Nothing could ever be enough to repay the black community of the United States for the holocaust that was committed against enslaved people and their descendants by American policies and the people of the United States. I believe the reparations debate is basically happening inside out. America's leadership should have long ago asked for and sought out a way to make some costly propitiation to the descendants of the enslaved.
I do volunteer much of what little I have to this endeavor. Because while it can never be enough, I'm going to need an installment plan.
Thursday, April 11, 2019
Sunday, January 13, 2019
The Steve King Mess
The Steve King mess reveals how far Republicans have to go to distance themselves from racism.
When I became a Republican in November in 2010, it was to pursue lower taxes, smaller government and a pronounced reduction to non-sponsored immigration. I had no idea what white supremacy, the KKK, and other hate groups, have to do with that.
And yet it should not have been so difficult for me to trace. The 1787 text of the Constitution itself permitted the trade of enslaved human beings across the ocean until 1818. People who were enslaved were reduced to three fifths of the apportionment for representation in Congress. The fact that, to this day, the three-fifths clause is still bandied about as "less racist" than full apportionment for the enslaved, is ridiculous. The simple fact that the Northern founders allowed such a thing to enter the foundational document of our government has caused problems to this day.
And yet it does no good to rage at the Founders. We need a new Constitution - one on which all citizens of the United States start on an equal footing.
And yet even racism may not be our biggest problem. The Federal budget deficit is set to consume the entire economy. Had we held to what was good in the Constitution - the written, clear-language limits on the scope of the Federal government - we would not be in this budget mess.
And if we looked at our fellow human beings and saw a fellow human being and not someone to dictate supremacy over, we wouldn't be in this Steve King mess.
When I became a Republican in November in 2010, it was to pursue lower taxes, smaller government and a pronounced reduction to non-sponsored immigration. I had no idea what white supremacy, the KKK, and other hate groups, have to do with that.
And yet it should not have been so difficult for me to trace. The 1787 text of the Constitution itself permitted the trade of enslaved human beings across the ocean until 1818. People who were enslaved were reduced to three fifths of the apportionment for representation in Congress. The fact that, to this day, the three-fifths clause is still bandied about as "less racist" than full apportionment for the enslaved, is ridiculous. The simple fact that the Northern founders allowed such a thing to enter the foundational document of our government has caused problems to this day.
And yet it does no good to rage at the Founders. We need a new Constitution - one on which all citizens of the United States start on an equal footing.
And yet even racism may not be our biggest problem. The Federal budget deficit is set to consume the entire economy. Had we held to what was good in the Constitution - the written, clear-language limits on the scope of the Federal government - we would not be in this budget mess.
And if we looked at our fellow human beings and saw a fellow human being and not someone to dictate supremacy over, we wouldn't be in this Steve King mess.
Sunday, July 15, 2018
You know what's even more cruel
Than separating kids at the border? It's bombing them, Laura Bush. News flash on that, by the way. Don't know if you were aware of that. You know, because your husband ordered an undeclared war against the nation and people of Iraq, a 'worst in the century' type of decision wasn't backed by any reasonable American national security objective. A war we're literally still paying for, because your husband couldn't see fit to balance a single budget during his eight years in office. A war whose veterans - loyal almost to a fault and courageous beyond anything demanded of a 'veteran' of the Texas Air National Guard - are still receiving care for their physical and psychological wounds. A war which destabilized an entire region and that made American troops targets of the Iranian theocratic regime's IEDs - a regime we couldn't attack because we already had our hands full, propping up a corrupt government in Iraq.
We should indeed hope that the kids being separated at the border are treated to better and more tender mercies than the more than 1,000 killed in the undeclared, unnecessary war in Iraq.
What's happening on the U.S. Southern Border is very bad, but rather than work to solve it, isn't it easier to post something online, complaining about a leader's regime you don't like?
See, I can do it too.
We should indeed hope that the kids being separated at the border are treated to better and more tender mercies than the more than 1,000 killed in the undeclared, unnecessary war in Iraq.
What's happening on the U.S. Southern Border is very bad, but rather than work to solve it, isn't it easier to post something online, complaining about a leader's regime you don't like?
See, I can do it too.
Wednesday, July 4, 2018
The New Second Amendment
Given the mass killing and death caused by guns over the last several years, from the Pulse nightclub attack to the tragic deaths of 17 people in Parkland, Florida, I cannot help but begin to wonder if the Second Amendment is functioning in anything like the capacity which the Founders intended.
Part of the lost history of the Second Amendment is that states once had far more military power than the Federal government. States had militias and navies. A large part of the reason that the War of 1812 was not as great of a success for America as it could have been was that many state militias did not participate. The Constitution was written by the Founding Fathers, many of whom had contentious state governments to contend with, and the votes to enact the Constitution were far from unanimous. It was Thomas Jefferson who had promised a Bill of Rights, and when it was enacted just a few years after the Constitution itself, what we now think of as "gun rights" was literally very high on the list. Several states had "right to bear arms" clauses in their state constitutions, and my theory is that the states demanded that the Federal government abjure itself of the power to collect guns en masse and thereby horde so much power to itself. You could go all the way back to Bacon's Rebellion in 1676 to look at the consequences (popular rebellion) of a state that won't defend its people or let them at least defend themselves.
However. The actual text of the Second Amendment has been nagging me lately. "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Doesn't it seem like the part about a well regulated Militia that's necessary to the security of a free state comes first? Now I've heard the grammatarians pick this one apart and they tell me it's a subordinate clause, that the action part of the amendment is "the right of the people to keep and bear arms part." Really? Did Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin really sit around going, "You know what? Let's put in a completely subordinate and irrelevant fluff clause into the Second Amendment, with no bearing on the understanding or interpretation of the right to keep and bear arms part of the Amendment. That's just how we will regulated Militia conduct ourselves regulated Militia going forward."
Not so much, right?
And then there's this other problem with the Second Amendment. There are places where it seems to be overly applied - like when psychotic teenagers purchase rapid-fire weapons. And there are places where it seems like the Federal government - if it really was protecting citizens against dumb state laws - would want to throw out the "well regulated Militia" part and protect a citizen's allegedly expressed right to own a gun. What about dangerous places across the country, where break-ins, assaults and other crimes are common - and yet in many of these places, gun regulations are so strict that people can't have firearms they need to protect themselves. Why don't the "it's a subordinate clause" Second Amendment firebrands step in and effectively stop local governments from denying people their rights? Nobody is arguing that every single man, woman, and near-adult person who's still legally a child but who could still bear a firearm is a candidate for the militia, let along the regular military. A terminally ill cancer patient could possibly have the strength to level a pistol and pull the trigger at a dangerous intruder, but no one is suggesting that such a person be recruited up as squad leader in the 101st Airborne.
And this exposes a paradox within the Second Amendment. The Founders started by writing about the need for a properly function militia - roughly, a bunch of more-or-less organized citizen-soldiers - being necessary to keep the security of a free state. But the Amendment then takes the very big leap of logic and - depending on how you want to weight your understanding of the words - grants the right to keep and bear arms to "the people."
And this is what's really staggering - and easy to miss - in the Second Amendment. "The people" could well mean everyone who is physically in the United States- and this is where Second Amendment absolutists get going - and by a plain-language reading of the text it would seem tough to prove them wrong. But this understanding of the Second Amendment is exactly what put deadly weapons in the hands of every mass shooter, murderer, terrorists, criminal, and insurrectionist in American history, since, apparently, the right to keep and bear arms, by the most literal reading, can't be infringed!
I think we can agree that's a little insane?
Again, did the Founding Fathers place the right to bear arms deeply within the context of citizen-soldiers and the security of a free state as pure and total fluff? The several Presidents who have signed gun control legislation and the temporarily responsible people in Congress who limited even free Americans' possession of machine guns and true automatic fire weapons like carbines - let alone heavier weaponry like rocket launchers and portable missiles - didn't seem to think so.
So why does Dylan Klebold get a HiPoint 995? Why does Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz get an AR-15?
The Founding Fathers would want us to figure this out - and even if they were demented lunatics who didn't, it would be incumbent on us to do so. The current morass of policies and procedures isn't working. We need a new and more relevant sense of what the right to bear arms in a free society means for the next few centuries - a sense that does not simply enable mass killings on one hand and hypocritically limit the ability of free people to defend themselves on the other. We must also protect rights of sporting people to wield guns responsibly when hunting, and the dream - however hackneyed and improbable - that if America were invaded by a hostile foreign power, we'd all rise up, Militia all, and with our crazed collection of hundreds of millions of individual firearms, give that invader hell on Earth. Finally, I give the argument that firearms protect us from government tyranny at least a little weight, and I think that the Federal government as devised needs that counterweight.
But we need a new Second Amendment.
Look. The Founders were geniuses. If nothing else, it's hard to write that well. The Second Amendment has protected many lives from criminals, factored into the thoughts of at least one invader, and fostered a culture of national defense, responsible gun ownership, and self-defense that few other nations on Earth have.
I think the first changes, though, that need to happen is that it be clear that not just "the people" have a right to bear arms. I think it needs to be clarified to "law abiding-citizens, of sound mind." I think its crucial to properly fund the large establishment we have going to do background checks on gun purchases. And I think that our communities should be more tightly knit - yes, like in the olden days.
That's all I've got.
Part of the lost history of the Second Amendment is that states once had far more military power than the Federal government. States had militias and navies. A large part of the reason that the War of 1812 was not as great of a success for America as it could have been was that many state militias did not participate. The Constitution was written by the Founding Fathers, many of whom had contentious state governments to contend with, and the votes to enact the Constitution were far from unanimous. It was Thomas Jefferson who had promised a Bill of Rights, and when it was enacted just a few years after the Constitution itself, what we now think of as "gun rights" was literally very high on the list. Several states had "right to bear arms" clauses in their state constitutions, and my theory is that the states demanded that the Federal government abjure itself of the power to collect guns en masse and thereby horde so much power to itself. You could go all the way back to Bacon's Rebellion in 1676 to look at the consequences (popular rebellion) of a state that won't defend its people or let them at least defend themselves.
However. The actual text of the Second Amendment has been nagging me lately. "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Doesn't it seem like the part about a well regulated Militia that's necessary to the security of a free state comes first? Now I've heard the grammatarians pick this one apart and they tell me it's a subordinate clause, that the action part of the amendment is "the right of the people to keep and bear arms part." Really? Did Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin really sit around going, "You know what? Let's put in a completely subordinate and irrelevant fluff clause into the Second Amendment, with no bearing on the understanding or interpretation of the right to keep and bear arms part of the Amendment. That's just how we will regulated Militia conduct ourselves regulated Militia going forward."
Not so much, right?
And then there's this other problem with the Second Amendment. There are places where it seems to be overly applied - like when psychotic teenagers purchase rapid-fire weapons. And there are places where it seems like the Federal government - if it really was protecting citizens against dumb state laws - would want to throw out the "well regulated Militia" part and protect a citizen's allegedly expressed right to own a gun. What about dangerous places across the country, where break-ins, assaults and other crimes are common - and yet in many of these places, gun regulations are so strict that people can't have firearms they need to protect themselves. Why don't the "it's a subordinate clause" Second Amendment firebrands step in and effectively stop local governments from denying people their rights? Nobody is arguing that every single man, woman, and near-adult person who's still legally a child but who could still bear a firearm is a candidate for the militia, let along the regular military. A terminally ill cancer patient could possibly have the strength to level a pistol and pull the trigger at a dangerous intruder, but no one is suggesting that such a person be recruited up as squad leader in the 101st Airborne.
And this exposes a paradox within the Second Amendment. The Founders started by writing about the need for a properly function militia - roughly, a bunch of more-or-less organized citizen-soldiers - being necessary to keep the security of a free state. But the Amendment then takes the very big leap of logic and - depending on how you want to weight your understanding of the words - grants the right to keep and bear arms to "the people."
And this is what's really staggering - and easy to miss - in the Second Amendment. "The people" could well mean everyone who is physically in the United States- and this is where Second Amendment absolutists get going - and by a plain-language reading of the text it would seem tough to prove them wrong. But this understanding of the Second Amendment is exactly what put deadly weapons in the hands of every mass shooter, murderer, terrorists, criminal, and insurrectionist in American history, since, apparently, the right to keep and bear arms, by the most literal reading, can't be infringed!
I think we can agree that's a little insane?
Again, did the Founding Fathers place the right to bear arms deeply within the context of citizen-soldiers and the security of a free state as pure and total fluff? The several Presidents who have signed gun control legislation and the temporarily responsible people in Congress who limited even free Americans' possession of machine guns and true automatic fire weapons like carbines - let alone heavier weaponry like rocket launchers and portable missiles - didn't seem to think so.
So why does Dylan Klebold get a HiPoint 995? Why does Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz get an AR-15?
The Founding Fathers would want us to figure this out - and even if they were demented lunatics who didn't, it would be incumbent on us to do so. The current morass of policies and procedures isn't working. We need a new and more relevant sense of what the right to bear arms in a free society means for the next few centuries - a sense that does not simply enable mass killings on one hand and hypocritically limit the ability of free people to defend themselves on the other. We must also protect rights of sporting people to wield guns responsibly when hunting, and the dream - however hackneyed and improbable - that if America were invaded by a hostile foreign power, we'd all rise up, Militia all, and with our crazed collection of hundreds of millions of individual firearms, give that invader hell on Earth. Finally, I give the argument that firearms protect us from government tyranny at least a little weight, and I think that the Federal government as devised needs that counterweight.
But we need a new Second Amendment.
Look. The Founders were geniuses. If nothing else, it's hard to write that well. The Second Amendment has protected many lives from criminals, factored into the thoughts of at least one invader, and fostered a culture of national defense, responsible gun ownership, and self-defense that few other nations on Earth have.
I think the first changes, though, that need to happen is that it be clear that not just "the people" have a right to bear arms. I think it needs to be clarified to "law abiding-citizens, of sound mind." I think its crucial to properly fund the large establishment we have going to do background checks on gun purchases. And I think that our communities should be more tightly knit - yes, like in the olden days.
That's all I've got.
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
So Josh Brolin
Has now played three supervillians - Thanos, Cable, and George W. Bush.
Actually, Cable might not count as a supervillian, spoiler alert. But two supervillians, that's non-negotiable.
Actually, Cable might not count as a supervillian, spoiler alert. But two supervillians, that's non-negotiable.
Sunday, April 1, 2018
Are we all Stephon Clark?
I voted for Donald Trump because America was at a perilous crossroads. We faced a choice as a country- between an independent destiny as a nation-state with a free market economy and a denigrated limited-sovereign entity beholden to the whims of collectivist internationalists. Electing Donald Trump was, therefore, an existential choice for Americans, and, in essence, a minorty-turned-Electoral College-majority of us choose to continue to exist.
It's increasingly obvious to me that this choice, however, has come at an incredible cost. For nearly three years, I've been oblivious as people - particularly people of color - told me through the media and pretty much to my face that Donald Trump terrified them. I was dismissive of their concerns and thought that, surely, the era of racial injustice and violence must be over.
Then Charlottesville happened and civilian, citizen counter-protester Heather Heyer was killed, allegedly by an insane person, linked to white supremacist groups, in a vehicular attack. Donald Trump's bizarre response to this incident was to condemn Antifa and say that there were "very fine people on both sides."
Very fine people? I've now had the time to gather my thoughts and I've done a moment or two of research, and the hog's feast of white supremacist lunatics who made up the Unite the Right rally do not fit that description by my definition. And again, I was almost willfully blind to the fact that Trump himself seems to be a thinly disguised racist lunatic.
On March 18, police officers in Sacramento, California, killed a young man by the name of Stephon Clark. At this time, we still do not have all the details of the attack, although we do have many details. I understand that police officers operate under a great deal of strain, and that the job is extremely challenging. I understand that people who serve in law enforcement have volunteered to risk their lives to defend our society and our lives, and I respect that fact. I do not pretend to be judge and jury of the police officers who undertook this action. In this moment, the police officers themselves are not my core issue. To my profound regret, the core issue, once again, has to be President Trump's response.
President Trump, through White House official communications, has called the Stephon Clark's killing a "local matter." This would be a perfectly reasonable statement if American history had begun on March 1, 2018. The Constitution does seem to place certain limits on the ability of Federal authorities to intervene in cases like this. But American history didn't start a few weeks ago. Oppression of black people goes back more than four centuries at this point.
The least problematic this statement could possibly be is that it demonstrates a staggering and presumably willful ignorance of the plight of black citizens within the United States. In 1967, black people were killed by Detroit police officers at the Algiers Motel, an incident chronicled in the film "Detroit". There have been untold other incidents of police violence against black people. For President Trump to not even address the issue in the context of a headline incident today is staggering and a breach of his duty as President of the American people.
President Trump seems to look at black citizens of the United States with much the same, if not even worse, eyes that he looks at the unlawful invaders who exploit America's easily-breached borders. Few if any people of the United States have earned a place in America more than the descendants of the enslaved. If such a thing can be earned, it was earned by generations of unpaid sacrifice and another century of legalized discrimination.
For the President to ignore the systemic and historical racism that has been so prevalent in the United States, and the ongoing issue of young, unarmed black men being killed by police, is unacceptable. This is not a 'local issue'. It is something that happens in many states, in a repeat pattern of behavior by law enforcement agents around the country. America deserves better. America should have a national consensus that the killing of unarmed black men by law enforcement is unacceptable. We should have Federal response, an impartial investigation, and leadership that is responsive to the outcry of its people.
I now do not know if I can, in good conscience, vote for President Trump when he runs for re-election in the year 2020.
It's increasingly obvious to me that this choice, however, has come at an incredible cost. For nearly three years, I've been oblivious as people - particularly people of color - told me through the media and pretty much to my face that Donald Trump terrified them. I was dismissive of their concerns and thought that, surely, the era of racial injustice and violence must be over.
Then Charlottesville happened and civilian, citizen counter-protester Heather Heyer was killed, allegedly by an insane person, linked to white supremacist groups, in a vehicular attack. Donald Trump's bizarre response to this incident was to condemn Antifa and say that there were "very fine people on both sides."
Very fine people? I've now had the time to gather my thoughts and I've done a moment or two of research, and the hog's feast of white supremacist lunatics who made up the Unite the Right rally do not fit that description by my definition. And again, I was almost willfully blind to the fact that Trump himself seems to be a thinly disguised racist lunatic.
On March 18, police officers in Sacramento, California, killed a young man by the name of Stephon Clark. At this time, we still do not have all the details of the attack, although we do have many details. I understand that police officers operate under a great deal of strain, and that the job is extremely challenging. I understand that people who serve in law enforcement have volunteered to risk their lives to defend our society and our lives, and I respect that fact. I do not pretend to be judge and jury of the police officers who undertook this action. In this moment, the police officers themselves are not my core issue. To my profound regret, the core issue, once again, has to be President Trump's response.
President Trump, through White House official communications, has called the Stephon Clark's killing a "local matter." This would be a perfectly reasonable statement if American history had begun on March 1, 2018. The Constitution does seem to place certain limits on the ability of Federal authorities to intervene in cases like this. But American history didn't start a few weeks ago. Oppression of black people goes back more than four centuries at this point.
The least problematic this statement could possibly be is that it demonstrates a staggering and presumably willful ignorance of the plight of black citizens within the United States. In 1967, black people were killed by Detroit police officers at the Algiers Motel, an incident chronicled in the film "Detroit". There have been untold other incidents of police violence against black people. For President Trump to not even address the issue in the context of a headline incident today is staggering and a breach of his duty as President of the American people.
President Trump seems to look at black citizens of the United States with much the same, if not even worse, eyes that he looks at the unlawful invaders who exploit America's easily-breached borders. Few if any people of the United States have earned a place in America more than the descendants of the enslaved. If such a thing can be earned, it was earned by generations of unpaid sacrifice and another century of legalized discrimination.
For the President to ignore the systemic and historical racism that has been so prevalent in the United States, and the ongoing issue of young, unarmed black men being killed by police, is unacceptable. This is not a 'local issue'. It is something that happens in many states, in a repeat pattern of behavior by law enforcement agents around the country. America deserves better. America should have a national consensus that the killing of unarmed black men by law enforcement is unacceptable. We should have Federal response, an impartial investigation, and leadership that is responsive to the outcry of its people.
I now do not know if I can, in good conscience, vote for President Trump when he runs for re-election in the year 2020.
Monday, March 26, 2018
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