tingilinde

comments from radio opensource

Chris Lydon has some of the more interesting discussions online - a quick look at the last election with  David Bromwich, Jill Lepore, David Bosworth, Briahna Gray, and Mark Blyth.   I'm all ears whenever he has Mark Blyth of Brown on.

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Donald J. Trump has fixed his name on the era, his whims on the agenda, his temperament on the rattled American mood. But the midterm campaign results say he’s not in control even of his own fate; he hasn’t dented dissent, much less broken the opposition. Historian Corey Robin makes the point that there’s no Trump political order in the making yet — nothing like the Roosevelt or Reagan realignments – but rather the continuing breakdown of an old order. Finger-pointing at President Trump comes next – for his firing of chief law officer Jeff Sessions; then from Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller about Trump’s Russia connection; and (come January) from the several House committees with subpoena power, under new Democratic Party management. We are sampling the delights of American politics this hour – the swell of woman power, and also what’s being called Kavanaugh’s revenge on Senators who opposed his Supreme Court nomination. We are calling on voices we admire from vantage points anthropological, economical, and historical more than journalistic.

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it's not tribalism

It's racism  (via The Atlantic)

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I am not arguing that the Democratic Party or its members are particularly virtuous. A little more than a century ago, it was the Republican Party that was reliant on a diverse coalition of voters, and the Democratic Party that rode white rage to power. Rather, I am saying that when a party’s viability is dependent on a diverse coalition of voters, that party will necessarily stand for pluralism and equal rights, because its survival depends on it. And when a party is not diverse, it will rely on demonizing those who are different, because no constituency exists within that party to prevent it from doing so, or to show its members that they have nothing to fear..

In the Trump era, America finds itself with two political parties: one that’s growing more reliant on the nation’s diversity, and one that sees its path to power in stoking fear and rage toward those who are different. America doesn’t have a “tribalism” problem. It has a racism problem. And the parties are not equally responsible.

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pilot 6, row c, grave 15

To think about today ..  from the London Review of Books

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Fernald had gone up to Trinity College, Oxford in October 1915, where he immediately joined the Officers’ Training Corps. Not much interested in his studies, he applied for a commission, stating in order his preferred branch of service – artillery, infantry, cavalry (but explicitly not the unglamorous Army Service Corps) – and confirming that he was ‘of pure European descent’. In February 1916 he completed a short service attestation form, swore allegiance before a magistrate and was posted to ‘A’ Company, No. 2 Officer Cadet Battalion in Cambridge for 16 weeks’ training. From his billet at Queens’ College, he wrote enthusiastically to his parents that he was having a ‘good healthy time’. A typical day consisted of Reveille at 6.45, followed by breakfast parade, PT, platoon drill, dinner, route march or arms drill, tea, lecture, supper, Last Post and lights out at 10.15. They played football against local boys, losing 18-0 to The Leys School, and canoed on the Cam. ‘I am very warm at nights,’ he reassured his mother, ‘and sleep like a log, eat like an elephant, work like a dog, and love my Dad and Mum as only their Van Dyke can.’ He took up smoking and sent his younger brother cigarette cards showing uniforms and battles. He revered his captain, ‘an awful sport’ who had won the Military Cross at the First Battle of Ypres. In July he was commissioned into the 3rd Battalion of the Royal West Surrey Regiment, and applied for an attachment to the RFC. The following month a medical board at Chatham confirmed his vision, hearing and blood pressure were normal, and he was in.

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george takei on trump's racism

George Takei responded to the horrible Republican hate ad. 

 

vote!

 

 

 

the myth of a southern democracy

Keri Leigh Merritt is a historian a recent book:  Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South is excellent.   Here's a short piece from her.

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Yet such behavior has deep roots in the American South. Even before the 150 years of valiant struggles by African American voters, slaveholders severely limited suffrage in the region, disenfranchising non-slaveholders in an effort to preserve slavery. In the process, they crafted an intricate system of voter suppression, intimidation, and outright election fraud — a system that persists to this day.

Far from a democratic region, the Deep South instead functioned more like an oligarchy or aristocracy. As W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, “Even among the 2 million slaveholders, an oligarchy of 8,000 really ruled the South.” Slaveholders wielded immense and pervasive power as lawmakers, law enforcers, judges, and even jury members. They dominated the region’s politics and devised multiple ways to disenfranchise their fellow countrymen.

While slaveholders in the cotton South occasionally paid lip service to democracy throughout the Jacksonian era, by the 1850s many of the region’s leaders were openly touting the benefits of oligarchy and aristocracy, while condemning the free states for rule by mobocracy. They fully realized that non-slaveholding whites outnumbered them, and thus had the power to challenge slaveholder interests.

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a tip of the hat to Linda

 

the great supply side experiment

In the mid 90s Jerry Brown raised taxes in California and Republicans in Kansas began a series of cuts claiming it would validate supply side economics 

 

Here's what happened to incomes in both states (100 is the average non-farm income in each state in 1995).  In the meantime the school system in Kansas has degenerated to the point where it is difficult to attract companies that require knowledge workers .

 

 

We're on track to seeing the US become more like Kansas, but not to worry.. there are a few very wealthy people in Kansas and that's what seems to matter.

 

 

 

 

on ravens

Bjarne points out the Norse influence on the raven as an iconic figure in England.

 

 

work that is probably safe from automation

and in England too

 

how sears helped fight white supremacy

Unintentionally it fought Jim Crow white supremacy

a tip of the hat to Xeni

 

stan mack's comic strip to the editor

A first for the NY Times and on target.