May 2016 - Page 6 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Trump could be President

Which path will save their collective hides? They don’t know yet.

Chris found my last Ask Roger Anything to pose this:

Why the **** doesn’t it bother Republicans that rational respected leaders of their own party have branded Trump as dangerous?

Two presidents, a presidential nominee and the speaker of the house won’t endorse him. Romney gave a beautiful and impassioned speech on why Trump would be terrible for the nation.

Why don’t they even listen to their own?

Because Donald J. Trump could be President, as I first suggested on January 27.

Because the people who are supporting Trump don’t care about what the Republican leadership thinks.

Because the GOP leadership has been, depending on the particular voter’s POV – and more than one of these can be true:
* are TOO liberal, RINOS (Republicans In Name Only), who actually (occasionally) compromised with the President; when I saw John Boehner and Paul Ryan so dubbed, I realized there was an almost an impossibly obstructionist standard that must be met
* are too financially reckless; George W. Bush paid for the Iraq war, in particular, on a credit card
* are too corporatist, beholden to the rich and powerful, exporting jobs abroad
* are not securing the borders
* are doing too little on the national security front
* are too socially conservative on issues such as gay marriage and even abortion
* are too religious, in that judgmental way
* are too political correct
* are not racist enough
* are letting the world change too quickly
* are not entertaining enough

It’s a dance, really. The Republican party was thrilled when Donald Trump generated interest in their brand in the early debates. The August 2015 debates were watched by FOUR TIMES more voters than the debates in 2011. So, when Trump inevitably abandoned his campaign, as he had always done before, the GOP figured it could use that pixie dust on a more conventional candidate, and the voters would pivot to a Rubio or, shades of 1992, yet another Bush.

It’s not unlike the Tea Party, that the conventional Republicans, such as former House Speaker John Boehner, thought they could control, but it was the Tea Party that ended up controlling them. Obviously, Boehner could not, and he ended up resigning.

Even as Trump said more and more outrageous things, there was a good chunk of the Republican electorate who were not repelled by his comments, but embraced him, because he told it “like it is,” even when it was internally illogical, not to mention racist, sexist and xenophobic.

Virtually every pundit in 2015 said that Trump had a ceiling, of 20 or 30% of the Republicans. This proved to be true when the number of candidates was in double digits, but the numbers of candidates got smaller, his numbers got larger.

If he WINS the presidency, and I think he can, especially against Hillary – polling in May is just not that definitive – then he might make it difficult for a governor or a senator or a House member to distance from him. If he LOSES, the GOP could lose the Senate.

Oh crap, what DO they do? Stand up against their party’s very likely nominee? Will that be seen as a moral stance, or as the action of a party hack, out of touch with the electorate? Which path will save their collective hides? They don’t know yet.

In some ways, I think Donald Trump in 2016 is like Barack Obama in 2008, with one slight difference. BHO represented the hope of America; “Yes, we can.” It was seen as proving that America is better than it had been. Hey, America’s not racist; we elected a black man and watched Oprah to boot. But he failed to solve racism, and the world is a scary place. The social experiment, electing the black guy, did not work out.

DJT is nostalgia, mixed with fear. “Let’s Make America Great Again.” Great, again. It was great at some unspecified period in the past, when America’s dominance and supremacy were not questioned. “Girls were girls, and men were men.” THOSE were the days. We want to get back there, or as far back as we can while keeping our smartphones. Even if he’s insincere, and is now hiding his views on minorities better now.

The Republican leadership can say no, but if the American people say yes, then the party bosses become all but irrelevant, even more insignificant than they had before. They want to back the right horse, but they can’t tell yet who that will be.

On the other hand, Leon Wolf from Red State, a conservative website, notes:

The temptation is going to be to go numb to all of this. That when the next person who we should have counted on stuns us all by actually suggesting that Donald Trump is fit to be President of the Untied States, that we just write it off with barely a second thought. There comes a certain point where you feel like you just can’t allow yourself to continue to be surprised and hurt when another person that you once respected shows that their judgment and principles forever tainted by the love of the office they hold.

Don’t. Going numb to the corruption wrought by Trump is what got us in this mess. Trump – and support for Trump – must not become the new normal in the conservative movement. Maybe it will become normal in the Republican Party, which ceased to stand for anything meaningful as an institution a long time ago, but it can’t become normal for the actual conservative voters who believe in things like limited government, equality under the law, free markets, free trade, and basic public decency.

The only way this won’t become the new normal is if you allow yourself to be hurt every time someone caves to this perversion of conservatism and the Republican party. Be horrified. Be aghast. Feel betrayed. Ask aloud to yourself, “How could you?” Ask aloud to THEM, by calling, writing, or emailing, “How could you?”

Because the minute you stop feeling that, the closer you become to assimilating it and accepting it yourself. And if that happens, the conservative movement as we know it dies.

See, much of the right is no happier with The Donald than the left is.

Mother’s Day 2016

I was watching Anderson Cooper and his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, talk about the book they wrote together.

In the interview, Cooper said that he “realized there were many things that neither of them actually knew about the other. We decided, on her 91st birthday, to change the conversation that we have and the way we talk to each other.”

“According to Vanderbilt, it was all done by email.”

“‘I think we’re both at a place where both of us didn’t want to leave anything unsaid,’ Cooper added.”

It struck me, HARD, that there are plenty of things that I never asked my mom, because… well, I don’t know, actually. Maybe it’s because she often spoke as though she were reading from the same script.

I’d ask her how she was doing, and invariably she’d say “busy but good.” Busy with what? Sometimes I’d get an answer, but more often than not, a response that really didn’t answer the question.

If I could ask her now, on this Mother’s Day 2016, I think I’d want to know:

*How were you punished as a child? Did they use corporal punishment?

She was an only child, surrounded by her mother, aunt, grandmother, and sometimes, an uncle, so she didn’t get away with much.

She didn’t like to give corporal punishment, that’s for sure. She was pressured by my father, who, especially when he was working nights at IBM, didn’t always want to be the disciplinarian hours after the fact.

One time, she actually struck me on the butt. But you can tell her heart wasn’t in it.

*How is it that you never learned to cook?

Your mother and aunt could cook.

*Were my sisters and I breastfed?

I suspect not, because the convention at the period was to use the bottle. And she could be very conventional.

*Did you think my father was faithful to you? Or did you have reason to believe he was not?

Then I’d get some names to fill in some genealogy holes. I’d ask her some questions about her theology, something beyond the perfunctory responses she often gave me.

Of course, that window of opportunity is more than five years past.

Music Throwback Saturday: Rare Earth

Motown did not have a name for the new division, so jokingly, the band suggested the name Rare Earth.

Rare Earth was NOT the first all-white group signed by Motown. Wikipedia cites The Rustix, The Dalton Boys, and The Underdogs as predecessors on the label; I actually have a couple of Underdogs tracks on some compilations.

But the group, which had started up in high school as “The Sunliners”, decided, after seven years to change the name of the band to “Rare Earth”, and ended up as clearly the most successful white band on the label.

Motown Record Corporation approached Rare Earth in the latter part of 1968 to sign a recording contract. At first the group was reluctant to sign because of knowing of other white groups and artists before them that had not had any success… It was when Motown decided they wanted to launch a new division of Motown to cater to white artists that Rare Earth started to seriously consider signing.

Motown did not have a name for the new division… so jokingly, the band suggested the name Rare Earth. Unbelievably they agreed.

On 20 Hard to Find Motown Classics, Volume 1 (1990), there appears Get Ready (pop #4, soul #20 in 1970) and (I Know) I’m Losing You (pop #7, soul #20 in 1970), both songs previously recorded by the Temptations. Both Rare Earth covers did better on the pop charts than did the Temps, whose pair of #1 soul hits only went to #29 and #8, respectively, on the pop charts in 1966.

20 Hard to Find Motown Classics, Volume 2 (1990) includes I Just Want To Celebrate (#7 pop, #30 soul in 1971) and Born To Wander (#17 pop, #48 soul) in 1971.

Get Ready was also the name of Rare Earth’s second album (#12 pop), with the title song, written by Smokey Robinson, taking up the whole second side. Ecology, the third album (#15 pop), featured Born To Wander and a nearly 11-minute version of I’m Losing You.

Many years later, Get Ready and Ecology were on a twofer CD, which I bought, but the Ecology songs were obviously shortened. They substituted the album version of I’m Losing You with the three-minute single version, and trimmed Eleanor Rigby and other songs, which really ticked me off.

I Just Want to Celebrate was on the fourth album, One World (#28 pop).

LISTEN TO
Get Ready – single version and album version and album version

I’m Losin’ You – single version and album version and album version

Born to Wander – the version here and here

I Just Want To Celebrate – the version here and here

Ahead of the curve: Harriet Tubman on the $20

I took some great pleasure from the large number of folks who expressed confusion at the decision to pick the $10 for revision.

As you’ve likely heard, the redesign of the United States currency involves putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill. While most people thought it was a swell idea, naturally there have also been all sorts of backlash.

One thread, which I shan’t link to, was an attack on political correctness. “Why can’t we have money the way we’re used to?” Why, she wasn’t even a President! Neither were Alexander Hamilton ($10) or Benjamin Franklin ($100).

But the path to get Tubman on the $20 actually predated any government initiative. A non-profit group called Women On 20s was campaigning in early 2015 to get a woman on that popular denomination. I wrote about it on March 15, 2015, including the organization’s reasons for booting Andrew Jackson, in addition to the Trail of Tears: “He was a fierce opponent of paper money and the central banking system, and would probably be horrified to see his face on our national currency.”

Five weeks later, I explained why Harriet Tubman is my choice for the $20 bill. She won the Women on the 20 online poll, announced around May 10, barely beating out Eleanor Roosevelt, who I also seriously considered.

So I was disappointed to hear Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announce in mid-June 2015 that the US is changing the face of the $10 bill. Because of my close personal relationship with Alexander Hamilton, I opposed that choice.

Moderators finished the Republican debate in mid-September by asking the candidates which woman they would put on the $10 bill.

The Rand Paul: Suffragist Susan B. Anthony

Mike Huckabee: His wife, Janet [living people cannot appear on U.S. currency]

Marco Rubio: Civil rights activist Rosa Parks

Ted Cruz: Put Rosa Parks on the $20 bill and keep Alexander Hamilton on the $10 [props to Cruz for picking the $20!]

Ben Carson: His mother, Sonya [still alive]

Donald Trump: Rosa Parks

Jeb Bush: Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher [God save the PM]

Carly Fiorina: “We shouldn’t change the $10 dollar bill or the $20 dollar bill. I think, honestly, it’s a gesture. I don’t think it helps to change our history. What I would think is that we ought to recognize that women are not a special interest group. Women are the majority of this nation, we are half the potential of this nation and this nation will be better off when every woman has the opportunity to live the life she chooses.” [Sisterhood is powerful.]

Scott Walker: American Red Cross founder Clara Barton

Chris Christie: First Lady Abigail Adams

John Kasich: Nobel Peace Prize-winner Mother Teresa [it needs to be an American]

These were some lame answers.

Oddly, I took some great pleasure from the large number of folks who expressed confusion at the decision to pick the $10 for revision. “I thought they had picked the $20,” I read fairly often. People conflated an online campaign by the nonprofit with government action!

Fortunately, the Hamilton musical, which started previews on July 13, 2015, and opened on August 6, became a phenomenon, eventually winning the Pulitzer Prize. The Treasury Department started looking at the $20 bill and ended up planning to redesign the $5, the $10, AND the $20 bills.

This is what I wrote on December 30, 2015: “This is a prediction, based on nothing but a gut feeling, and the unexplained postponement of the $10 redesign. Obama decides that the $10 won’t be replaced after all, because, in his feisty last year, he wouldn’t do that to old Alex. Instead, he dumps Jackson, an opponent of the banking system. He suggests a woman, a black woman, maybe Rosa Parks, but I’m hoping Harriet Tubman.”

Not sure how much, if anything, the President had anything to do with the process. Still, every once in a while, things work out the way I want them to. Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill! Allow me to enjoy the moment.

Of course, many people think it’s fairly irrelevant. I mean, “Who uses cash, anyway?” (Actually, I did this past weekend, when my chip-technology embedded credit card failed to work at the grocery store. Fortunately, they STILL accept greenbacks.)

Oh, I like this from Samantha Bee: “Andrew Jackson Was ‘Trump With Better Hair'”.

Literally, while I was writing this

[I received an email from Women On 20s:]

Without your help, a woman front and center on the widely circulated $20 bill and female representation on two other bills would not have been possible and we THANK YOU for all your support…

We are pleased to claim VICTORY and so should you. We think of this, not as a day done but rather a day just beginning that has everyone seeing with new eyes and new hope. You proved we can work together to make a difference and shake up the status quo. The new TRIFECTA — the $5, $10, and $20 — will look like more of what has made us a great country and why you stuck with us for the last year.

After more than a year of campaigning to convince the U.S. Treasury to replace the portrait of Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with the face of a female American hero, Women On 20s is celebrating your historic game changing influence. Now, the Treasury Department acknowledges the importance of accelerating production on the new $20 bill, and plans to reveal its design in time for the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in 2020. Hallelujah! What’s more, we have been assured that Treasury has a commitment from Federal Reserve Board chair Janet Yellen to fast track the $20’s issuance into circulation. What usually takes 10 years per bill is going to happen so much sooner because Women On 20s will make sure Treasury knows you care.

Whether you voted for Harriet Tubman or not, we hope you’ll agree the freed slave and freedom fighter is an excellent choice to replace the slave trader Andrew Jackson on the $20. She provided critical military intelligence to end a brutal Civil war and later fought for women’s rights alongside the nation’s leading suffragists. Whatever obstacles she faced, she kept going. There was no stopping her. She’s an inspiration and now the whole world will know her story. So, let there be no stopping us from making this and the other currency changes a reality.

[Oh, yeah, and then the pitch for money.]

Once again, thank you and help us keep this dream on track for the celebration of women’s inclusion in our democracy in 2020.

xkcd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

Bigotry as pack mentality

The word miscegenation was coined in an anonymous propaganda pamphlet published in New York City in December 1863, during the American Civil War.

When I linked to a couple of articles about obvious signs of bigotry, my friend Chris wrote: “Holy 1952, Batman! What’s up with all the crazy racism stories? Are they more prevalent or are they being reported more?”

Well, yes. Both, I would assert.

At the same time, I’ve come up with a theory. There was a period that bigotry, at least in the public forum, was considered impolite, inappropriate, untoward. What changed is that people have been able to more easily find like-minded folks online. In other words, bigotry as pack mentality.

So, if Malia Obama is going to Harvard — but is taking a year off first, that’s a rather benign story. But the racial vulgarity that appeared in comments in the FOX News, just-as-tame, report, was a torrent that forced FOX to disallow comments altogether.

Old Navy tweeted a picture of an interracial family and Twitter is inflamed in racist blather. It echoes the 2013 Cheerios TV commercial generated Sturm und Drang in numbers so great that the General Mills website likewise had to forego comments.

I contend that a “lone wolf” bigot, being shouted down by other readers, might give up. But when he finds like-minded allies, this emboldens the bigot to spew vile, knowing that at least some others will also take up the cause.

One of the comments in the Old Navy story made reference to the word miscegenation, a rather old-fashioned term:

Miscegenation comes from the Latin miscere, “to mix” and genus, “kind”. The word was coined in the U.S. in 1863, and the etymology of the word is tied up with political conflicts during the American Civil War over the abolition of slavery and over the racial segregation of African-Americans. The reference to genus was made to emphasize the supposedly distinct biological differences between whites and non-whites…

The word was coined in an anonymous propaganda pamphlet published in New York City in December 1863, during the American Civil War. The pamphlet was entitled Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro. It purported to advocate the intermarriage of whites and blacks until they were indistinguishably mixed, as a desirable goal, and further asserted that this was the goal of the Republican Party. The pamphlet was a hoax, concocted by Democrats, to discredit the Republicans by imputing to them what were then radical views that offended against the attitudes of the vast majority of whites, including those who opposed slavery…

Only in November 1864 was the pamphlet exposed as a hoax…

By then, the word miscegenation had entered the common language of the day as a popular buzzword in political and social discourse. The issue of miscegenation, raised by the opponents of Abraham Lincoln, featured prominently in the election campaign of 1864.

In the United States, miscegenation has referred primarily to the intermarriage between whites and non-whites, especially blacks.

Before the publication of Miscegenation, the word amalgamation, borrowed from metallurgy, had been in use as a general term for ethnic and racial intermixing.

Of course, President Obama is the child of a white mother and a black father. For a time, I think that partially insulated him from the full brunt of bigotry. “His mom’s white; maybe he’ll be all right.” But once he showed that he actually expressed the feelings many blacks in America experience, he had his “half-white” card revoked.

Not all gatherings are online. Check out White Power Meets Business Casual: Inside the Effort to ‘Make White Nationalism Great Again’. “Trump, the engrossed crowd was told, intends to smash an oligarchic system ‘stacked’ against white America. The only way to break free from the system that blocks ordinary white Americans from fighting against the ‘disease’ of multiculturalism and the unilateral rule of the American elite is to get behind a candidate with tremendous cultural capital who is also capable of funding his own campaign in full.”