Late-breaking item too outrageous to pass without note.
The University of Florida (UF) is prohibiting three professors from providing expert testimony in a lawsuit challenging a state law critics claim restricts voting rights, saying the school should not be placed in conflict with the administration of the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis. (AP in Tallahassee, University of Florida bars professors from testifying in voting rights lawsuit, The Guardian, October 30, 2021)
So much for academic freedom and free speech. This is the prospect we face on a national scale if the Trump Republican Party regains control of Congress and the White House.
New blog post: Dispatch from the Bunker, October 23, 2021. The president and the congressional Democratic brain trust may yet pull from their nether regions something to pass in tandem with the bipartisan infrastructure bill (reference to a congressional Democratic brain trust being a venture into oxymoronic territory). At present, not much inspires confidence. But as longtime readers know, I am an eternal pessimist. I could be wrong… read more>>
Keep the faith.
yr obdt svt
Pictured below: Laurelhurst Park, afternoon. October 29, 2021