6/21/23

 Wednesday, June 21, 2023

Solstice

In bed at 9:30, up at 5:20.  60℉, high of 77℉, sunny all day, no rain😦, wind ENE at 4 mph, 2 to 9 mph during the day, gusts up to 15 mph.  Sunrise at 5:11, solstice at 9:58 CDT, sunset at 8:35, 15+23, the longest day and shortest night.

Race-based governmental decision-making, affirmative action, and the Indian Child Welfare Act.  In today's The Atlantic online there is a piece by Leah Myers titled "BLOOD-QUANTUM LAWS ARE SPLINTERING MY TRIBE: The rules were supposed to preserve my community. Instead, they are slowly cutting people out of it."  Excerpts:

Even though I am a citizen of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, because of my blood I may also be the last tribal member in my family line.  My tribe requires that members be at least one-eighth Jamestown S'Klallam by blood. Because I am exactly one-eighth, unless I have kids with another citizen, my kids will be ineligible to join. Regulations like this, known as blood-quantum laws, are used by many tribal nations to determine citizenship. They do this in the name of preservation, fearing that diluting the bloodline could mean diluting the culture. However, by enforcing these laws, tribal governments not only exclude some active members of their communities, but also may be creating a future in which fewer and fewer people will be eligible for citizenship. Watching enrollment in my tribe dwindle, I’ve started to wonder: What if there were another way to think about the preservation of a community?  (Underscoring added by me.)

Blood-quantum laws were originally created by white settlers in the 18th century. They were used to prohibit interracial marriages, and to keep people deemed Native American out of public offices or on reservations—essentially to determine who would (and wouldn’t) benefit from the privileges of whiteness. By the time of the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934, tribal governments had begun implementing these laws themselves. In theory, the act was designed to preserve Native American identity. In addition to restoring Indigenous people’s fishing and hunting rights, it also offered funds and land to people who volunteered to move to reservations. This system cemented the importance of blood-quantum laws because many tribes that had previously relied on kinship and relationships to determine citizenship now used blood to determine who was allowed to settle on reservations. 

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The act also split my own tribe, the S’Klallam, into three. The federal government paid tribal members to move to two new parcels of land in Washington State and start new tribes; they became the Port Gamble S’Klallam and Lower Elwha. Those who stayed in place on the Strait de Juan de Fuca, on the northern coast of the state, had to pool their money together to buy our ancestral land even though they lived on it already; they became the Jamestown S’Klallam. Now, because of the federal government’s requirements when it offered the land, legally we are separate tribes, even though we all share the same ancestors. Someone can be enrolled in only one of the three. Cousins of mine who have a grandfather in one tribe and a grandmother in another must choose to commit to only half of their family tree and leave behind part of their heritage. Even though they are one-quarter S’Klallam, they are only one-eighth Jamestown S’Klallam—and, unless they have children with another tribal citizen, their kids will be ineligible for citizenship, just like mine could be.

The author points out that the splintering effect of the tribal laws and the federal law is effectively dooming her tribe to extinction.

I think about the plight of the Jamestown K'Llallam Native Americans as I continue to think about the  USSC decision on the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act, and especially about Clarence Thomas' dissent and Brett Kavanaugh's concurring opinion.

From Kavanaugh's concurrence:  "In my view, the equal protection issue is serious. Under the Act, a child in foster care or adoption proceedings may in some cases be denied a particular placement because of the child’s race—even if the placement is otherwise determined to be in the child’s best interests. And a prospective foster or adoptive parent may in some cases be denied the opportunity to foster or adopt a child because of the prospective parent’s race. Those scenarios raise significant questions under bedrock equal protection principles and this Court’s precedents. 

From Thomas' dissent:  "But ICWA displaces the normal state laws governing child custody when it comes to only one group of citizens: Indian children. ICWA defines “Indian child” capaciously: It includes not only children who are members of an Indian tribe but also those children who are merely eligible for membership in a tribe and are the biological child of a tribal member. See 25 U. S. C. §1903(4). If the child resides on Indian tribal lands, then the Indian tribal court has jurisdiction. §1911(a). But, if the child resides within a State, ICWA requires state courts to transfer any proceedings to a tribal court, absent “good cause to the contrary,” upon petition by the child’s parent, custodian, or tribe. §1911(b).

[Thus, Leah Myers' children, being only 1/16th K'Lallam 'by blood', would not be an "Indian child" under the ICWA.]

Further from Thomas' dissent: "ICWA dictates the preferences a court must adhere to when deciding where to place the child. In the typical case, the primary consideration would be the best interests of that child. (Citations omitted)  That makes sense; as the majority notes, these children are some of the most vulnerable among us, and their interests should be a court’s primary concern.  But ICWA displaces that standard with its own hierarchy of preferences, requiring a court to prefer any placements with (1) a member of the child’s extended family; (2) other members of the child’s tribe; and (3) other Indian families of any tribe, anywhere in the country. §1915(a). Similar rules govern foster-care placements. §1915(b). As the majority notes, these preferences collectively ensure that any Indian from any tribe in the country outranks all non-Indians for adopting and fostering those whom ICWA deems to be Indian children.

[Thus, if Leah Myers did have a child who under a hypothetical tribal law was eligible for tribal membership based on 1/16th 'tribal blood,' that child could, in appropriate circumstances, be placed with wholly-unrelated  Indian adoptive or foster parents in Wisconsin or Florida or Maine far from the Jamestown K'Lallam native lands along the coast of the Juan de Fuca Straits in Washington State in preference to a non-Indian family living across the street from the K'Lallam reservation, and this would be so even if Leah Myers and her child wanted the child to stay with the non-Indian adoptive or foster parents and even though a Washington state court found that staying with the non-Indian adoptive or foster parents was in the best interests of the  child.]

Some thoughts: (1) Are "blood" and "race" the same or different?  How are they the same and/or how different? Didn't the Nazis treat the two concepts as equal, as in Blut und Boden, blood and land referring to the Aryan 'race'? (2) Isn't the ICWA precisely race-based discrimination mandated by Congress? (3) How is it that Indian tribes, i.e., identified only by "blood" or "race" are granted rights superior to those of (a) the child, (b) the child's biological parents and 'blood' relatives, and (c) every state's otherwise sovereign right to implement its policies respecting each individual child's welfare in adoption and custody cases, but only if the child in question is an "Indian child" as defined by ICWA and some tribe's political decision about which children are entitled to tribal membership 'by blood'?  I have not yet digested either Amy Conan Barrett's majority opinion or Neil Gorsuch's lengthy concurrence.  Alito's dissent is 11 printed pages long.  Thomas' dissent is 40 pages long.  Kavanaugh's concurrence is mercifully only 2 pages, but Gorsuch's concurrence is 38 pages long and the majority opinion is 34 pages long.  I think that's 125 pages of history and legal argument, or some would say historical and legal casuistry or sophistry.  

I'm also thinking about how the overt race-based governmental decision making the the ICWA case will be compared with race-based governmental and non-governmental decison making in the affirmative action cases which are expected to be handed down any minute.

6/20/23

 Tuesday, June 20, 2023

In bed at 10:10, up at 7:19, GERD episode at 2:45 had me in the bedroom recliner but also let Lilly out.  62℉, high of 74℉, sunny all day, wind NNE at 6 mph, 3 to 14 mph during the day, gusts up to 25 mph, no rain😖.  The sun rose at 5:11 and will set at *:34, 15+23.

Guns, Crimes, and Incarceration in America's Dystopia.  From Jennifer Rubin's WaPo column this morning:  

In the Netherlands, there are roughly 2.6 guns for every 100 people; there are more than 120 guns per 100 people in the United States. In the Netherlands, it is very, very hard to get a gun; in the United States, it is ridiculously easy to get guns.

In the Netherlands there are about 27 gun homicides a year. Not 27 per 100,000. Total. In the United States, the Pew Research Center reports, 48,830 people died from gun-related injuries in 2021. (The U.S. population is about 20 times that of the Netherlands; U.S. gun homicides are more than 1,777 times the number in the Netherlands.) 

Also, the Dutch do not incarcerate people for drug addiction. It’s one reason they have locked up so few people. The Guardian reported, “Since 2014, 23 prisons have been shut, turning into temporary asylum centres, housing and hotels. … The number of prison sentences imposed fell from 42,000 in 2008 to 31,000 in 2018 — along with a two-thirds drop in jail terms for young offenders. Registered crimes plummeted by 40% in the same period, to 785,000 in 2018.” 

By contrast, a report from the Prison Policy Initiative found that in the United States, “Drug offenses still account for the incarceration of over 350,000 people, and drug convictions remain a defining feature of the federal prison system. And until the pandemic hit … police were still making over 1 million drug possession arrests each year, many of which lead to prison sentences.” As a result, “Drug arrests continue to give residents of over-policed communities criminal records, hurting their employment prospects and increasing the likelihood of longer sentences for any future offenses.” In short, the United States has 163 times the number of incarcerated people as the Netherlands, more than eight times as many per 100,000 people. 

 Understand, then, that we have our current criminal justice system because we have fetishized guns, criminalized addiction, neglected mental and emotional health, and resisted addressing social factors driving crime.

We could do it differently. We simply don’t want to.

Why not?  The primary reason is RACE.

 The demonic Willy Horton and George H. W. Bush

Affirmative action.  From an article in the current New Yorker:

In another two decades, perhaps we’ll know whether we managed to find a way to advance racial equality that doesn’t also feel to a majority of people—and to the Court—like legally approved discrimination. Since S.F.F.A. filed suit nine years ago, the number of Asian Americans admitted to Harvard has significantly increased, reaching nearly thirty per cent of admitted students this year. White students are less than half of the class. At Stanford, only twenty-two per cent of admitted applicants last year were white, and, in the University of California system, only nineteen per cent were. Beyond any decision of the Court, the increasingly clear picture of white students as an underrepresented racial group whose majority status in the U.S. is fading—and of Asian Americans taking their place at the most selective schools—predicts even more racial resentment. And it suggests that a white conservative alignment with Asian Americans as the victims of discrimination cannot endure for very long. ♦

Untethered thoughts about Hunter and Joe Biden.  News stories are reporting that Hunter Biden's and his attorneys have struck a plea bargain with the Trump-appointed US Attorney in Delaware under which Hunter witll plead guilty to 2 tax misdemeanors and participate in a 'diversion program' for his gun-purchase related falsehood.  I know little of Hunter Biden other that the bits I have head in the media but here are some impressions.  First, he seems like a very unadmirable guy who has traded on his father's position as a US senator and then as US vice president to make a lot of money for doing nothing other than being Joe Biden's son.  Second, his problems with drugs and women also make him pretty unadmirable, at best.  Third, I don't think I would like this guy or want him for a friend.  Fourth, I can't help feeling sorry for him precisely because he is Joe Biden's son, and not the favorite son.  Fifth, I have mixed feelings about Joe Biden's decision to keep the Senate seat he had recently won when Hunter's and brother Beau's mother and sister were killed in a vehicular collision.  If small children ever needed a loving parent's presence after such a tragedy, it was Beau and Hunter.  How much time could Joe make available to his children, even as a commuting US senator?  Sixth, can there be much doubt that Hunter, compared to Beau, was the 'spare', much like Prince Harry was to Prince William?  Beau was so favored and so accomplished compared to Hunter, who seems like a psychological train wreck.  I always cringe at least a little when Father Joe speaks of Son Beau almost as his heir apparent with Hunter the misfit ne'er-do-well child in the background.  When an adult child ends up as thoroughly screwed up as Hunter did, mustn't we at least wonder about the job his one natural parent did during the child's early and later life?

 

6/19/23

 Monday, June 19, 2023

In bed by 10, and up at 5:33. 57℉, high of 75℉, wind ENE at 3 mph, 2 to 8 mph during the day, and gusts up to 13 mph.  No rain😟.  The sun rose at 5:11 and will set at 8:34, 15+23.

Morning on the patio.  I went outside to listen to the morning bird calls but it was already 7 o'clock, almost 2 hours past sunup so things had pretty much settled down.  As usual, the cardinals dominated the airwaves and Merlin said he heard a cowbird, a reb-bellied woodpecker, a house finch, and a sparrow, but what I heard mostly was traffic sounds from the freeway coming mostly from the south where we had hoped the Great Wall of Bayside would muffle or dampen freeway sound.  On the contrary, it seems to have amplified it.  I watch a young cotton-tailed bunny hop acoss the grass to get to Geri's west marginal garden when s/he stops to nibble on some goodies.  The chipmunk that was on a big flowerpot on the patio when I opened the sliding door to come out here has disappeared.  A robin and now a chickadee have come to the old birdfeeder for some sustenance and seem not to be bothered by the sounds of the freeway or that of the cars heading out on Counaty Line Road, probably neighbors off going to work.  I'm awar of my tinnitus and wonder how many decades ago it was when I last 'heard' silence.  The sun rose at 56 degrees NE this morning, its farthest north in this solstice season and can see the sunlight hitting the northern end of Geri's fern patch  and not reaching the ferns to the south.  The little bunny has moved to Geri's garden path, satill filling up on groundcover.  The chipmunk has emerged from the lush groundcover on the west side of the house toa spot under the glasstop patio table I am so fond of; as soon as I move my head, s/he scurries back.  A few minutes later, s/he or probably another one scurries under the chair I sit on from the opposite direction.  And now two of them scurry right in front of me.  I guess they got tired of waiting for me to go back into the hosue.   This is a wonderful spot to be sitting on a summer morning, in our back yard, at the corner of Wakefield Court and County Line Road, in the Village of Bayside, County of Milwaukee, State of Wisconsin, United States of America, Continent of North America, Western Hemisphere, planet Earth, the Solar System, the Universe, the Mind of God, pace Thornton Wilder, Our Town, Act 1.

Ferns, flowers, trees, shrubs, metal garden sculpture, a view from my chair on the patio - habitat for voles, field mice, chipmunks, cottontail bunnies, cardinals, robins, mourning doves, great-crested flycatchers, blue-gray gnatcatchers, house wrens, sparrows, house finches, goldfinches, brown-headed cowbirds, bluebirds, downy woodpeckers, red-bellied woodpeckers, crows, red-bellied nuthatches, white-bellied nuthatches, great horned owls, starlings, wild turkeys, white-tailed deer, a white-capped old man,, a silver-topped old lady, and one old dog.

Journaling.  

Con: no editors, publishers, critics, readers, or rules.

Pro: no editors, publishers, critics, readers, or rules.

Celebrating American-Style.  Over the Juneteenth/ Fathers Day holiday weekend, in Willowbrook IL outside Chicago,  1 dead and 22 wounded by a shooter at a Juneteeth celebration.  In St. Louis, a 17 year old was killed and 9 other teens were injured by a shooter at a party downtown.  An AR-15 style weapon was recovered and a 17 year old is in custody.  At a music festival in Washington State, 2 were killed and 3 others injured..  THERE HAVE BEEN MORE MASS SHOOTINGS IN 2023 THAN THERE HAVE BEEN DAYS IN 2023, 315 mass shootings so far this year.  So far this year more than 800 children and teens have been killed by guns.  There have been 19 mass shootings since last Friday with at least 14 killed & 101 wounded.  In 2021, guns were used in 20,958 homicides, 36% of the victims were young Black males, who account for only 2% of the American population.

AG Merrick Garland.  "No person is above the law."  WaPo today:   FBI resisted opening probe into Trump’s role in Jan. 6 for more than a year:  In the DOJ’s investigation of Jan. 6, key Justice officials also quashed an early plan for a task force focused on people in Trump’s orbit  By Carol D. Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis, June 19, 2023:

A Washington Post investigation found that more than a year would pass before prosecutors and FBI agents jointly embarked on a formal probe of actions directed from the White House to try to steal the election. Even then, the FBI stopped short of identifying the former president as a focus of that investigation.

A wariness about appearing partisan, institutional caution, and clashes over how much evidence was sufficient to investigate the actions of Trump and those around him all contributed to the slow pace. Garland and the deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, charted a cautious course aimed at restoring public trust in the department while some prosecutors below them chafed, feeling top officials were shying away from looking at evidence of potential crimes by Trump and those close to him, The Post found.

In November, after Trump announced he was again running for president, making him a potential 2024 rival to President Biden, Garland appointed special counsel Jack Smith to take over the investigation into Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

The AG, DOJ leadership, and FBI leaders were all afraid of going after Trump and his political henchmen.  No surprise.    It was only Trump's early announcement of his candidacy for president in the 2024 election that forced the appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith and the serious investigation of Trump and his henchment.  No person is above the law, except the politically powerful. 

6/18/23

 Sunday, June 18, 2023

In bed at 10:40 after watching 2 old episodes of Veep, up at 6:15.  Let Lilly out & listened to the morning songs of cardinal, wren, robin, mourning dove, chickadee, house finch, cowbird, and chimney swift.  58℉, sunny morning to be followed by a cloudy day, high of 70℉, the wind is SE at 5 mph, 2 to 10 mph today and gusts up to 16 mph.  The sun rose at 5:11 and will set at 8:34,  15+23.

Am I really just too paranoid, pessimistic, and cynical or is the country truly in danger of becoming a Fascist, corporate, oligarchic plutocracy?  Yesterday's WaPo carried a piece by Dan Balz, Ann E. Marimow, and Perry Stein entitled Trump’s indictment plus candidacy could endanger democracy and the Rule of Law.

Not since the Vietnam War in the 1960s or perhaps the mid-19th century before the Civil War has the country’s governing structure faced such disunity and peril, given the unprecedented nature of a federal criminal indictment of a former president compounded by the fact that Trump has been charged by the Justice Department in the administration of the Democrat who defeated him in 2020 and who is his likeliest general election opponent in 2024, if Trump is nominated again by the Republican Party.

Scholars, legal experts and political strategists agree that what lies ahead is ugly and unpredictable. Many fear that the 2024 election will not overcome the distrust of many Americans in their government and its pillars, almost no matter the outcome. “A constitutional democracy stands or falls with the effectiveness and trustworthiness of the systems through which laws are created and enforced,” said William Galston of the Brookings Institution. “If you have fundamental doubts raised about those institutions, then constitutional democracy as a whole is in trouble.”

Attacks on the legitimacy of government institutions are most virulent on the political right, led by Trump. But many on the left also have doubts, especially about a Supreme Court that now has a solid conservative majority and whose rulings in cases including Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ended the constitutional right to abortion, have inflamed the political debate.

These are likely to be the conditions throughout the coming election year. By any measure, this represents a gloomy prospect for restoring a thriving democracy.

“At the level of national politics and presidential politics, things do feel quite fragile, and I don’t have much reason to think we’re about to turn the corner in 2024,” said Archon Fung, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government who studies issues of democracy. . . . A conviction and a decisive defeat at the ballot box might force Trump from the political scene and cause the Republican Party to move in a different direction, although in an era of close elections, the prospect of 2024 producing a blowout in either direction remains doubtful — and even that would not necessarily cleanse the system.  “The country functioned after the Civil War,” Galston added, “but it was a long time before the system was drained of the political poisons of the Civil War.”

Quaere whether any informed, intelligent person can really believe the the 'system' has been 'drained of the political poisons of the Civil War.'  

"One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all"

 Quaere whether we are already reliving the 1850s and on our way into our new civil war.   

Quaere whether many on the Left, like me, aren't disgusted by the anti-democratic constitutional structure of our government that vests seemingly almost permanent power in a non-urban, less educated, anti-democratic White minority.

 I agree with Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and George Will? !?!?   I am troubled by the 7-2 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case upholding the Indian Child Welfare Act.  It strikes me as validating a form of racism.  Can it be that I am in league with three guys who usually give me the willies?  George Will in this morning's WaPo: 

The ICWA, which repellently calls children tribal “resources,” is about enhancing tribal power rather than protecting children’s welfare. It allocates group entitlements based on biology, as did Germany’s 1935 Nuremberg Laws, one of which was “The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor.”

About the case decided Thursday: The biological mother of a Navajo child identified as A.L.M. and his sister, called Y.R.J., supported their being raised by Chad and Jennifer Brackeen, neither of them Indians, in Texas, far from the Navajo Nation. This nation, however, wanted the siblings separated, and the sister sent to another state to live either with a great-aunt or an unrelated Navajo couple.  

The court, divided 7-2, chose not to strike down the ICWA. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote: The ICWA “requires a state court to place an Indian child with an Indian caretaker … even if the child is already living with a non-Indian family and the state court thinks it in the child’s best interest to stay there.” That accurate description should have sufficed to dictate a different ruling.

Barrett writes unhelpfully that Congress has “plenary” but not “absolute” power to legislate regarding Indians. Otherwise, Congress could disregard the Constitution, including “equal protection of the laws,” concerning Indians. But the court now allows that. Could Congress forbid Indians from leaving their tribes, marrying outside the tribe, adopting non-Indian children, etc.? The seven justices might say yes.  . . . 

The ICWA was enacted to stop the wicked practice of forcing assimilation by removing Indian children from non-Indian families. Now it functions to yank even thriving Indian children from nurturing non-Indian families, in barbaric homage to Indian “blood.” This means that Declan Stewart and Laurynn Whiteshield and others died unremembered.

Declan was 5 when beaten to death in 2007 by his mother’s live-in boyfriend. Oklahoma, responding to his fractured skull and severe bruising between his testicles and rectum, had earlier removed him from his mother’s custody. The Cherokee Nation objected. The state, knowing the ICWA’s bias toward tribal rights, relented. Declan died of a beating a month after being returned to his mother.

Laurynn was 3 when living in foster care with a North Dakota minister, Jeanine Kersey-Russell, who tried to adopt her. The Spirit Lake Sioux tribe, invoking the ICWA, got Laurynn sent to a reservation in 2013 and the custody of her grandfather. Within six weeks she was dead, thrown down an embankment by the grandfather’s wife, who had a record of child abuse.

This was carnage from identity politics. More will come from the court’s decision allowing children to be treated like tiny trophies of tribal power 

I find it hard to argue with the reasonng of Thomas, Alito, and Will.  Egad.

White House Plumbers.  We finished watching this series last night.  The comedic acting by Woody Haeelson as Howard Hunt and Justin Thereoux as E. Gordon Liddy very good and the story is of course an interesting one, but for one who  lived through the Watergate years, it was not so easy enjoying a spoof of the sandal.  It did a lot of damage to the country, to the people of the country.  We were living on Newberry Boulevard at the time and I remember saving  Watergate newspapers in my basement office, waiting for Nixon to be impeached, convisted, and removed from office.  Instead we got his resignation and then Gerry Ford's pardon.

Skype call from Sarah and Christian this morning.  We had a good chat until I had to beg off for a pit stop.😩

Text from Andy who was at Road America for a big Formula One race with Peter.  I told him how proud of him I am, what a great father he is.

America and the Holocaust.  We watched the first episode of this Ken Burns documentary on the  PBS streaming app.  Although its focus is on overt anti-semitism in the U.S and broad-based indifference to the plight of European Jews seeking entry into the U.S. in the 1930s and 1840s, it's a reminder of the role racism in general has played in our history, including anti-Asian, anti-indigenous, and of course anti-Black.  More generally, I suppose I should say the role that groupism, me and mine come first, plays in all our lives.  How hard it is for all of us to 'welcome the stranger,' etc.  Mt. 25.  And throughout the Toruh " . . . . for you were strangers in the land of Egypt."

 

 

6/17/23

 Saturday, June 17, 2023

In bed by 9, unable to stay awake watching "Vera" on BritBox, and up at 6:30.  56℉, high of 72℉, sunny, wind WNW at 4 mph, 2 to 9 mph today, gusts up to 15 mph.  The sun rose at 5:11 and will set at 8:34, 15+22.  No rain, none expected for the next 10 days.

LTMW at a bright, warm, sunny morning.  One chickadee after another flies to the niger tube, and squirrels and chipmunks search the ground under the feeders for spilled sunflower seeds.  A huge bluejay works on the suet cake. A house finch perched on top of the shepherd's crook with the orange is passing a morsel from his (?) beak to the other's, as cardinals do.  It's the first time I've seen this behavior in birds other than cardinals.  An aggressive English sparrow lands next to them and drives them away.  I wonder if the finches are Barkis and Peggotty.  The chipmunks are climbing the shaft of the shepherd crooks again, desperately trying to figure out how to get past the squirrel baffle.

My Pandora Boxes.  I looked through some more photos this morning and found a Christmas card from "Mary and Bob Hillary." I couldn't read the postmark to ascertain the year it was sent, maybe 198- or 199-.  [It must have been 1999 when first class postage went up to 33 cents.)  Hillary, from Los Angeles, was a good friend of mine both in Yuma and in Vietnam.  He wrote me after we were back in the States and I never returned his letter.  I let our friendship go by the board just as I did with my friendship with Iowan and good friend Ron Kendall, much to my regret.  I was not in good emotional shape after my reutrn from Asian service, some of it from culture shock, some from what was happening in the country, and some from personal challenges. I  made some big mistakes, among them not maintaining good friendships I had enjoyed during active duty and earlier in life.  Andy Furlong from NAS Glynco, Larry Stack from Leo H.S., Cathy Semrau from childhood.  How foolish and self-defeating.  My fault.  I'm reminded of both Ed Felsenthal and Cam Wakeman telling me during our Notch House reunion on Marco Island how "aloof" I was thought to be during our college days.  I'm inclined to blame all of these problems on childhood pains with my father after the war and after the crime by 'Jimmy' Hartmann, and with feeling out of place with contemporaries with more settled backgrounds, but ultimately the responsibility for my own choices, my own behaviors, is mine.  I have lots of regrets and Bob Hillary's Christmas card and Ron Kendall's letter reminds me of them.

Cops.  The lead story in this morning's NYT is Consent Decrees Force Changes to Policing. But Do They Last?  It's a follow-up to yesterday's news of the DOJ report excoriating the Minneapolis Police Department.  "The Justice Department said on Friday that the Minneapolis police routinely discriminated against Black and Native American people, used deadly force without justification and trampled the First Amendment rights of protesters and journalists — damning findings that grew out of a multiyear investigation and may lead to a court-enforced overhaul" i.e., a consent decree. 

 Consent decrees involving modern American police forces have become almost commonplace.  They exist, e.g., in New Orleans Police Department, Puerto Rico Police Department; Seattle Police Department; Portland (Oregon) Police Department; Detroit Police Department; Virgin Islands Police Department; East Haven (Connecticut) Police Department; Warren (Ohio) Police Department; Albuquerque (New Mexico) Police Department; Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department-Antelope Valley; Cleveland Division of Police; Meridian (Mississippi) Police Department; Maricopa County (Arizona) Sheriff’s Office.  Additionally, Los Angeles and the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Departments have recently concluded operating under DOJ consent decrees.  There are ongoing investigations of the Chicago and Baltimore PDs.

I haven't researched all these cases but it seems a fair wager that they all, or almost all, involve the use of excessive and often lethal violence against racial minorities, especially Blacks.  And, not surprisingly, when racist Jefferson Beauregard (political mentor of racist Stephen Miller) Sessions was U.S. Attorney General, his last act before being fired by Donald Trump was to sharply limit the use of consent decrees as enforcement mechanisms for civil rights protections.

The thoughts that this story prompts in me are (1) with America's history, including very recent history, how can there be any doubt that at least our urban police departments are infected with SYSTEMIC racism, (2) why is this so, and (3) can heavy-handed, bureaucratically-enforced consent decrees really affect the root causes of systemic racism in policing.  The second question is the most important: what are the causes of the racism, all the causes, individually and socially?  Do police academy cadets bring with them attitudes, beliefs, and dispositions that are racist, or do those attitudes, beliefs, and dispositions develop from their experiences on the force, or both?  What kinds of persons want to become cops?  wants to carry a deadly weapon while on the job and to perhaps be called upon to kill another human being?  What is it about urban policing that attracts people to the job?  I don't think the answers to these questions are easy and certainly are not uniform from one police officer to the next.  What is it about the job requirements and the job experiences in the community and within the police department that may create or reinforce racist dispositions in police officers?  If we don't realistically address and answer those questions, why should we expect federal consent decrees to fix the problems we have.

We (I) fall so easily into categorical thinking about the police, into painting with brushes that are way too broad.   Lefties start out at least distrustful of them.  They represent authority.  They exercise great power, even over life and death.  They are employed on the side of the Establishment against promoters of healthful progressive changes.  They represent corporate America against 'the little guy', management against labor, government against protesters, etc.  They carry guns and batons and tasers, cuffs and shackles, and deploy them against unarmed persons as well as dangerous criminals.  Those on the Right talk of cops as if they are all heroes, first responders who serve and protect law and order, who prevent crime and keep 'undesirables' from debauching our society, our culture, our 'American way of life.'  The Census Bureau tells us that in 2021 there were 725,000 full-time law enforcement officers in the U.S., about 3/4th of a million.  It's easy to think that some or most are 'good guys', some or most are 'bad guys.'  On the other hand, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago.  

6/16/23

 Friday, June 16, 2023

In bed at 10:10, up at 4:30.  Let Lilly out.  A robin singing before dawn.  53℉, high of 66, wind NNE at 12 mph, with gusts up to 19 mh, beach hazard warning with waves 2 to 5 feet until 7 a.m.  Sunrise at 5:11, sunset at 8:33, 15+22.

Bloomsday.  This morning's Pearls Before Swine cartoon strip:

Rat to Goat: HAPPY BLOOMSDAY!

Goat to Rat: What's that?

Rat to Goat: It's a day we celebrate the life of the writer James Joyce whose novel "Ulysses" took place on June 16th.  Because if there's one thing we should celebrate, it's a novel that's 265,000 words long that not one person on earth understands.

Goat to Rat: I sense sarcasm.

Rat to Goat: And tomorrow is my "Right Foot Day" which  I celebrate by kicking all book snobs right in their arrogant . . . 

Still trying.

Haaland v. Brackeen, 599 U.S. ___(2023),  I heard news reports yesterday of this U.S. Supreme Court case upholding by a 7-2 vote the constitutionality of the federal Indian Child Welfare Act, passed in 1978.  I wasn't familiar with the case and wondered about it after hearing fellow Lefties praise the decision so I read much though not all of the decisions this morning.  I expected it to be a 'good guys' vs. 'bad guys' decision with inveterate bad guys Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito the only two dissenters.  After reading the 2 dissenting opinions and much of Neil Gorsuch's long concurring opinion (joined in parts by Sotomayor and Jackson, but not by Kagan), I wasn't very sure of who were the 'good guys' and who were the 'bad guys.'  There were 3 young children whose lives and well-being were involved in the legal issues in the case.  They seemed to be pawns in a political game.   I need to read more of the opinions.   Gorsuch's opinion is a great description of White Supremacy in operation against a feared minority group, almost a form of cultural genocide.  I learned from listening to a podcast some months ago about the role of the Jesuits in the Red Cloud Indian boarding school on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.  (American Genocide: The Crimes of Native American  Boarding Schools)

Daniel Ellsberg has died, an American hero, the Great Unmasker who in "The Pentagon Papers" revealed the lies told by American government officials to the American people, including the Americans who served, were wounded, and/or died in Vietnam.  Or who came back with psychic, emotional, or spiritual wounds which plagued them for life.  From my memoir:

Throughout the time I was in Vietnam, and for the years of occupation and fighting thereafter, our government promulgated what we, even in late 1965, called ‘happy horseshit.’  One of the memorable lines in Apocalypse Now is “The bullshit piled up so fast in Vietnam you needed wings to rise above it.”  The Pentagon Papers, that the Nixon Administration tried to keep secret, collected much of the ‘happy horseshit.’     On August 9, 1965, three CBS correspondents interviewed Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk about Vietnam.  Harry Reasoner asked why American national interests were linked to South Vietnam.  McNamara said: 

First, let me make it clear, Mr. Reasoner, that this is not primarily a military problem.  Above all else, I want to emphasize that.  It is a battle for the hearts and minds of the people of South Vietnam . . .

Secretary Rusk’s reference to President Johnson’s invocation of ‘national honor’ drew this question:

But, sir, don’t you have to reckon honor at its cost?  I mean, it is not an abstract thing.  It has to be valued and weighed according to what it costs you.  And what about dishonor?  What about the world image that we now present?  We are burning villages, we are killing civilians.  Now, don’t you weigh one against the other?

Rusk answered:

Well, let me say that you also weigh the costs of dishonor, that is, the failure of an American commitment.  And I would hope that our own American news media would go to some effort to present a balanced picture of what is going on in South Vietnam: the thousands of local officials who have been kidnapped, the tens of thousands of South Vietnamese civilians who have been killed or wounded by North Vietnamese mortars and by the constant depredations of these acts of violence against the civilian population.

It is a sad experience to think back on those days in Vietnam and to re-read the ‘happy horseshit’ of the politicos.  I remember quite clearly talking with other Marines about the futility of the war, sharing the judgment or intuition that no ultimate good was going to come from all the death and destruction.  I talked about it in the middle of the night with my friend Bob Hilleary during those endless night watches in ‘the bubble.’  My tentmates and I groused about it while holed up under canvas during the endless monsoon rains.  We talked about it over alcohol and blackjack hands at the officers’ club.  Regarding the “happy horseshit” in the news reports on Armed Forces Radio and in Stars and Stripes and in hometown newspapers that were mailed to DaNang, I remember with surprising vividness my good friend, from Yuma and Iwakuni and DaNang, Warrant Officer Ron Kendall frequently quoting his high school football coach in Iowa who used to tell his team: “You can fool the spectators but you can’t fool the players.”  The players, at least in my unit, didn’t believe the happy horseshit from Saigon and Washington, just as I haven’t believed the happy horseshit from Baghdad and Washington 40 years later.  A nation does not ‘win the hearts and minds’ of another people by dispatching an invading army of highly trained killers to its shores, airfields, or landing zones.  A nation cannot successfully use as ambassadors of good will Marines and soldiers who are always at least a lethal threat to kill locals and often a homicidal force.  We do not ‘save villages’ by ‘destroying them,’ whether the village is a hamlet in the Mekong Delta or the city of Fallujah on the Euphrates.  We do not preserve national honor by becoming an international pariah.  My heart aches when I think of the price the Clausen family and millions of other families paid in foreign wars only to lead to policies of invasion, occupation, torture, kidnappings, detentions without legal process, and claims of almost boundless executive authority by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Gonzales.  Did we learn nothing from Vietnam?   Is there no limit to the amount of happy horseshit gullible Americans will willingly eat?

When I arrived in Vietnam on July 12, 1965, the conflict there was not yet a full-fledged American war.  The mission of American combat forces was limited and essentially defensive.  It all changed two weeks later when President Johnson made the decision to grant General Westmoreland’s request for a massive infusion of American forces in 1965 and more in 1966.   He granted the request for the very reasons that should have caused him to deny it - because he knew that the South Vietnamese government was incapable of effectively governing the country and the South Vietnamese military was incapable of defending it.  That decision on that date for those reasons turned the war into an American war.  The whole world knew of the fecklessness and corruption of the Vietnamese government in Saigon and of the powerlessness of the South Vietnamese military and of the determination of the VC/NVA forces and we Marines knew it too.  In Robert McNamara’s In Retrospect, he acknowledges the mistake of not pulling out of Vietnam early.  He wrote:

By [the early or mid 1960s] it should have become apparent that the two condition underlying President Kennedy’s decision to send military advisors to South Vietnam were not being met and, indeed, could not be met: political stability did not exist and was unlikely ever to be achieved; and the South Vietnamese, even with our training assistance and logistical support, were incapable of defending themselves.

Given these facts – and they are facts – I believe we could and should have withdrawn from South Vietnam either in late 1963 amid the turmoil following Điem’s assassination or in late 1964 or early 1965 in the face of increasing political and military weakness in South Vietnam.  And, as the table opposite suggests, there were at least three other occasions when withdrawal could have been justified.

Date of Withdrawal US Forces US Killed Basis for Withdrawal

Nov. 1963 16,300 advisors 78 Collapse of  Điem regime and political instability

Late 1964 or Early 1965 23,300 advisors 225 Clear indications of SVN’s inability to defend itself, even with US training and logistical support

July 1965 81,400 troops 509 Further evidence of the above

December 1965 184,300 troops 1,594 Evidence the US military tactics and training were inappropriate for guerrilla war being waged.

December, 1967 485,600 troops 15,979 CIA reports indicating bombing in the North would not force North Vietnam to desist is the face of our inability to turn back enemy forces in South Vietnam.

January 1973 543,400 troops (April 1969) 58,191 Signing of Paris Accords, marking the end of US military involvement

All of my college roommates, except Joe Daley, would end up serving in Vietnam.  Tom Devitt served as Executive Officer, one step below the commanding officer, of a Marine artillery battery.  The man he replaced had been ‘fragged’, killed by his own men with a fragmentation grenade thrown into his tent.  Gerry Nugent served as a Marine infantry officer.  Ed Felsenthal and Bill Hendricks served aboard ships on the South China Sea, pulling into the port of Da Nang frequently.  None of us was in contact with any of the others during our time ‘in country.’  One of our friends from the NROTC unit at Marquette, Jay Tremblay, was shot down and lost piloting his aircraft over North Vietnam.  Another good friend, John Boyan, flew H34 helicopters for 13 months in Marine operations.  Pat Townsend, Dick Coffman, Brian Fagin, all good friends from Marquette, all served as Marines in Vietnam and made it home in one piece.

Daniel Ellsberg more than any other single human being revealed the lies and hypocrisy behind the Vietnam War.  To many, especially Republicans, he was a traitor.  To me, he will always be a hero.  RIP

My favorite painting

My workplace

6/15/23

 Thursday, June 15, 2023

In bed around 9:30 after sleeping on the recliner, and up at 6:03.  60℉, high of 65℉, cloudy morning, wind SW at 3 mph, 2 to 15 mph during the day, gusts up to 23 mph. No rain in the last 24 hours and none is expected until 6/24.  The sun rose at 5:11 and will set at 8:33.  15+22.

Animal cruelty?  Yesterday I moved the long niger seed feeder from the sunflower seed & suet shepherd's crooks to the nesting material crook so Chip 'n Dale couldn't engage in their acrobatic leaps to access the bird food.  The chippies were not only frustrated, but they also seemed to be beside themselves, even attempting suicide leaps from the shaft of the crooks to the upper side of the baffle.  More guilt feelings though I suspect there is plenty enough food on the ground under the feeders to keep their food larder under our front stoop well supplied.

Yesterday's wasted day.  Geri spent much of the day yesterday in bed.  She was experiencing a lot of dizziness.  I bought her some Claritin in the late afternoon and she said that seemed to help.  I don't know at what time she got to bed last night as I fell asleep in my chair watching some British cop show (Murder in the Suburbs w/ Caroline Catz of Doc Martin fame) and then again during Lawrence O'Donnell's show after dozing off a few times during the day and feeling half-alive.  Whasupwidat?😲😳😴😵

Today's Pearls Before Swine.

Goat to Pig: What are you doing, Pig?

Pig to Goat:  Filling out this personality questionnaire.  It's asking what kind of things make me happy.

Goat to Pig: Well, nothing 'makes' us happy.  Things happen as they will and we choose how to react.   Because while events are not in our control, how we react to them is.

Pig quietly thinks and then:  I'll just say chocolate.

Fox News chyron labels Biden a "Wannabe Dictator"; calls Trump "the president of the United States."  On Tuesday night, after Trump's indictment and leading into his fund-raising speech at his Bedminster golf club, Fox News broadcast a split screen showing Joe Biden delivering a Juneteenth Day speech at the White House on the left side and Trump's speech setting on the right side with a chyron reading "Wannabe dictator delivers speech at the White House after having his political rival arrested."  Brian Kilmeade led into Trump's speech saying "This is the President of the United States" about to speak to his supporters.  The chyron was promptly replaced but Fox has offered no explanation or defense of its appearance.  Fox carried Trump's speech live including statements like this: “This day will go down in infamy, and Joe Biden will forever be remembered as not only the most corrupt president in the history of our country but perhaps even more importantly, the president who together with a band of his closest thugs, misfits and Marxists tried to destroy American democracy. But they will fail, and we will win bigger and better.”  Neither MSNBC nor CNN carried the speech, with Jake Tapper and Rachel Maddow explaining the decision not to carry it by referring to Trump's mendacity and the dangers posed by his inflammatory lies.   This is what we can look forward to for the foreseeable future.  I keep thinking back to my daily early-morning conversations with Kitty about what is happening to the country and the grim times ahead.  Speaking of which . . .

Trump promised to use his reelection to prosecute Biden:  “I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” Mr. Trump said at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., on Tuesday night after his arraignment earlier that day in Miami. “I will totally obliterate the Deep State.”

Stand back and stand by.

The summer of 1967.  There is an excellent essay in this morning's JSOnline by Jill J. Morin entitled "Sidney, Monroe, and Jerry: Conversations I Wish I Had With My Dad About His Pale Perspective."  She starts the piece by referring to attending a drive-in movie showing of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" in 1967.  I tried  unsuccessfully to submit this comment to the piece:

This is a lovely essay by Ms. Morin. I well remember the summer of 1967 in Milwaukee. I had just returned to the city after being discharged from the U. S. Marine Corps and after having served in Vietnam in 1965-1966. Racial tension was high all over the country and certainly in Milwaukee with Father Groppi and the NAACP Commandos marching over the 16th Street viaduct into the lily-white South Side. It was the summer of the so-called 'riot' on 3rd Street, Mayor Maier and Police Chief Harold Breier shutting down the city, of the frightenied John Oraa Tucker shooting MPD officers from his home and killing officer Bryan Moschea.  While I was in Vietnam fighting for "freedom" and "democracy" in Asia, I was well aware of the 2 separate Americas that existed in our own country, very separate and very unequal. I am now in my 80s, living with the memories of those days, those years of apartheid America. Some real progress has been made in dismantling de facto apartheid in our country, but to see how much of it remains, all one needs to do drive through Milwaukee (or Chicago or Detroit or Birmingham or . . ) or read the statistics on racial disparities in income, wealth, education, incarceration, etc. In 1968, the Kerner Commission issued its report and concluded that “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal" and that unless conditons changed we were heading toward a system of apartheid in our major cities.  Of course, we already had a system of de facto apartheid and the question is to what degree are we still in that system.

Moral Life in America's capitalist health care system.  From this morning's NYT: The Moral Crisis of America’s Doctors:  The corporatization of health care has changed the practice of medicine, causing many physicians to feel alienated from their work.

"In July 2018, Dean published an essay with Simon G. Talbot, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, that argued that many physicians were suffering from a condition known as moral injury. Military psychiatrists use the term to describe an emotional wound sustained when, in the course of fulfilling their duties, soldiers witnessed or committed acts — raiding a home, killing a noncombatant — that transgressed their core values. Doctors on the front lines of America’s profit-driven health care system were also susceptible to such wounds, Dean and Talbot submitted, as the demands of administrators, hospital executives and insurers forced them to stray from the ethical principles that were supposed to govern their profession. The pull of these forces left many doctors anguished and distraught, caught between the Hippocratic oath and “the realities of making a profit from people at their sickest and most vulnerable.”

The article was published on Stat, a medical-news website with a modest readership. To Dean’s surprise, it quickly went viral. Doctors and nurses started reaching out to Dean to tell her how much the article spoke to them. “It went everywhere,” Dean told me when I visited her last March in Carlisle, Pa., where she now lives. By the time we met, the distress among medical professionals had reached alarming levels: One survey found that nearly one in five health care workers had quit their job since the start of the pandemic and that an additional 31 percent had considered leaving. Professional organizations like National Nurses United, the largest group of registered nurses in the country, had begun referring to “moral injury” and “moral distress” in pamphlets and news releases. Mona Masood, a psychiatrist who established a support line for doctors shortly after the pandemic began, recalls being struck by how clinicians reacted when she mentioned the term. “I remember all these physicians were like, Wow, that is what I was looking for,” she says. “This is it.”

    . . . . . “It’s all about the almighty dollar and all about productivity,” [an E.R. doctor] said, “which is obviously not why most of us sign up to do the job.”  That’s not always clear to patients, many of whom naturally assume that their doctors are the ones who decide how much time to spend with them and what to charge them for care. “Doctors are increasingly the scapegoats of systemic problems within the health care system,” Masood says, “because the patient is not seeing the insurance company that denied them the procedure, they’re not seeing the electronic medical records that are taking up all of our time. They’re just seeing the doctor who can only spend 10 minutes with them in the room, or the doctor who says, ‘I can’t get you this medication, because it costs $500 a month.’ And what ends up happening is we internalize that feeling.”

I'm interested in this idea of "moral injury" which comports with the sense of complicity which I so often feel in connection with my participation in the bombing and spraying of North and South Vietnam and Laos, with the whole Vietnam War, with the whole of America's economic imperialism.  Military actions (or as Vladimir Putin would put it "special military operations") engaged in to permit and provide economic exploitation of raw materials and corporate markets.  We call it 'protecting our freedoms' or the freedoms, e.g., of the Vietnamese peasants we shot, bombed, burned, and left with lands and bodies poisoned with carcinogenic and teratogenic chemicals to protect them, regardless of their wishes, from a form of government and economy that would after awhile become one of the larger trading partners of America's corporate economy always needing cheaper labor costs.  It reminds me of George III's song in Hamilton, "You'll Be Back."

. . .  when push comes to shove,

I'll send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love.

. . .

You'll be back like before,

I will fight the fight and win the war

For your love, for your praise,

And I'll love you till my dying days.

When you're gone, I'll go mad

 So don't throw away this thing we had

'Cause when push comes to shove

I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love.

VA Eye Clinic visit.  Pressure readings are good, no glaucoma, and no retinal bleeding.  Pretty young ophthalmology resident offered to have me schedule a laser cleansing of some sort of the film that has formed behind the new lens inserted after the removal of the cataract in my left eye by Tom Alprin.  I declined.  The idea of shooting a laser beam into my eye is not appealing to me.

Female vocalist playlist.  I listened to some old, old favorites on my way to Zablocki, including the tremendous (word used advisedly) Nina Simone (Be My Husband, Strange Fruit, Nobody Knows You,  Mood Indigo) and the extraordinary Sinead O'Connor before her terrible troubles (Feel So Different, I Am Stretched on Your Grave, Black Boys on Mopeds, The Emperor's New Clothes, Nothing Compares 2 U, Jerusalem).  I'm always moved by them, never tire of them. 

 An oil I did decades ago from a photo of Sinead O'Connor failing to capture her extraordinary beauty