Now what?

In the wake of losing an election, some consideration of why your side lost, that is, doing a postmortem, is an entirely reasonable idea.¹

Assuming, that is, the desire is actual analysis and it's done right.

Neither of which we got. No actual analysis and what was done wasn't even done right. So let me start this by laying out my own bias, my own analysis of the "why," admittedly a limited one.

I think the Harris campaign made three significant mistakes. First, she didn't separate herself from Biden on Gaza.² Doing so would surely have cost her some votes but just as surely gained her a good number more.

Second, she began with a message of what could be summarized as "hope and the future" only to turn her back on her base, preferring to vainly seek votes among those all but mythical "moderate" GOPpers and the all too real 1% by campaigning with Liz Cheney and Mark Cuban instead of with UAW President Shawn Fain or other labor and progressive leaders.

Third, the last weeks of the campaign revolved almost entirely around "I'm not Trump." (Which was, interestingly, the same mistake made in 2016.) A legitimate stand, particularly in the face of the genuine threat to democracy, but nowhere near adequate standing alone, because people are almost always going to vote on immediate concerns as opposed to future hypotheticals, even likely ones.

None of that, of course, was raised in postmortems from the corporate media, political big heads, or consultant coterie. Except, that is, to brush by them in their haste to get to the REAL problem.

Oh, no, they cried almost in unison, the result was all because Kamala Harris was way, way too much into "identity politics," in particular in support of transgender folks who, to hear them say it (but not openly) really are kinda weird and who everybody hates and who we should not only throw under the bus, we should back over the corpse a couple of times to be sure.

Dan Moynihan at Can We Still Govern brings us a New York Times tetrarchy:

- There is Bari Weiss, denouncing "running on extraordinarily niche issues that you find on college campuses and in gender studies departments." Forgetting that, as a married lesbian, just a generation ago she and her rights would have been such a "niche issue."

- There is Bret Stephens, insisting that "today’s left increasingly stands for the forcible imposition of bizarre cultural norms." Because regarding basic human rights as worthy of respect is "bizarre."

- And there's Nicholas Kristof, assuring us that Democrats can only compete if they “focus more on minimum wages and child care than pronouns and purity." As if dwelling on "pronouns and purity" described her practice rather than his paranoia.

- And of course, there is Maureen Dowd, smirking the right-wig mantra "woke is broke" and charging

progressives failed to realize that women can be worried both about reproductive rights and their "daughters compet[ing] fairly on the playing field."³

As if loss of reproductive health care was an equal worry to the hypothetical possibility of facing a trans girl on the other school's team.

In the course of this, she approvingly quoted James Carville and Rahm Emanuel and actually called Michael Dukakis an "avatar of elitism," a title that fits her far better.

On top of that, Dowd got extra exposure from Mika Brzezinski of Joe Scarborough's MSNBC morning program, who read the entire thing on-air the day after it was published. Scarborough, for his part,

went on a wildly transphobic rant on [the day after the election] against “men who transition after puberty competing against young girls,” saying that opposing trans-inclusive athletic policies is “not a hard call.”

In other words, it was a buncha damn, comfortable, secure, rich, white people saying that the rights of vulnerable people which are of no benefit to them are therefore unworthy of consideration.

But of course it wasn't just the media elite, the sneering also came from inside the Democratic Party itself.

As I think folks have heard, there was New York Rep. Tom Suozzi declaring the party must “stop pandering to the far left” on trans rights. “I don’t want to discriminate, but I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports," he said, adding "Democrats should be saying that.” Which means, of course, that he does want to discriminate.

More surprising to some, there was Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, offering "I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that,” rather unsubtly patting himself on the back for his supposedly courageous expression of transphobia.

Fortunately, there has been pushback from other Congressional Democrats against these and other trimmers⁴ who are dipping their toe in the waters to see how far they can distance themselves from trans rights without political cost (or better yet, with political praise).

Related to which we now have Jonathan Larsen of The Fucking News reporting that the DNC's search for a new party chair is being defined by people screeching that the party has become too "woke"⁵ and demanding it must "return" to the "center" because they "don’t want to be the freak show party" and do want a party chair "who’s going to be for the guy who drives a truck back home at the end of the day” and I guess women and people of color need not apply for inclusion - unless, I suppose, if they drive trucks (The image of the "guy" "truck driver" came up more than once.⁶)

It appears that's truer than not, since one DNC member described the field of potential chairs as “White Guy Winter,” with the list essentially empty of women or non-white people but including, deity help us, Rahm Emanuel.

All of which goes to raise the point I really wanted to get to. This sort of "we've gone too far" tut-tutting and hand-wringing is neither new nor actually about tans folks except as they serve as the target du jour.

It is, rather, part of an overall effort by the hierarchy of the Democratic Party, the I suppose you could call it legacy party, to find someone, something, some force, to blame for election losses that does not involve, that actively avoids, looking at the campaign itself, looking at the idea that maybe it was the party apparatus that screwed up.

Indeed, it's hard to find any analysis from any such quarter that does not praise the Harris-Walz campaign with terms like "great job" and "no mistakes" while dismissing critiques out it of hand as unproductive or even destructive finger-pointing - while busily pointing destructive fingers at anyone convenient, particularly the vulnerable population of trans folks still struggling for basic recognition of their rights, indeed of their existence. (I say that knowing much the same could be said of a good number of other vulnerable populations; it's just that this time it's trans folks.)

Same as it ever was: After 2016, the same "blame anybody else" game got played. There, the blamed included third party voters, sexism, Russian interference, James Comey re-opening the email-investigation, millennials, and even Bernie Sanders - but not, oh no of course not, the party or the Clinton campaign.

This time it's "wokeness" and trans people, but the real point is the same in each case: to protect the power and position of a party hierarchy more dedicated to their prestige and perks than public benefit and committed to "winning" as a concept rather than as a program of progress.

It other words, it was intended then and is again now to smack down the influence of the actually progressive wing of the party by reasserting the control of the institutional party apparatus.

Which means - coming to the blunt bottom line - that it's time to realize, we have to realize, that the Democrats are not on our side, not on the side of doing what is right and just, not on the side of progress rather than stasis.

Some individual Democrats, yes. The party itself, no, and all the talk about "moving to the center" is about just that: stasis. It's about not advocating anything that does not already have wide support, about following, never leading, about, bluntly, being damn cowards. And doing it even as both public polling and election results on ballot questions says that on a number of those untouchable "too left" issues (including trans rights) the public is already there.

Okay. After all that, you'd think I'm chock full of idea about what to do now.

I'm not.

I'm just sure the one thing we need to do is not give up. To keep going. To seek comfort and find strength in community and, as others have noted, that community is out there and may even be next door.

So we have to, each of us in whatever way we can, just keep going. Just persist. Just be stubborn. If that's too much, then just survive. But like the man in the movie said, "Never give up! Never surrender!" Or, if you prefer a musical reference, "Rejoice, rejoice/We have no choice/But to carry on."

Because it can get better. And comparing ourselves to the 1900 that George Will said the conservatives' goal is to recreate, we have come so far as to astonish the most stoic among us. Even within our own lifetimes we have seen changes to be celebrated and worth building on. And, romantic that I am, I still believe in the line about the moral arc of the universe.

However - and I know it's hard to hear but yes, it's true - it will undoubtedly get worse before it gets better. Which brings me to something else. But that's for another post.

¹Chess grandmaster and one-time world champion Jose Raul Capablanca once said "I have learned more from each of my defeats than I have from all of my victories.”

²Early in her campaign, I thought Harris, who expressions on the need for humanitarian aid was more intense than Biden's, was trying to distance herself from him without openly breaking from the administration of which she was still part. The same issue faced Hubert Humphrey in 1968 over the Indochina War. He finally, "tight-lipped and grim," made the break. She never did, which raises the very real possibility that she didn't separate from him because she never wanted to. However, that doesn't change the judgment that not doing so cost her a good number of votes.

³Recent studies challenge that "concern." One, from 2021 from the Center for American Progress, shows no impact on girls' participation in sports from allowing trans girls to join those teams. Another, published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism in 2024, found that "physical performance of nonathletic trans people who have undergone GAHT for at least 2 years approaches that of cisgender controls." Finally, in October the British Journal of Sports Medicine published a study saying that at least by some measures, transwomen athletes may be at a disadvantage as compared to ciswomen.

⁴"Trimmer" (referring to trimming the sails of a ship) was a term used in labor struggles to refer to those whose support for worker rights shrank as soon as things got tough.

⁵The next time anyone complains about anything being "woke," tell them the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as "aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)" and ask them why they think that's a bad thing.

⁶You know the saying about generals always planning to fight the previous war? It appears the Dems will go after the "bros," planning to fight the previous election.

No reconciliation. No forgiveness.

"'Back to 1900' is a serviceable summation of the conservatives' goal." - George Will, January 2 1995, syndicated column

I swear to myself that I will throw that quote in the face of every Trumper I come across any time they express any even minor disagreement with anything he does. And I will not let them forget and I will not forgive.

Every time a woman dies from lack of access to abortion care.
"You wanted this to happen. You voted for it."

Every time a trans child commits suicide.
"You wanted this to happen. You voted for it."

Every time someone you are acquainted with gets deported.
"You wanted this to happen."

Every time you are shown the horrible and inhumane conditions at the required detention camps.
"You wanted this to happen."

As the government adopts Steven Miller's openly fascist slogan "America is for Americans and Americans only" as official policy.
"You wanted this to happen."

.As the slaughter, the literal genocide, of Palestinians intensifies.
"You wanted this to happen."

As Ukrainians (and perhaps Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians) are abandoned.
"You wanted this to happen."

As tariffs drive inflation, costing families thousands of dollars a year.
"You wanted this to happen."

As measles, mumps, and other diseases re-emerge and new pandemics arise because Secretary of HHS RFK Jr. disparages vaccines and blocks funding on research.
"You wanted this."

As the cost of insulin multiplies because the limits are removed, the cost of health care soars, “pre-existing conditions” again become a bar to health insurance, and tens of millions more than now lack even basic coverage as ACA is “repealed” but not “replaced.”
“You wanted this.”

As social services shrivel, protections for consumers and workers are repealed, and pollution controls are dismantled after Director of OMB Elon Musk slashes $2 trillion in social spending.
"You wanted this."

As climate change worsens amid "drill, baby, drill" and renewable energy programs being shut down even as there is no disaster relief because FEMA was on the chopping block.
"You wanted this."

As strikes are declared illegal.
"You wanted this."

As infrastructure funding for roads, bridges, railroads, and all the rest vanishes as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is repealed.
"You wanted this."

As Secretary of Education Ryan Walters mandates Bibles and bible instruction in all public schools.
"You wanted this."

As media outlets are threatened with or even experience loss of licenses for airing/ publishing "false" information, i.e., unfavorable to the reactionaries in the administration.
"You wanted this."

As government surveillance becomes more intrusive and widespread, privacy ever rarer, and people get investigated and charged as part of "the enemy within."
"You wanted this."

As people you know, even members of your family, get labeled as part of "the enemy within."
"You wanted this."

As you see the US military attacking, even shooting, protestors.
"YOU WANTED THIS."

As.... The list could and as events develop will go on. But the point remains. No excuses, no "I didn't mean that," no "but"s.

You knew. You had to know or you damn well should have. You are responsible. Because -

"You.
"Wanted.
"This."

Sometimes not losing is enough to celebrate

During his struggles for the rights of migrant farm workers, Cesar Chavez was quoted as explaining the celebratory nature of the union's gatherings by saying "We have so few victories we have to celebrate our losses." He was joking, but the truth of it remains: the importance of hope and even finding joy in the struggle.

Because sometimes, it's enough to not lose. The estimable Erin Reed, tireless tracker of LGBTQ+-related legislation, brings an example.

She reports that legislative sessions in Florida and West Virginia have adjourned sine die - that is, without setting a date to meet again. What that means is that any bills that have not passed are dead and must start from scratch when the legislatures get back together.

Which is good news for the human rights of LGBTQ+ people and their supporters and allies because the effect is that over 20 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in each state are now dead. At the same time, again in each state, only one such bill passed. This dramatic contrast to the results of the past few years not only represents a victory for the increasing pushback against such bills but also provides a respite from the assault and space to plan for the battles to come.

While the passage of any such legislation is yet another attack on basic rights of transgender folks, the failures here are nonetheless heartening. It had already seemed to me that the spread of the legislative bigotry was stalling, with most - not all, but most - of the action this year coming in states that had, as Erin put it, "historically targeted transgender individuals" rather than spreading to new ones.

Some have suggested that this has been a case of the bigots and fear-mongers engaging in some CYA in the run-up to the November elections: Anti-LGBTQ+ stands have not been a big winner for them this year, so they want to downplay the issue now, intending to get back to it once the threat of democracy is behind them.

Personally, I suspect that this is less related to the elections than to the right wing's practice of "slash, burn, move on," that is, of glomming onto some issue where they think they can get an inflamed, unthinking response, loudly and viciously defaming/decrying/denouncing their target, doing as much damage as they think they can before real resistance sets in, then moving on to the next boogeyman.

(After all, how much screeching have you heard about Critical Race Theory of late? Even the general all-purpose smear "woke" has become more of a vapid cliche used ritualistically than a verbal weapon.)

That of course doesn't mean those concerned about LGBTQ+ rights can relax; as Clarence Darrow said, "Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more." But it does mean that as part of strategizing we can include going on the offensive to secure rights in some areas rather then solely resisting their denial.

So hold to hope, embrace justice, and celebrate victories (even the small ones), because like the song says, "Every victory brings another" so long as we "carry it on."

Footnote: Another relevant quote from Cesar Chavez:  "Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore."

Why would I do it?

Robert Reich had a poll up about the just-passed bill about the Child Tax Credit. He noted that half of the funding would go toward expanding the tax credit and half would got to tax cuts for the rich and Big Business, resulting in an average increase of 0.3% in after-tax income for beneficiaries and 0.5% for the rich. The question was if you would vote for the bill.

The choices were Yes, it helps the poor; No, it increases income inequality; and Other (in comments). I voted Other and this was my comment:

I would vote for it, but with great and vocal reluctance, using it as an occasion to point out as loudly as I could (not just on the floor but through social media and press statements) the disgusting, stomach-wrenching greed and moral bankruptcy of the rich, those "squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinners" whose only concern is "Gimmie more! Gimmie more!" and often have quite literally more money than they can use and so buy things from apartment-building-sized yachts to private islands to joyrides into the upper atmosphere just to have things to spend it on.

That, and just as loudly pointing out that the very fact that an average income increase of $60 a year potentially could make a difference in the lives of number of people is undeniable proof of just how screwed up, sick, and wretched our economy has become.

We regard the "gilded age" as a time of ostentatious wealth and extreme poverty. We are facing such a time again, one where being a multimillionaire is to be small fry, billionaires seem ordinary, and centibillionaires (with the arrival of the first trillionaire in sight) are presented by the media as affable folk heroes. Meanwhile, nearly 40 million among us remain in poverty with the "official" rate varying between 11 and 15 percent for the last nearly 60 years, some among us so poor that, again, $60 a freaking year makes an actual difference, and some legislators propose to deal with this by revoking child labor laws.

All in line with George Wills' statement "'Back to 1900' is a serviceable summation of the conservatives' goal."

We need to take that sense we have of the "gilded age" as being tacky, distasteful, and apply it to the present and add the moral outrage that radicals and reformers expressed at the time. We need to make possession of that level of wealth something shameful. We need, that is, to stop simply referring to economic inequality and instead make it both a moral campaign and the central economic issue of our age.

So why I would vote for this bill? Because for all the moral and ethical faults it represents, it does provide some benefits to the poorer among us. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, it would benefit some 16 million children in the first year and could raise over 500,000 children above the poverty line when fully in effect. (Bear in mind the $60 after-tax figure is an average for everyone eligible to apply for the benefit, including those above the poverty line, with shrinking benefits as income rises.)

So I would vote yes for the sake of the small benefit it does give those in need while expressing my thorough disgust at the shameless, immoral, inhumane, avarice of those who put me in the soul-killing position of having to do it.

Free Speech: $35,000 and up

A GOPper in the Florida Senate by the name of Jason Brodeur has introduced a bill, SB1780, "that would deal a devastating blow to freedom of speech in the Sunshine State" in the words of The New Republic.

The bill would make calling someone a racist, sexist, homophobe, or transphobe "defamation per se," that is, by definition, making them grounds for a civil suit of "at least" $35,000 plus attorney's fees and court costs. At the same time, it would restrict defenses available to the target of such a suit by, for example, limiting who could be considered a "public figure" and making it easier to find "actual malice" in the accusation.

In the case of a transphobic or homophobic bigot, as Erin Reed noted, it's even worse.

The bill says that in cases of "sexual orientation or gender identity," a person can't defend themselves against a suit by "citing a plaintiff’s constitutionally protected religious expression or scientific beliefs" (lines 135-145). What that means, in practical reality, is that truth is no defense.

Bigot: "Homosexuals should be killed!"
You: "You're a bigot."
Bigot: "I'm suing you for defamation."
You: "But it's true! You are a bigot!"
Bigot: "Doesn't matter, that's my 'constitutionally protected religious expression.' Pay up."

Upon reading about this bill, I fantasized about someone saying this during debate:

"If it please the Chair, I rise to propose a friendly amendment to my esteemed colleague's bill, one to which I'm sure he'll agree as it pursues the same object of his own. The amendment would add to his list of terms to be presumptively defamatory accusations of 'groomer' and 'pedophile' plus claims of connections to 'the deep state,' in each case whether directed at an individual, group, or organization. I will yield to Mr. Broder for his response."

It wouldn't be accepted, of course, but it would serve to make the actual purpose of the bill even clearer than it already was.

One other thing: The bill is almost a carbon copy of one introduced last session, which died in committee. Hopefully this one will meet the same fate.

But if this did pass and was challenged in court, don't be surprised if the defense included claiming there is no First Amendment issue because the accusations aren't banned, the state is doing nothing to impede your speech, it's merely a matter of defining the legal meaning of certain terms. If the response is that there's a penalty for using those terms, the comeback would be "Maybe so, but the state isn't the one imposing the penalty, so nothing to do with us."

This style of argument - don't actually do it, just enable others to sue over it and so impose self-censorship - is central to the "Don't Say Gay" bill and Florida has become saturated with it even though the roots, if I recall correctly, lie in a Texas bill about abortion.

Worth repeating

On a recent video, the poster mentioned how one thing that distinguishes the left and the right is that we want even those we politically oppose to obtain the help they need. That prompted me to pull this out which I know I have said in a few different ways but which I think bears repeating from time to time. This version is from 2011 but the original is from a letter to a friend the 1990s. Here we go:

It's the right that says "I," the left that says "we." It's the right that says "gimme," the left that says "we'll give." It's the right that says "compete," the left that says "cooperate."

Where the left says "us together," the right says "me first." Where the left says "hope," the right says "fear." Where the left says "you can come for help," the right says "you can go to hell."

Time after time after time, the left argues for choices that primarily benefit the needy. Time after time after time, the right argues for choices that primarily benefit the needless.

Time after time after time, when folks on the left benefit from their proposals it's because they're part of a broader community. Time after time after time, when folks on the right benefit from their proposals it's because they're part of a narrow clique.

It is the left, not the right, that knows that the real answer to Cain's question is "Yes."

When Someone Tells You Who They Are, Believe Them The First Time

 When Someone Tells You Who They Are, Believe Them The First Time

The title of this post is a quote from Maya Angelou that seems especially appropriate these days, and I'm reminded of a letter-to-the-editor I wrote some time ago in response to a syndicated column by George Will, at the time regarded as pretty much the definition of a right-wing intellectual.

"Some time ago," indeed: The date of the letter is January 3, 1995. This is the unedited text:

To George Will (Boston Globe, January 2) goes the honor of being called an honest man. Cutting through the nonsense of Newt and company, he opens the heart of his cohorts' agenda: "'Back to 1900,'" he says, "is a serviceable summation of the conservatives' goal."

"Back to 1900." Back to a time before legal labor unions or effective anti-monopoly laws, a time of child labor and twelve-hour work days. Back to a time before consumer or environmental protection laws, before regulations requiring safe working conditions, a time when being killed at work was a major cause of death. A time before Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment or disability insurance.

"Back to 1900." Back to when poor people were considered genetic defectives who deserved their condition. Back before civil or voting rights laws, when wives were chattel, blacks were either "good n*****s" who got called "boy" or "uppity "n*****s" who risked being lynched, when racism (against Irish, Italians, and others as well as blacks) was institutionalized, sexism the norm, and gays and lesbians, as far as "polite society" was concerned, didn't exist.

Back, in short, to a time when the elite were in their mansions and the rest of us were expected to know our places, live lives of servitude without complaint, and then die without making a fuss. "Back to 1900" is indeed "a serviceable summation" of the right-wing's goal, which is to undo a century of progress toward economic and social justice in order to selfishly benefit their morally stunted lives.

And if anyone thinks I'm too harsh, remember that Will's "summation" was offered as a moderate alternative to Christopher DeMuth of the American Enterprise Institute, who proposed we "go back to the Articles of Confederation and start over." One wonders what, given the chance, they'd do with the Bill of Rights.

They told us. Believe them.

065 The Erickson Report for November 11 to 23, Page 2: Transgender youth know who they are

Welcome to Jon Swift Roundup Readers!

If you'd like to see the video version of The Erickson Report, go to

https://www.youtube.com/@whoviating/videos.

For more of my writing on transgender rights, try

https://whoviating.blogspot.com/search?q=transgender&max-results=20&by-date=true.

 

065 The Erickson Report for November 11 to 23, Page 2: Transgender youth know who they are

Now on to a topic I have talked about before and expect I will again.

First, do you remember, and it wasn't that long ago, that there was a big surge in stories about "abortion regret?" A wave of orchestrated personal testimonials from women who later regretted having an abortion, some of them describing being tortured by their consciences because "I killed my baby." Remember that? It was a campaign to stampede the public into opposing abortion by playing on fears and any shred of doubt a woman might have about having the procedure.

Well, now we're seeing the same sorts of tales, only this time with transgender youth: "transition regret," with fables of kids either being pressured by parents into transitioning or being convinced it's somehow "cool" to do it and now desperately trying to undo it.

The word "fables" is chosen deliberately because the fact is, the more data we get in, the more research is done, the more the question gets asked, the more we know that transgender youth know who they are, know what is right for them, and the manufactured fears over "transition regret" are just another tactic by the reactionaries to deny the value, indeed the reality, of trans lives.

The results of a study published in 2014 of 50 years of data in Sweden of people who applied to get sexual reassignment surgery - or the more accurate and now preferred name gender affirmation surgery - found that of 767 transgender people who had the surgery, only 2.2 percent of them expressed regret after having it.

That number is even lower for nonsurgical transition methods, like taking puberty blockers. Amsterdam University Medical Center’s Center for Expertise on Gender Dysphoria is the largest gender-identity clinic in the Netherlands. A 2018 study looked at the medical records of transgender young adults who went to a clinic there, covering 1972 to 2015, a period of 44 years. It found that only 1.9 percent of adolescents who started puberty suppressants did not go on to pursue hormone therapy, which is typically the next step in the transition process. Put another way, once they started, 98.1% continued.

And you also have to ask why those who stopped did so. In a 2015 survey of nearly 28,000 people conducted by the US-based National Center for Transgender Equality, only 8 percent of respondents reported detransitioning, and 62 percent of those people said they only detransitioned temporarily, that is, they resumed the process later. Significantly, the most common reason for detransitioning, according to the survey, was pressure from a parent, the opposite of the line the wacko right is pushing. Only 0.4 percent of respondents said they detransitioned after realizing transitioning wasn’t right for them.

And now we have another study, this one published October 20 in The Lancet, one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world. The study looked at data from the Center for Expertise on Gender Dysphoria in Amsterdam from a different angle: Researchers checked the medical records of 720 patients who had historically received at least three months of puberty blockers starting before they turned 18 to see how many continued on to hormone replacement therapy medications.

At the end of the data collection period, 98% of those patients had active hormone replacement therapy prescriptions, effectively confirming the earlier study.

And as before, you don't know why the 2 percent stopped. Indeed, most of those who had stopped had had some form of gonadectomy - that is, gender affirming surgery - and may not know they still need hormone treatment to avoid osteoporosis or other conditions. Some may have decided they are nonbinary and may not want further treatment, some may have decided to detransition, and some may have been pressured into stopping - remember that the most common reason for stopping in that 2015 survey was pressure from a parent.

It is simply a fact: Despite the screeching from the reactionaries, transgender adolescents know who they are.

According to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, there are an estimated 1.4 million transgender adults in the US. The UK’s Government Equalities Office “tentatively” estimates there are between 200,000 and 500,000 trans people in Britain and Northern Ireland.

Even if there are as many trans youth in the US as there are adults and that combined estimate is off by an order of magnitude - that is, the total is 10 times the estimate - we'd still be talking about 8% of the population.

So much hatred, so much bile, so much fear, directed toward so few people. And driven almost entirely by cruel exploitation of bigotry in pursuit of political power and selfish gain. It really is a moral disgrace.

065 The Erickson Report for November 11 to 23, Page 1: On the election results

065 The Erickson Report for November 11 to 23, Page 1: On the election results

 

[This is a little different from the broadcast version, which was done the day after the election. It's essentially the same, but has in a few cases been updated to reflect later results.]

So. We had us some elections.

So I'll give you my comments on a rundown of the results.

I'll start by confessing I was concerned - to be honest, fearful - coming into this election because I was afraid the Dimcrats would blow it in the same way they blew 2016. That time, they managed to lose to the most unpopular major party presidential candidate in the history of such polling, one even less popular than Hillary Clinton, whose own approval was well under water.

They did it by making the central theme of their campaign "We're not Donald Trump. He's a scumbag, a creep, disgusting, so vote for us." Not that they never talked about anything else, but that was the primary approach, forgetting (or ignoring) the fact that not enough people cared; in fact, there were people who liked Tweetie-pie because of that, who thought "That's the kind of 'I don't give a damn' attitude we need more of in our leaders."

This time, they staked it all on reproductive rights, to the point where even as the burning anger over the Dobbs decision, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, faded some (as anger naturally does over time) and it appeared people were shifting their attention to economy and crime, party campaign consultants were telling candidates to just not talk about those issues, even though Dems had, particularly on the economy, good things they could say on their own behalf.

So it came as a great relief that this time around they did better than expected, indeed they held their own and even marked a few gains as the predicted "red wave" or "red tsunami" proved to be more of a pink ripple.

One reason for that is shown by exit polls that indicated that people who voted for Demcrats had reproductive rights and threats to democracy high on their list of concerns while GOPper voters were more focused on the economy and crime.

It was claimed that this validated the Democrats' strategy, but I'm not giving up on my own analysis quite so easily: Holding your own, not getting swamped, is hardly a stirring goal or a basis on which to build. I maintain that had they spent some of their time addressing those other issues, where again they did have
things to say for themselves - even on crime, on violent crime, which yes, had gone up recently but had already peaked and was starting to come down and in any event even at the peak was way below what it had been in the '90s - anyway, if they had spent just some time on those two points, they could have done better than just hold their own. We should have learned at least by the time of John Kerry's run that you can't let those sort of attacks go unanswered for weeks on end and expect that to not affect people. This time they ran the same risk - but they got away with it. Fortunately.

Anyway. The GOPpers, as expected, retook the House of Reperesentatives, with the breakdown now projected as 221-214, essentially the same majority the Dems had before.

It easily could have been worse, part of the reason the results are being called "better than expected." In each of the last four midterm elections, the president’s party has lost an average of about 37 House seats. In 2010 (Obama’s first midterm), Democrats lost 64 seats; in 2018 (Tweetie-pie's midterm), Republicans lost 42 seats.

This time, they lost about nine or ten, depending on the results of few campaigns that are still not called.

In the Senate, they actually stand to gain a seat. With wins in both Arizona and Nevada, they are guaranteed no worse that a 50-50 split, which leaves the Dems, as the party in the White House, in control because VP Kamala Harris would be the deciding vote in the case of a tie.

Meanwhile, Georgia is set for a run-off on December. You'd have to think that Raphael Warnock is the favorite not only because he came in first in the general, almost always an advantage, but because the third candidate in that race, a guy named Chase Oliver who got a couple of percent of the vote, presented a pretty liberal platform despite being a Libertarian, focusing more on civil liberties including - something I'd really like to see - an end to qualified immunity, so I expect that many of the people who voted for him, if they vote in the runoff, are far more likely to go for Warnock.

Which means the next Senate could easily be 51-49, which delights me because it would mean that on any given vote, either Kyrsten Sinema or Joe Manchin could be told to go F themselves.

Okay, on some more general notes:

I enjoyed the tweet from Hannah Trudo, the senior political correspondent at TheHill.com, who said

The entire Bernie Sanders-aligned wing of the Democratic Party won tonight, from Fetterman in the Senate to the new Squad members in the House.

It's also important to note where the results came from: voters under 30. Not only did they turn out, they voted for Democrats by a net 28 percentage points, enough to offset the votes of those over 45.

As the Washington Post noted in an post-election article, voting took place against a background of increasing worry among Americans that US democracy is under threat. About 70% of voters in an exit poll said our degree of democracy is “very” or “somewhat” threatened.

Interestingly, the same poll said that about 80% of voters were "very" or "somewhat" confident that elections in their own state would be fair and accurate, which reminded me of all the polls about Congress where people would say how much Congress sucks but when asked about their own representatives, they'd say "Oh, they're okay. It's all those other ones who are lousy."

The important point, however, is that the Post looked at 569 GOPper candidates for state and federal office and found that 291 of them, 51% of the total, questioned or refused to accept that Joe Biden is the legitimate president and over half of that number, somewhere between 150 and 200, won.

A mitigating factor is that the vast majority of those who won were running for seats in the House, where they would have little involvement with or impact on the actual conduct of elections. And most of the them campaigned on a range of issues, so it's hard to say how much their wins translate into support for election denial in the general public.

They still could be an issue, however, as they will be a sizable majority within the House Republican caucus and so still could drive the selection of Speaker despite Kevin McCarthy having won an initial intra-party caucus - and the Speaker would in turn preside over the House in 2024, when the presidential vote could again be contested.

So while having those people win for the House is not as threatening, it's not non-threatening.

Better news is at the state level, where officers like governor, secretary of state, and attorney general have significant power overseeing and conducting elections. That is where the concern really is and there, happily, the elections deniers by and large lost. In Arizona, the heartland of paranoid election denial, it appears the whole slate of deniers went down.

This doesn't mean some of the deniers didn't get in, but not nearly as many as were feared.

But that doesn't mean the issue goes away. Even before polls closed and many states began releasing vote counts, far-right users in Telegram channels and other fringe forums were spreading conspiracy theories and trying to declare the midterm elections fraudulent.

Consider Maricopa County, the largest county is Arizona. They had a problem which was later shown to be a printing problem with the ballots such that the tabulating machines had trouble reading them. Officials announced they had a problem, explained what they were doing about it, which involved getting tech help from the manufacturers of the machines, and assured everyone not to worry, the ballots would still be counted because they had the paper ballots which if necessary could be counted by hand.

Which prompted wacko loser Kari Lake - who really is a Karen and who still has not conceded - to point to officials acknowledging a problem and specifying what they were doing to fix it as clear evidence of fraud. And she was not alone.

In response to such inanities, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, herself the target of such claims, noted that “There are always things that potentially could be seized upon that really have no impact" and aptly called the whole conspiracy claims "a political strategy that some have chosen to pursue to the detriment of who we are as Americans and our democracy.”

Since we talking now about the state level, its a good time to note that another surprise in the elections was that Democrats also over-performed at that level, including flipping a couple of legislative houses and winning two governorships along with increasing the number of states where they control both Houses and the governorship, the so-called trifecta. They still trail GOPpers in that measure, but no longer by as much.

One area that matters to me is the progressive prosecutors movement, comprised of those District Attorneys who make reform of the criminal justice system part of both their campaign platforms and their practice in office. They did rather well in the midterms, winning in places, as said by Lara Bazelon, director of the Innocence Commission inside the San Francisco DA’s Office, "purple and blue and even red."

The right wing had persistently tried to bury the movement under a barrage of "criminals running wild" rhetoric. After progressive Chesa Boudin was recalled from his position as San Francisco DA in June, a good deal of the media, always ready to be swayed by right-wing screeching, was prepared to declare the whole movement dead. The wing nuts failed and the media was wrong.

Meanwhile, the Dems were right about one thing: Protection of reproductive rights is broadly popular. Protection of such rights was on the ballot in five states. It won in all five.

Voters in California, Vermont, and Michigan added protections for reproductive rights to their state constitutions, while reliably red Montana and bright red Kentucky rejected measures that would have added restrictions to access to reproductive care, in Kentucky's case by proposing to specifically deny any state constitutional protections for abortion.

Include the vote in Kansas is August that rejected a ballot measure that would have given the state legislature the authority to restrict abortion access through a state constitutional amendment, and you have reproductive rights going six for six this election cycle.

On another matter, legalization of recreational marijuana was on the ballot in five states. Maryland and Missouri approved their measures, while Arkansas, North Dakota, and South Dakota said no.

As of now, 21 states and Washington, DC, have legal recreational marijuana, something polls say 60% of the public supports. It is worth noting that in all three states that rejected the idea, medical marijuana is legal.

While I support legal grass and in fact have for oh my word over 50 years, it has never been high on my list of personal political priorities. So I want to mention that even as they rejected legal grass, the voters of South Dakota did something of more importance to me: By a hefty margin, they approved expansion of Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act. Some 40,000 people in South Dakota thus become eligible for Medicaid, many of who would not afford access to health care without it.

Finally on elections for now, something of which many of us are unaware: The 13th amendment did not ban slavery outright. It says:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. [Emphasis added.]

That is, slavery can be a punishment for crime. Which is why there has been and continues to be forced labor in US prisons.

Today, such prison labor is a multibillion-dollar industry, with prisoners given the choice of working for pennies on the dollar or being punished by being denied phone calls and family visits or even being thrown into solitary confinement.

Nearly 20 states had language in their state constitutions permitting slavery and involuntary servitude for prisoners. On election day, voters in four of those states said "Not here, not any more." Voters in Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont approved measures to remove the relevant language from their state constitutions.

A fifth measure, in Louisiana, failed only after its backers told people to reject it because they realized they had screwed up the legalese and it didn't clearly outlaw involuntary servitude.

Max Parthas, campaigns coordinator for the Abolish Slavery National Network, said his network hopes to have this on the ballot in a dozen states next election cycle.

065 The Erickson Report for November 11 to 23

 

065 The Erickson Report for November 11 to 23

This episode includes my reactions to some of the election news along with a follow-up to last episode's look at transgender rights.

Sources:

On the election results
shttps://www.aol.com/news/biden-white-house-cheers-red-155101989.html
https://www.thedailybeast.com/here-are-all-the-fox-news-stars-who-promised-a-red-tsunami
https://www.aol.com/news/2022-midterms-republican-hopes-dashed-073721826.html
https://twitter.com/HCTrudo/status/1590222473215315970
https://twitter.com/dellavolpe/status/1590190476334096386
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/09/election-deniers-2020-house-senate-races/
https://www.aol.com/news/election-deniers-lose-key-races-200211432.html
https://www.aol.com/news/biden-hails-good-day-democracy-204536495.html
https://www.insider.com/far-right-donald-trump-voter-fraud-baseless-claims-midterm-elections-2022-11
https://www.aol.com/news/minor-poll-problems-twisted-false-181533639.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/09/election-deniers-2020-house-senate-races/
https://www.aol.com/news/democrats-outperform-expectations-state-legislatures-215022871.html
https://www.democracynow.org/2022/11/10/midterms_republicans_crime_public_safety_criminal
https://www.aol.com/news/kentucky-michigan-voters-approve-protecting-143639236.html
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3726347-voters-support-abortion-rights-in-all-five-states-with-ballot-measures/
https://www.aol.com/news/voters-approve-recreational-marijuana-maryland-151817054.html
https://www.aol.com/news/much-relief-south-dakota-voters-003234247.html
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/slavery-involuntary-servitude-rejected-by-4-states-voters/ar-AA13U7Fv

Transgender youth know who they are
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262734734_An_Analysis_of_All_Applications_for_Sex_Reassignment_Surgery_in_Sweden_1960-2010_Prevalence_Incidence_and_Regrets
https://www.jsm.jsexmed.org/article/S1743-6095(18)30057-2/fulltext#sec3.3
https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTS-Full-Report-Dec17.pdf
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4642(22)00254-1/fulltext
https://www.amsterdamumc.org/en/research/institutes/amsterdam-public-health/strengths/aph-cohorts/the-amsterdam-cohort-of-gender-dysphoria-.htm
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/media-s-detransition-narrative-fueling-misconceptions-trans-advocates-say-n1102686

064 The Erickson Report for October 27 to November 10, Page 1: Attacks on transgender youth

064 The Erickson Report for October 27 to November 10, Page 1: Attacks on transgender youth

Let's start here with a basic fact: Treatment for gender dysphoria, that is, gender-affirming treatment and care, has deemed medically appropriate by literally dozens of health-related organizations including every major pediatric institution in the country, including:

the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
the American Academy of Pediatrics
the American Medical Association
the American Psychiatric Association
the American Psychological Association
National Association of Social Workers
the Pediatric Endocrine Society
the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine
and more than a dozen others.

Despite that, using the same devotion to facts and logic that enabled them to claim COVID was "just the flu" and to encourage infections by opposing mask mandates - the current death toll is approaching 1.1 million - GOPpers and other assorted proto-fascists have over the past two years directed levels of viciousness toward transgender youth that are nothing short of barbaric.

And it's gone from sneering to attacks about school sports to witch hunts about "grooming" to have reached levels of outright eliminationism.

Gender-affirming care is banned in Arizona and Arkansas; gender-affirming surgery for minors is a felony in Alabama; in Texas, state agencies are required to consider gender-affirming health care to be child abuse and anyone who provides it or supports children in accessing it a potential abuser. A bill passed the Idaho House to sentence health care providers who offered gender-affirming care to life in prison.

Note that some of these provisions and some of those in other states have been blocked by courts from going into effect, at least not yet, but that cannot deny either the intensity or the intent, marked perhaps most clearly by South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who celebrated the passage of an anti-trans school sports bill by by directly comparing support for transgender rights to terrorism.

Meanwhile, in Congress, 50 House GOPpers, lead by QAnon butt-kisser Marjorie Taylor Greene, the brainiac who's against solar power because she thinks it doesn't work at night, are pushing a bill to outlaw gender-affirming care for minors nationwide, including a ban on any federal money for any form of such care, banning any coverage under the Affordable Care Act, and even requiring institutions of higher education not to offer any training on such care and accrediting agencies to refuse to accredit any institution or association that offers such care. Criminal penalties can range up to 25 years in the federal slammer. 

But on October 13, a group of Michigan Republican state representatives went all the way, introducing a bill that would see parents and health care professionals facing the treat of 25 years to life in prison for providing gender-affirming care to a minor. The bill would change the very definition of child abuse to explicitly include anyone who “knowingly or intentionally consents to, obtains, or assists with a gender transition procedure for a child.” "Procedure" is defined as including not only to gender-affirming surgery - which is very rare for teens - but also to hormone treatments and puberty blockers, even though such treatments are both harmless and completely reversible: You start to transition, decide you don't want to, just stop taking the meds and your body takes care of the rest.

GOPpers are the majority in the Michigan House and they are expected to throw full support behind the bill. The only sort of good news here is that if it passes both the House and the Senate, also controlled by GOPers, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer would likely veto it - assuming she survives the dark money-funded assault from GOPper and all-around definition of right-wing fakery Tudor Dixon.

But that's not the worst, as the bill goes beyond that. It not only bars the provision of new treatment, it mandates that trans teens in the state who are currently receiving gender-affirming medical care be forced to stop their treatments and undergo compulsory medical detransition.

This is outright eliminationism. This is saying to trans youth "You are not allowed to be that way and we will force to you not be that way. You are not allowed to exist."

This at a time when the Trevor Project’s 2022 survey on the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth determined that more than 60 percent of LGBTQ+ youth said their mental health has deteriorated as a result of these sorts of attacks. Nearly one in five transgender and nonbinary youth attempted suicide in the past year, while 42% of youth who identified as LGBTQ+ contemplated suicide - a figure that rose to 52% for trans kids in particular.

And every one of those figures is worse for LGBTQ+ youth of color.

These laws, despite all their screeching about "Protect the children!" are going to see children die.

And you know, it's always about "The children! Think of the children!" It's what this sort of moral panic seems to be always about. From the Salem witch trials right up through in my lifetime comic books, rock and roll, day care centers, Dungeons and Dragons, video games, and the Internet, it keeps being about "Omigod the children!"

But there is a difference in this case. Most moral panics seems to emerge sort of organically. Somehow, a few people get an idea about something, it gets talked about so a few more hear about it and for some reason invariably related to broader social fears and stresses, it catches on and grows by feeding on itself in a feedback loop until at some point it burns itself out.

Not this one. There is nothing natural or organic about this one. This anti-trans panic has been manufactured, created, consciously and deliberately, top-down, by right-wing and repressive forces and their associated think-tanks to create fear and then exploit that fear purely for their own extremist self-interest.

David Neiwert has looked at and followed the topic of eliminationist rhetoric - that is, the use of expressions of "You do not have the right to be here" or even "You do not have the right to exist," for reactionary political gain - for years. He says "the entire point of such rhetoric is to create permission to direct violence freely at the targeted minority group."

Or, as in this case, the targeted group plus "anyone in the general vicinity," such as supportive teachers, parents, and health care professionals - and more recently, performers at drag shows reading to children - who are all either "groomers" or outright pedophliles or predators or all three, or in the case of drag show performers, also "perverts." And do not think for an instant that the overt physical intimidation directed at those drag shows by such as the Proud Boys, whose pride lies in being right-wing thugs, is not a manifestation of this eliminationism

For evidence this is all deliberate, we can look to a report from August out of The Human Rights Campaign and the Center for Countering Digital Hate looking at the increasing anti-LGBTQ+ hate rhetoric on social media and by the way thanks to David Niewert for the link and for more background on the issue.

The groups looked at tweets containing slurs like "groomers" or "pedophiles" in the context of conversations about LGBTQ+ people between January and July of 2022. There were nearly 990,000 of them - plus an additional 130,000-plus using the dismissive smear "ok, groomer."

One key finding was that after Florida Gov. Ron DeSandTick got his "Don't Say Gay" bill through, the rate of hateful tweets more than quadrupled, apparently because, I'd say, the bill's passage was felt to somehow legitimize the bigotry.

More significant, however, is the finding that much of the hate is being generated by a handful of well-known right-wing influencers. The researchers determined the 500 hateful “grooming” tweets had been viewed the most times had been viewed an estimated 72 million times and 2/3 of that total - 48 million views - were generated from just 10 people.

The top four contained no surprises:

Marjorie Taylor ColorOfNausea-Greene
James Lindsay, an “anti-woke” activist who described the pride flag as that of a "hostile enemy"
Lauren "Pistol-packin' mama" Boebert
and Chaiya Raichik, the sniggering clown behind the “LibsofTikTok” account.

Among the rest we find Ron DeSandTick press secretary Christina Pushaw, who pulled language right out of QAnon to take the "groomer" crap mainstream, two pundits for the far-right outfit Turning Point USA, one from BlazeTV, which is where you go if you ever wonder what the hell happened to Glenn Beck, and one from The Daily Wire, the reactionary "news" source founded by poster boy for privilege and winner of The Erickson's Report Clown of the Year 2019, Ben Shapiro.

In other words, a pretty standard collection of right-wing grifters, greedheads, and gasbags, backed by the usual band of bullshitters like the cretins at Faux News, which ran a series of shows on pedophilia in March and April, which included a guest on Fox and Friends claiming children were “being ripened for grooming for sexual abuse by adults” and another on America Reports insisting that affirmative care for trans children “goes beyond predatory grooming” into “psychological torture.”

The fact is, reactionary groups and movements like Christian nationalists - including fundamentalist preachers demanding that gay people be lined up and shot in the head - and neofascist white power groups like Patriot Front, with their individual ranges of ideological focuses, have banned together to wield “groomer” rhetoric like a bludgeon for one purpose only: As put by Justin Unga, the Human Rights Campaign's director of strategic initiatives, "pure politics," adding "It is no coincidence that people have inflamed and used this rhetoric during the period of the primary elections. They are," he said, "inflaming the most extreme elements of their fan base to gain notoriety, to build a brand that they see as politically and financially profitable."

In other words, it is about what the right wing is always about: greed, selfishness, egotism, and power-hunger.

These people don't give a single flying damn about the children they claim to be protecting. They don't care about the bullying, about the harassment, about the violence, about the suicides. They don't care about the prospect of children being ripped from supportive parents precisely because of that parental support - remember, in Texas and not only there, that's called child abuse. They don't care about the increase in hate crimes directed against gender nonconforming people. They do not care.

Because for them, these children aren't real, they are just cartoons, cardboard cutouts, stage props to be named, labeled, and moved around however they think it will produce the desired result in the audience. The realities of the lives of these children don't move them, the realities of their deaths move them even less. It's all about the posturing, the pose, the play.

If Diogenes were to move among these people I expect he would be very lonely and extremely disappointed. They are, in a word, despicable.

063 The Erickson Report for October 6 to 19, Page 2: Follow Up on the shooting of Shireen Abu Akleh

Back in May, I addressed the killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, shot while she was covering an operation by the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces, near the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.

Now, a new report, the result of a collaboration between the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq and a UK-based research agency called Forensic Architecture, has concluded that Abu Akleh was deliberately and repeatedly targeted by Israeli snipers who shot her down despite her being clearly identified as a member of the press.

The new report confirms the findings of half a dozen earlier independent reviews of the incident, which have found that Israeli forces were responsible for Abu Akleh’s killing, including one from the United Nations that described the killing shot as “well aimed.”

But the new report goes beyond those earlier by having produced a detailed digital reconstruction of the shooting based on previously unseen footage recorded by Al Jazeera staff at the scene, open-source video, eyewitness accounts, and a drone survey of the area, and so offers the most conclusive account yet of what happened.

The Israeli response to this issue has been from the beginning both despicable and typical. The first, immediate response, including from then Israeli PM Naftali Bennett, was to say it had to be Palestinian militants. I mean, it just stood to reason. The IDF Chief of Staff, Major General Aviv Kochavi, said it surely was Palestinians because Palestinians shoot "wildly and indiscriminately in every direction" while IDF soldiers "carry out professional and selective firing."

The Israeli Ministry of Defense then produced a video it claimed depicted what it called "Palestinian terrorists" who "likely" killed Abu Akleh - only to have it turn out that the video was shot several hundred yards away in the wrong direction and there was neither any shooting nor any militants around where she was.

Right around that same time, the military declared "there was no need to open a military police investigation" because, they said in effect, there was a lot of shooting and stuff going on and so who knows what really happened.

Oh, but Israel did promise a full investigation, and on September 5 its official review was issued. It actually admitted that Abu Akleh was probably killed by IDF forces, but hey, it was "accidental," so, y'know, hey, they things happen. Get over it.

And so much for Major General Kochavi's "professional and selective firing," as by the official account either that statement is a lie or what happened was a deliberate murder.

The reconstruction in the new report gives every reason to think it was the latter.

It clearly shows that, again, there were neither armed gunners nearby nor were there shots fired in the minutes leading up to Abu Akleh’s killing and during the actual incident the only shots fired came from an IDF position. Moreover, the reconstruction shows that Abu Akleh’s and her colleagues’ “PRESS” insignias were clearly visible from the position of the IDF shooter; that the shooter had a “clear line of fire,” that the pattern of shots indicated “precise aim,” and that the firing continued as the journalists sought shelter. After Abu Akleh was hit, a civilian attempting to provide aid to her was fired upon each time he tried to approach her: When he hid behind a wall, no shots were fired; when he emerged to try to reach Abu Akleh, he was shot at.

So multiple reports had already come to the conclusion that Shireen Abu Akleh - and in case you didn't catch it, she was Palestinian-American; she was an American citizen - Shireen Abu Akleh was deliberately targeted by the Israeli military. And this new report, with the strongest proof yet, renders the same judgment as the rest.

Sadly, also like the rest, I expect it won't make a damn bit of difference.

There have been calls both in and out of Congress for the US to make its own investigation of what is at the least the extrajudicial killing of one of its citizens, all to no effect. US officials claim to have reviewed the findings of Israeli and Palestinian investigators but failed to reach a “definitive conclusion” as Secretary of State Anthony Blinken wistfully says he wishes someone could do an independent investigation - deliberately ignoring the string of such investigations by human rights organizations that have indeed reached a conclusion along with the fact that the US could do its own such independent investigation, but is deterred by the fearful knowledge of what it would be forced to conclude if it did so.

And so it goes on, without consequences, as the US continues to finance Israel's military to the tune of $3.8 billion every year and our policy wobbles between evading responsibility and making excuses for the crimes against human rights that aid helps to enable, also thereby helping to perpetuate a political atmosphere that holds Israel, whatever its policies, whatever its behavior, whatever its crimes, essentially exempt from criticism and speaking the most literal and simple truth, even if carefully expressed, can and if your voice is loud enough to be heard likely will generate charges of antisemitism.

Consider that there is a movement known as BDS. It stands for boycott, divest, and sanction; it's aim is to bring economic and cultural pressure on Israel to change policies, particularly with regard to Palestinians in the Occupied Territories but also Palestinian citizens of Israel.

And the very fact that it calls for such actions, the very fact that it is aimed at Israel, has resulted in it's being labeled antisemitic. Indeed, there are so-called "anti-BDS laws" on the books in 35 states that in some way seek to constrict speech by economically penalizing, through loss of government investment or contracts, any company that might consider joining the boycott.

Shireen Abu Akleh

Consider, too, the recent example of Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who, speaking at a Palestine Advocacy Day event on Sept 20, said (and this is an exact quote) “I want you all to know that among progressives, it becomes clear that you cannot claim to hold progressive values yet back Israel's apartheid government.”

It took precisely one day for Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, to twist Tlaib's words into her having made a declaration that progressive "American Jews need to pass an anti-Zionist litmus test" and "doubled down on her antisemitism," that antisemitism consisting of "slandering Israel as an apartheid state.”

The same day, Rep. Jerry Nadler said “I fundamentally reject the notion that one cannot support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state and be a progressive,” a statement even further removed from what Tlaib said than Greenblatt's.

Other members of Congress, including Reps. Ted Deutch, Haley Stevens, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Juan Vargas, and others, made similar public comments, conflating opposing, quote, "Israel's apartheid government" with rejecting Israel's right to exist altogether and declaring that calling Israel an apartheid state is by definition both slander and antisemitic.

Major media outlets, including CNN, picked up and amplified the message: criticize Israel and you will be labeled an antisemite.

Now beyond the fact that Tlaib said nothing referring to Israel's right to exist, only to it's governing policies, the brutal truth is that Israel is an apartheid state. It has found to be one by Human Rights Watch, by B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, by Amnesty International, and by United Nations human rights experts.

For clarity, Amnesty International says, quoting,

The crime against humanity of apartheid under the Apartheid Convention, the Rome Statute and customary international law is committed when any inhuman or inhumane act (essentially a serious human rights violation) is perpetrated in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another, with the intention to maintain that system.

Apartheid can best be understood as a system of prolonged and cruel discriminatory treatment by one racial group of members of another with the intention to control the second racial group.

That is apartheid. And that is what leading human rights groups have found Israel is guilty of.

And it won't change, not until there are consequences. Palestinians in the Occupied Territories will continue to see discrimination, continue to see their homes demolished, their lands seized, their human rights denied, until there are consequences. And they will continue to be killed without recourse and that also applies to journalists, bringing us back full circle to where we started, as Abu Akleh was not the first: There have been at least 45 journalists killed by the "professional and selective[ly] firing" IDF since 2000.

Under US policy, those consequences should include a declaration the US that it will no longer use its veto in the Security Council or its influence in the General Assembly to defend or protect Israel from any UN sanctions, that the DOJ takes the position, which it will pursue in court, that all anti-BDS laws are unconstitutional violations of the rights to free speech and free association, and most importantly, there will be no more military aid to or military cooperation with, and no more security guarantees to, Israel until there is a final and just settlement to guarantee Palestinian rights, including the right to statehood.

Those are the consequences that we, that the US, should impose to end the injustice, end the occupation, end the apartheid. But I confess I have no faith that it will happen, at least until the current generations - including my own - die off.

063 The Erickson Report for October 6 to 19

 

063 The Erickson Report for October 6 to 19

Sources:

Correction regarding school book bans
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2022/09/062-erickson-report-for-september-22-to.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/book-bans-opinion-poll-2022-02-22/
https://hartmannreport.com/p/americans-used-to-understand-public
https://www.floridapolicy.org/posts/floridas-hidden-voucher-expansion-over-1-billion-from-public-schools-to-fund-private-education

Follow Up on the shooting of Shireen Abu Akleh
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2022/05/054-erickson-report-for-may-19-to-june-1.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2022/06/055-erickson-report-for-june-2-to-15.html
https://theintercept.com/2022/09/20/shireen-abu-akleh-killing-israel/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXjVDKILC3s
https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/06/1121252
https://theintercept.com/2021/11/29/boycott-film-bds-israel-palestine/
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/anti-bds-legislation
https://theintercept.com/2022/09/22/rashida-tlaib-israel-adl/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmZ0ZFgYWf8
https://bit.ly/3xMztNc
https://bit.ly/3dxZyJn
https://bit.ly/3r0OXcG
https://bit.ly/3C3Zlqr

False claims about the future of Social Security
https://whoviating.blogspot.com/search/label/Social%20Security
https://www.gobankingrates.com/retirement/social-security/debt-free-future-biggest-problems-facing-social-security/

Brief comments on Iran and Ukraine
https://www.reuters.com/site-search/?query=iran&date=past_month&offset=0
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/analysis-braced-to-crush-unrest-irans-rulers-heed-lessons-of-shahs-fall-analysts/ar-AA12FAAb
https://ajmuste.org/aj_mustes-life-of-activism

057 The Erickson Report for July 7-20

 

057 The Erickson Report for July 7-20

This episode of The Erickson Report focuses on three recent and one upcoming case before of the Supreme Court that reflect and reveal aspects of the slow-motion coup that threatens our future as a civil society and a free people. The issues are the practical ability of any federal regulation of any sort to exist, the ability to put any regulations on guns, the ability to maintain a separation of church and state, and even the ability to vote for president.

If that sounds over-dramatic, watch the episode.

The Erickson Report is news and informed commentary from a member of the radical nonviolent left (and a proud member of "the 'woke' mob"). As what's known as advocacy journalism, it uses facts and logic while never pretending it is neutral on or indifferent to the topics it addresses. Your host, Larry Erickson, is a veteran of 50 years of political activism in both "the streets and the suites" and looks with this show to both inform and inspire action.

Questions and other reactions are welcome by email at whoviating at aol dot com.

Footnote: I realize the episode is a week late. I do apologize. We do try to keep a bi-weekly schedule, but sometimes, well, we fail. Again, my apologies and I hope you'll find this show was worth the wait.

SOURCES:

Re federal regulation
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/30/-supreme-court-says-epa-lacks-authority-on-climate-standards-for-power-plants.html
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/06/21/right-wing-supreme-court-readies-help-destroy-planet
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/21907/were-firearms-prohibited-in-dodge-city-kansas-in-the-1870s

Re regulations on guns
https://www.democracynow.org/2022/6/24/supreme_court_new_york_state_concealed
https://www.wbur.org/npr/1102995474/supreme-court-opinion-guns
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/senators-aim-quick-passage-bill-providing-security-family-members-supr-rcna28000
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/roe-overturned-supreme-court-samuel-alito-opinion/661386/

Re separation of church and state
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-takes-aim-separation-church-state-2022-06-28/
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/06/27/supreme-court-takes-wrecking-ball-separation-church-and-state-prayer-ruling
https://www.vox.com/2022/6/27/23184848/supreme-court-kennedy-bremerton-school-football-coach-prayer-neil-gorsuch
https://www.rawstory.com/lied-gorsuch-blasted-after-photos-expose-his-claims-in-high-school-coach-praying-case-are-a-flat-out-knowing-lie/

Re vote for president
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/07/01/beware-supreme-court-laying-groundwork-pre-rig-2024-election

053 The Erickson Report for May 6 to 18

053 The Erickson Report for May 6 to 18

This episode:

US COVID deaths hit 1,000,000
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/covids-toll-us-reaches-1-million-deaths-unfathomable-number-rcna22105

SCOTUS to overturn Roe v. Wade
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/supreme-court-abortion-draft-opinion-00029473
https://www.history.com/topics/womens-rights/roe-v-wade
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/113
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/505/833/case.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/163us537
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griswold_v._Connecticut
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenstadt_v._Baird
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/02-102
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/478/186
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/obergefell_v._hodges
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx
https://www.marquette.edu/news-center/2021/new-marquette-law-poll-finds-sharp-decline-in-public-opinion-of-the-supreme-court-s-job-performance.php
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/11/16/post-abc-poll-abortion-supreme-court/
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/abortion-roe-v-wade-polling-where-americans-stand
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/21/politics/cnn-poll-abortion-roe-v-wade/index.html
https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-texas-california-foster-care-scott-wiener-b17a53196d54c7929d3c340b1bf3410c
https://www.colorado.edu/today/2021/09/08/study-banning-abortion-would-boost-maternal-mortality-double-digits
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23021104/texas-abortion-murder-charge-starr-county
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/02/abortion-ban-roe-supreme-court-mississippi/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/22/braun-supreme-court-interracial-marriage/
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/sen-braun-open-to-u-s-supreme-court-rescinding-ruling-that-legalized-interracial-marriage/article_19cf8eaa-f75a-5642-865e-5ce88b374160.html
https://www.vogue.com/article/anti-birth-control-movement

Inflation is driven by corporate greed
https://apnews.com/article/us-inflation-rate-historic-high-4ba3435cc3730198e299690a9d968038
https://www.wbur.org/npr/1092291748/economy-recession-inflation-federal-reserve-interest-rates
https://www.npr.org/2022/02/13/1080494838/economist-explains-record-corporate-profits-despite-rising-inflation
https://truthout.org/articles/corporate-profits-reached-record-high-of-nearly-3-trillion-in-2021/
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/11/30/executives-hike-prices-us-corporations-rake-biggest-profits-1950
https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3n5m3/applebees-wayne-pankratz
https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1509634830505426952
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/03/20/intergenerational-wealth-middle-class-spiral/
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/12/07/richest-1-took-38-new-global-wealth-1995-bottom-half-got-just-2

David H. Gans on originalist roots of abortion under the 14th amendment:
https://www.theusconstitution.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Issue-Brief-Reproductive-Originalism-FINAL.pdf

Jordan Smith of "The Intercept" on Alito's reasoning:
https://theintercept.com/2022/05/04/roe-abortion-supreme-court-samuel-alito/