Drag

In the first season of Mad Men, protagonist Don Draper crashes at the apartment of a would-be girlfriend’s bunch of beatnik associates.  Needless to say, they don’t hit it off.  When asked how he sleeps at night, ad executive Draper replies, “on a bed of money.” 

Nevertheless, they agree on one thing.  They eventually fall asleep after smoking a large quantity of pot.  In the morning, they awaken to a police raid in progress at a neighbor’s apartment. 

Draper, needing to report to work, straightens his tie and tugs on his suit coat to pull out the wrinkles.  As he opens the front door, one of the beatniks anxiously objects, “You can’t go out there!”

Don pauses a beat and says, “No, you can’t,“ and walks out, nodding at the policemen in the hallway as he goes.

I was reminded of this a couple of weeks ago as I boarded a plane for a brief vacation in Mexico.  Walking down the jetway, I passed by a Customs and Border Protection agent.  Suffice it to say, he was playing the part.  Body armor, M-4 carbine slung across his chest, etc.  Briefly looking over at him, he gave me a slight nod.  Reflexively, I nodded back.

A fleeting exchange to be sure, but telling all the same.  Like Don Draper, and unlike many other people, I can pass.  I’m an average-looking middle-aged white male who presents conventionally.  In a sense, I’m above suspicion.  I’m just grateful no one can detain me for my thoughts.  Yet.

At least the CBP agents were clearly identifiable. The news of late tells of law enforcement officials unidentifiable by agency or uniform rounding up migrants and student activists.  Are they or aren’t they actual cops? 

The second coming of Donald Trump has provoked a resurgence in militaristic cosplay.  I first noticed the trend the first time around during the lockdown phases of the pandemic.  We were shown the spectacle of white men donning tactical gear and brandishing weapons at urban civil rights protests and setting up unauthorized roadblocks in rural locales asserting authority they did not possess.  The January 6^th insurrection appeared to be the climax of this nonsense which would simmer down with the absence of Trump and his minions from Washington.

Wishful thinking.  Shortly after the election, I was at the airport waiting at the baggage carousel when I noticed a young man milling amongst us.  He was white, with a beard of course.  Otherwise dressed in civilian attire, he was sporting a tactical vest.  He walked slowly, with a serious expression, thumbs hooked at the top of his vest.  I had no idea who the hell he was or why he was there aside from being an arriving passenger, and I asked myself if anyone else was even noticing this.  No one seemed to.  It is common enough lately that such sights scarcely raise an eyebrow.

Much as they had during Trump 1.0, the real authorities have gotten in the act.  News and phone footage showing what seemed to be ICE agents abducting individuals in public are disturbingly frequent.  The agents are generally clad in black or in casual wear, their faces obscured with balaclavas or masks, and they are not displaying badges or other markings identifying which agency they represent.  Homeland Security officials defend the practice as protecting law enforcement personnel from being doxed.   

Maybe, but probably not.  The intended effect is performative intimidation made more ominous by ambiguity.  It also looks cool, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem is the poster girl for posturing as substitute for public safety.  We see her in tactical gear joining Border Patrol agents on a raid.  We watch her posing in front of a packed cell of deportees at El Salvador’s supermax CECOT, sporting a $50,000 Rolex no less.  She parries a question from U.S. Senator Alex Padilla at a press conference on the wholly unnecessary federal intervention in the civil unrest in Los Angeles by siccing the Secret Service on him.

The optics are lost on her.  Appearing before a congressional committee recently, Rep. Bennie Thompson greeted her by thanking her for her time amidst her busy schedule “of photo ops and costume changes.”  Noem scarcely batted an eyelash.   

As to be expected, bad actors are getting in on the act.  You, too, can buy ICE merch online.  Young white males have taken to stationing themselves in Home Depot parking lots wearing ICE jackets to scare off day laborers looking for jobs.  Even more troubling are reports of midnight “raids” on immigrant households by people claiming to be government agents.  In one instance, a family was told to hand over their phones and any cash in their possession.  Contacting ICE and Homeland Security offices afterward, the agencies denied knowledge.

The Trump administration’s methods of ensuring law and order have encouraged vigilantism and enabled common criminals to prey upon vulnerable people.  You could reason that this is an intended consequence.  In the first category, we have a small group of MAGA diehards who believe Trump possesses extralegal authority and that anything they do on his behalf is justified.  (I call this the deputization defense; several J6 rioters believed Trump had “deputized” them to stop certification of the 2020 election results.)  In the second category are opportunistic crooks and garden variety assholes exploiting people who can’t go to the police.

Authoritarians are drawn to military and police regalia.  Perhaps even more so when the individual never served in the military or law enforcement.  (Consider Trump’s fixation on parades.)  At a certain point, fantasy and reality blur.  At a certain point, the biggest Walter Mitty losers can delude themselves into believing they’re the good guys simply by cultivating a look. Provoked by the violent rhetoric emanating from Trump and his allies or internalizing a belief that white men with guns are sheepdogs protecting home and hearth, and you have a recipe for tragedy. 

Policing in a stable democracy must operate in the open.  Law enforcement should be clearly identifiable to the public they serve.  If you’re acting legally, there is no reason to hide who you are.  Otherwise, you erode public trust.  When legitimate law enforcement is indistinguishable from the LARPers you don’t believe your eyes anymore. 

Perhaps this moment will stimulate reform.  We can set guidelines for law enforcement agencies at the federal, state, and local levels relating to how they present themselves to the public they serve.  Place limitations on the sale and possession of certain items such as body armor and certain kinds of lethal and non-lethal weapons (though this probably wouldn’t pass constitutional muster in some cases).  Introduce stronger sanctions against impersonating law enforcement and military personnel.  Any of these would be a good start.

What we may not be able to fix is a cultural toxicity that long predated Trump and MAGA.  They are a symptom or the latest permutation of that ugliness.  The only road to improvement is through individual hearts and minds.  And that is a task fit for Sisyphus.

 

 

© 2025 The Unassuming Scholar

Vanity

Tomorrow’s the big celebration.

President Trump is finally getting the parade he’s been after for years.  On his birthday, no less.

There will be several thousand soldiers marching through the national capital.  There will be Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, and self-propelled howitzers rolling down the streets, and a swarm of helicopters in the city’s skies.

But wait, there’s more.  There will be fireworks, musical performances, and appearances by astronauts and NFL players.  In other words, the parade looks as if it will be the sort of cheesy corporate spectacle[1] that has characterized any number of “patriotic” celebrations of the last twenty years or so.

I don’t plan to watch.  I dislike these kinds of overblown displays as a general rule, and the fact that the administration has misappropriated the United States Army’s 250^th anniversary to serve the Narcissist-in-Chief’s unbounded vanity is a bitter pill.

But, you’re probably thinking, the president is making a heartfelt gesture celebrating soldiers past and present.  How could anyone object to that?

Well, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be awfully pleasant for the soldiers marching past the reviewing stand.  According to the Army’s public affairs office, the soldiers will sleep on folding cots in vacant federal buildings.  Rather than providing them with at least two hot meals a day, something easily achieved with mobile kitchen trailers, the soldiers will enjoy two MREs and one catered hot meal daily during their stay.  (Each will also receive partial per diem which will undoubtedly go far given the cost of takeout and fast-food meals these days.) Some news sources report that personal hygiene opportunities are being rationed, with field showers operating on rigid schedules.

Now that’s what I call military leadership, screwing the troops you profess to care about.

What’s most concerning are the optics.  There’s the frequently voiced objection that such displays are worthy of Russia, China, and North Korea.  That’s bad enough, because it’s true.  The mindboggling cost of the parade, not to mention the street damage which will inevitably result from numerous tracked vehicles passing over them, provokes wonder at the administration’s priorities.

However, the widespread perception across the political spectrum that this event was planned solely as Trump’s “birthday parade” is what I find most galling.   On the right, Saturday’s quick-time lollapalooza will be yet more justification for the MAGA revolution.  For the left, the association with Trump serves as further proof of our military’s supposed evilness.

Neither camp appreciates the planning and logistics involved.  It’s been known for a very long time that the Army’s sestercentennial was coming up, and you don’t just throw together a large-scale public display at the last minute.  In other words, there would most likely have been a public commemoration even if Kamala Harris had won the election.  With less bombast, perhaps, but a military parade nonetheless.  The emerging details of the logistical clusterfuck housing and feeding 6,600 people suggest the original plans had been more modest before blowing up at the last minute.

Context dismissed, the Big Parade will be always remembered as Trump’s celebration of Trump.  Before the media hype conflated the Army’s 250^th anniversary commemoration with the president’s autocratic fantasy of one-upping Putin, Xi, and Kim, I had privately looked upon the milestone with quiet satisfaction.  It was a satisfaction borne from the longevity of an institution which had played a part in shaping me as a person.  It was satisfaction that I had played a part in its story.  A trivial, momentary part, but I had been there for it all the same.

I don’t feel that now.  It’s as if something special of mine has been sullied.  I am also concerned by the MAGA influence on the military.  President Trump’s address to troops at Fort Liberty Bragg this week reflects this.  The speech was the usual word salad complaining about political correctness and how Joe Biden, Gavin Newsom, and Karen Bass ruined America.  The soldiers’ laughter, cheering, and boos were disturbing.  Subsequent reports said these soldiers were prescreened volunteers attending what was for all purposes a political rally.  While it’s reassuring that the audience were self-selected MAGA-heads who are not (we hope) representative of all Fort Bragg’s soldiers, an important norm is eroding.

That norm is the traditionally apolitical military.  Servicemembers are expected to keep their political opinions to themselves while on duty or any other occasion they are in uniform.  That custom is fading into the past.  The unprofessional conduct of the soldiers at the president’s speech, gratifying as it may have been to Trump, is a bad sign.

The public is noticing, and their conclusions do not augur well for the military’s reputation and its societal role.  You cannot turn the military into a political instrument in a democracy and have it remain a democracy.  This is what is at stake.  The question now is whether there is any turning back.

 

© 2025 The Unassuming Scholar

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[1] The Army reports that “more than 20” confirmed sponsors are (partially) funding the festivities.

Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste

The news media of late presents an even more skewed view than usual of the state of our institutions of higher learning.

The current skirmish in the culture wars concerns the reaction of a handful of activist students and professors to the war in Gaza.  If all your news diet consists of Fox News, pro-Palestinian activism and incidents such as the occupation at Columbia and a scattering of other, mostly private universities are rampant throughout American higher ed.  If I am to believe the clickbait headlines in my newsfeed, all of the commie elitist professors on every single campus in the country are indoctrinating all of their students in a woke orthodoxy which, if unchecked by loyal Americans, will result in the destruction of Israel.

This reportage is a cynical ploy by right wing news outlets to further polarize the electorate ahead of November’s election by appealing to the prejudices of their audience.  Tapping into festering resentments across a vocal segment of the public is profitable.  Pigeonholing anyone with any schooling beyond twelfth grade as an out of touch elitist with a head filled with useless “knowledge” is a good media strategy.

Like Fox’s audience, my only experience with the protests is what I watch and read.  The campuses where I work have been quiet.  The topics of Israel, Gaza, and Hamas are largely unmentioned by my students and I have only touched upon them in passing as they are largely tangential to the subjects I teach.  This goes to show that the people most agitated about what is undeniably a humanitarian crisis are on the fringes while the people most affected get lost in the ideological dogma of others.

Let’s begin with the campus protestors.  Let’s stipulate that the events of October 7^th and beyond have been horrific for those affected on both sides.  Having said this, the rhetoric wielded by the pro-Palestinian activists is disturbingly pro-Hamas.  It seems they are blind to the implications of “From the river to the sea.”  Quick to accuse Israel of genocide against the Palestinians, they are explicitly advocating the genocide of Israeli Jews.  Their behavior towards their critics or even towards anyone outside the group is also couched in rhetorical excess, branding them as “Zionists” without regard to the person or the arguments posed.

Now on to the cultural warriors of the right.  Unwilling to brook any criticism of Israeli policies or actions, they brand any critics as “anti-semites” who seek an end to Israel.  They willfully ignore Netanyahu’s heavy-handed policies in the West Bank and his ill-fated abandonment of Gaza to Hamas rule.  There doesn’t seem to be any questioning of the intelligence failures which led to the October 7^th attacks.  (Considering that the attacks coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War—another intelligence failure—one would think Netanyahu, his advisors, and the Israeli intelligence establishment would have been more alert.)   The delusional worldview of evangelicals for whom Israel’s existence brings us one step closer to the End Times has taken on a cult-like status across the political right, further polarizing the discourse.

The overflow effect on domestic policy has been to put American higher education in the crosshairs even more so than usual.  The focus has been upon “elite” institutions but the larger targets are colleges and universities across the board.  Conservatives want to replace so-called political correctness, which is not nearly as prevalent as charged, with their own orthodoxy.  Calls for the resignation of Columbia’s president, coming on the heels of the resignation of Harvard’s president after her congressional testimony on campus activism, is calculated to create a chilling effect.  Calls for cutbacks of humanities and social science courses and their replacement with more vocational curricula are another front in the right-wing war on academia. The limited scope activism that has the right in a lather is merely a convenient opportunity for them to advance their anti-intellectual agenda.  For them, Israel is beside the point.  The war in Gaza is a convenient opportunity, nothing more.

 

© 2024 The Unassuming Scholar

Eyes Open

I underwent my first faculty evaluation for an online class last year.  We’re evaluated by our department chair every four years; my last eval was pre-pandemic when I was mainly teaching in a live classroom.  These evaluations, on ground or online, include an anonymous student survey on their take on my performance.

It’s easier for me in a live classroom where I can gauge the students’ reactions to me in real time.  I can pretty much predict how they will describe my performance.  Online, I’m blind.  So, it was with a frisson of trepidation that I read over the survey comments.

The written comments are optional, which means they are usually left by students who either love you or hate you.  The latter category of comments included a disparaging description of me as “woke.” 

Woke is a funny choice of a snarl word, since it never really caught on among liberals and progressives.  The only occasion I remember using it in the classroom was a few years ago.  I had slept poorly the night before, and that day’s talk was not one of my best.  After a couple of stumbles, I paused and apologized and told them why.  I facetiously remarked that I should be more woke.

No, woke the way it’s used by conservatives is just part of their funhouse mirror vision of how they think people to their left are.  In the case of the critical student, he (it was probably a he) meant that I had failed to cater to his prejudices.  Concerning the course, there is really very little ideological content.  If my material has a flaw, it is that it is maybe a little more rah-rah about the status quo than I actually feel about it.  If it is woke in this student’s estimation, it’s likely it’s because I acknowledge the existence of non-whites, that we took our land from its indigenous occupants, that slavery and Jim Crow actually happened, that police violence is visited most often on Blacks and other people of color, that LGBTQ people have rights, and so forth. 

It is disconcerting for me the way each of us lives within our own media-driven ideological bubbles.  I grew up in an era where there were only three television networks (four if you counted PBS), most moderately large cities had at least two daily newspapers, AM talk radio was fringe, and the internet was in the future.  There was already a deepening rift between left and right, but there weren’t cable news and social media to channel extremist ideas unrooted in fact.  I am sure that the present climate of mutual mistrust explains the distaste for my classroom statements among some of my distance learning students, and that the quasi-anonymous online environment where teacher and student will never meet personally emboldens them to proclaim their beliefs with little concern for their potential offensiveness.  Pity.

 

© 2023 The Unassuming Scholar

Projection

Justice Alito is afraid.

The author of last summer’s holding in Dobbs said this week that the leaking of the decision draft in May exposed his fellow justices (the right-wing ones, anyway) to risk of assassination. 

One can partly attribute this rhetorical drama to conservatives’ self-importance.  Conservatism is rooted in the belief one is intrinsically better than other people.  Putting oneself above others leads to self-aggrandizing ideation.  Having said that, we have to look at who is victimizing whom in the long-Trump pandemic.  Aside from the incident of an antifa protestor killing a Patriot Prayer militant in Portland in 2020, there are few credible examples of lethal left-on-right violence in recent years.

Before Dobbs I saw Samuel Alito as I regarded other run of the mill conservatives in high places, something resembling a pebble in my shoe.  His low public profile in the past led me into a grudging acceptance of his presence.  Since the May leak, Alito’s outspoken assholery has become nearly intolerable.  We have learned much of his character in past months.  Alito strikes me as an angry, embittered man with antediluvian views who poses a threat to the personal liberties of tens of millions of Americans.

But it isn’t Alito’s hyperbole that prompted me to write this.  The attempted murder of Paul Pelosi in his San Francisco home yesterday is the worst example of right-wing violence since the January 6^th insurrection.  The accused is, unsurprisingly, a Trump-troll whose activism was previously limited to shitposting on social media.  News reports indicate the assailant planned to hold Pelosi hostage until his wife returned from Washington.  Pelosi was able to dial 911 during the home invasion and the police promptly responded, but not until after the attacker fractured his skull with a hammer.

The attack on Speaker Pelosi’s spouse is the latest incident in the trend of escalating far-right aggression since 2016.  As I write, a group of self-proclaimed militiamen (i.e., armed cosplayers in camouflage) are on trial in Michigan for plotting to kidnap and murder governor Gretchen Whitmer.  The ambiguity of Donald Trump’s statements on such incidents from the “good people on both sides” assertion after Charlottesville to his instruction to the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” before the 2020 election constitute a tacit endorsement of illicit force directed at other Americans.  Statements by other Republican leaders, such as Lindsey Graham’s prediction of “riots in the streets” if Georgia prosecutors dared to indict Trump for his attempted election fraud simply add fuel to the fire.  Last summer’s YouGov / Economist poll reporting more than 40% of those polled believe a civil war is likely in the next decade is probably a reflection of the ratcheting bombast emanating from Republican politicians.    

And yet, to hear them tell it, these same pols are the victims.  Alito’s drama queen fears of assassination have manifested in little more than Brett Kavanaugh being forced to cut short a night out when a few protestors showed up outside the restaurant.  To the last individual, Republicans at all levels whine about imaginary stolen elections while shamelessly advocating and instituting policies designed to exclude minority voters in future contests.  Delusional imaginings of violence meted by antifa and other lefties ignore the very real threat from the right.

There’s a word for this: Projection.  Push your faults and your misdeeds on your opponents.  That’s what is happening here.  Call it for what it is.  Call out the offenders.  May the truth win the day.

© 2022 The Unassuming Scholar

Free Ride

I must say that the latest stunt out of MAGA-dom is inspired, though not in a good way.  Busing and flying immigrants from Florida and Texas to blue states has the optics of a raised middle finger liberals.  Fox and other right-wing news outlets are portraying it that way. Less unhinged sources highlighted the outpouring of kindness toward the new arrivals in communities like Martha’s Vineyard. 

No story is that simple, notwithstanding one’s ideological lens.  We know that the migrants were promised jobs, housing, and gifts at their destination.  Some were misled about these destinations; the Cape Cod contingent thought they were going to Boston.  Others seemed to have known their itinerary in advance and saw an opportunity to travel someplace they wanted to be; one man got off his bus in Chicago and was met by family.

I’m sure each family or individual concerned had their motives for going along.  It does appear that many were deceived.  Outside the MAGA-verse, there have been comparisons to the “reverse Freedom Rides” of the early 1960s.  I thought I knew my Civil Rights Movement history, but I was unaware of them until now.  This bit of near-forgotten right-wing ratfuckery was orchestrated by the New Orleans White Citizens Council as retaliation for the SNCC- and CORE-organized Freedom Rides against racial segregation in the South.  Black families were bused to northern states with the promise of housing and jobs only to discover upon arrival that they had been had.  The campaign subsequently spread to other southern states. 

The idea was to overload social welfare systems up north, point out the imputed hypocrisy of civil rights advocates, and demonstrate to the displaced Black people that they were better off in the segregated South.  Similarly, the ongoing drive to offload Latino migrants onto blue states and sanctuary cities is intended to punish those who have the temerity to view these people as human beings possessing human dignity.  (The immigrants seem to have been indiscriminately targeted; El Paso bused 223 migrants to New York City many of whom were Venezuelan refugees.  Venezuelan-Americans, like Cuban-Americans, tend to favor Republican candidates.  Looks like the GOP successfully alienated a bunch of future voters.)

One key difference between then and now is that the Louisiana legislature refused to fund the 1960 campaign while the Florida legislature appropriated $12 million in support of the current effort.  (Governor Ron DeSantis has pledged to spend every last dollar.)  I am unsure of the cost to Texas taxpayers of Greg Abbott’s mischief, though indications point to private donations. 

One wrinkle is that this caper could actually benefit the receiving communities.  Many of the immigrants may be eligible for Temporary Protected Status.  If granted, those with TPS will be legally able to work.  While I’m not familiar with the labor economics of the various destinations, let’s assume that they are having the same hiring troubles as the rest of the country.  The arrival of the migrants may help alleviate labor shortages in at least some places.

Like all the other wingnut shenanigans of the last six-plus years, the bus-off will be superseded by even barmier escapades.  I’m not sure what they are meant to accomplish.  They’re not “triggering” or “owning” the libs.  All they’re doing is jerking each other off as they become less relevant over time, a development that cannot happen soon enough.

  

© 2022 The Unassuming Scholar 

Probity

Although I should be paying closer attention, I’ve sporadically followed the January 6^th House Select Committee hearings. Most of the live coverage and commentary I’ve listened to has been from NPR during my work commute. 

As viscerally horrified I was that day, time has blunted my emotions surrounding the incident.  I chalk this up to Trump fatigue.  I’m almost at the point where I say, “Fuck it.  Let ‘em all walk as long as I don’t have to hear about them anymore.”  

It’s not the conduct of the hearings.  Reps. Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney are making the best of an awful situation.  The revelations are nauseating but unsurprising.  The parade of in person witnesses and recorded depositions has become a rehashed drone of things we either already knew or suspected. 

Nevertheless, I was struck by Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony the week before last.  Hutchinson was White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ aide in the months and days leading up to January 6^th.  We learned of President Trump’s infantile reaction to Attorney General Barr’s denial of election fraud, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone’s warning of potential violence in the wake of the January 6^th rally, and Meadows’ strange inaction during the riot, as well as the requests for pardons afterwards.  

There was one thing in Hutchison’s testimony that cleared up a question I had had for the last year and a half concerning why Trump did not march on the Capitol after the rally as promised.  Apparently it wasn’t one of the innumerable cheap pledges he’s made over his career; Trump reportedly lunged at his Secret Service driver after the driver told him he had to go back to the White House.  That was the first actual surprise to come out of any the testimony.  Another was that Trump wanted the metal detectors removed from the rally site so that his supporters could bring firearms since he thought they posed no security threat to him.  It is unthinkable how much worse the ensuing riot would have been had Trump prevailed. 

Like many of the reporters and talking heads covering Hutchinson’s testimony, I was uncritical at first because I was genuinely impressed by her.  She projected a calm self-assurance, maturity, and wisdom beyond her twenty-five years.  I was also taken with her earnestness.  She was quoted in one source as wanting a career in public service, something that resonated with me.  I was a wide-eyed idealist as a young adult, though I soon learned to keep those sentiments to myself because they were often met with eyerolls.  At the time I worked in a position with a considerable amount of responsibility for a twentysomething, albeit far from the levers of power, but which nonetheless comported with my own aspirations. 

The passage of a couple of weeks has tempered my admiration.  I do not doubt Ms. Hutchinson’s idealism (or at least her own belief in it), and I will not criticize her conservative politics.  I can even forgive her cringy dance with Kayleigh McEnany to “Y.M.C.A.” during the 2020 campaign.  However, the White House-aide-as-Capra-heroine narrative does not completely hold up the closer one looks.  Certain questions arise. 

As an undergraduate Hutchinson interned with both Ted Cruz and Steve Scalise, two of the most disreputable people on Capitol Hill.  Surely, she was aware of their reputations before seeking work with them.  Then there is her accepting a position in the Trump White House.  Was it really idealism, or a self-serving determination to get ahead?  Only the most fanatical MAGA nutters, the people who believe Trump was chosen by God to save America from whatever imaginary threat, can truly believe Trump possesses even the slightest shard of integrity.  Then there is her apparent acceptance of an offer to work at Mar-a-Lago post-presidency which was later withdrawn (and has led to accusations from conservative media that her testimony was sour grapes for not getting the job).  

I am not second-guessing Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony.  I believe her to have been truthful with the committee.  However, I question the choices which put her in this position to begin with.  Although she did the committee a service, it does not mitigate her responsibility for being part of a criminal presidency.  Others may vouch for her character, but I am unconvinced. 

 

© 2022 The Unassuming Scholar

Freedom at Play

Brett Kavanaugh couldn’t stay for dessert. 

This week’s political tempest in a teapot concerns Kavanaugh’s hasty backdoor departure from a Washington, D.C. Morton’s steakhouse after protestors had gathered out front.  (Some accounts claim he was unaware of the demo, but the decision to leave through the back tends to refute this.)  Morton’s management took to Twitter, asserting that their high-profile guest’s right to dine in public had been violated. 

Yes.  And no.  Certain activities noted of late, such as protesting outside officials’ private homes, make me uneasy.  Similarly, I ask myself whether we should condone interfering with their non-official activities (as in the case a few years ago when Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a Northern Virginia restaurant after its employees objected to her patronage).  However, in the case of sitting U.S. Supreme Court justices, who can serve for life should they choose, there is precious little recourse to publicly register pushback against decisions which adversely affect the liberties and rights of vast numbers of citizens.  

The galling arrogance of the new SCOTUS supermajority, and that of Justices Alito and Thomas particularly, is horrifying when we take into account that its holdings will reverberate in people’s lives for generations. The power of these unelected officials, half of whom were nominated by a president who received a minority of the popular vote and confirmed by a Senate with a majority representing less than half the country’s population, is largely unchecked.  They are well aware of their freedom from accountability, hence their newfound disregard for precedent and stare decisis.  They are fast paving the way to a Christofascist future in which the majority of Americans do not want to live. 

So, misgivings aside I don’t have a lot of sympathy for Kavanaugh’s spoiled evening.  He chose to become a public figure with considerable authority and thus has a lessened expectation of being shielded from public scrutiny.  Yesterday’s near-confrontation sent a message that thousands of unread critical letters, emails, and online posts cannot.  I doubt neither he nor his colleagues care about public sentiment either way, but at least a public protest is visible.  As long as no one is harmed and no property is damaged, citizens should be permitted to gather for political expression.  

Perhaps Mr. Kavanaugh will spend his future evenings quietly at home.  And perhaps Morton’s will court a more respectable clientele.

 

© 2022 The Unassuming Scholar

 

 

 

 

Backsliding

Everyone knew it was coming, of course.  That didn’t make the news any easier to accept. 

The U.S. Supreme Court has formally handed down its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, nearly two months after Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion was leaked to the public.  The resulting backlash notwithstanding, it appears the final draft is identical or nearly so to the preview.  There is no longer a nationally recognized right to abortion.  

The extent to which a woman enjoys reproductive freedom now depends upon the state where she lives.  In my own state, little or nothing will change in the wake of Dobbs.  There has been talk of making our state a sanctuary for women seeking safe terminations.  But even then, measures elsewhere such as the Texas snitch law may thwart this particular haven unless the woman doesn’t return home. 

Emboldened by their right-wing supermajority, there is already talk of harsher actions to come.  Clarence Thomas has publicly said it may be time to consider limiting access to contraception. Rights such as same-sex marriage may also be at risk now that SCOTUS has issued a total reversal of what was once considered settled law. 

Despite having won, the right is nevertheless taking refuge in their perennial claims of persecution by a malevolent “woke” left.  Congressional wingnuts are already conjuring specters of a violent backlash to further entrench the hysterical tendencies of the base.  Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah (where else?) warned of a potential “constitutional crisis” resulting from a rumored “invasion” of the Supreme Court by the “pro-abortion left.”  (Sorry, Mikey, inciting mob violence is your party’s brand.)  

The decades-long assault on reproductive rights is deeply disturbing to me on a visceral level.  This may read counterintuitively considering men can’t get pregnant (except in emojis).  But the two things I value most are my privacy and my autonomy.  If I insist upon these for myself, then it is only right that I want them for you as well.  Anti-abortion and anti-contraceptive policies limit privacy and autonomy for women of childbearing age, and that is wrong.  

Dobbs is a landmark on the backsliding route our country is traveling.  It is also a warning.  We have arrived at a place where a moderate majority are increasingly subjected to the superstitious fanaticism of right-wing leaders and their legions of scruffy devotees.  It’s sickeningly awful to witness them fouling our nest while our freedoms erode and life in America becomes harder to bear.  We face more grim days such as this.  The darkness is gathering fast.

 

© 2022 The Unassuming Scholar

It's Happening Here

I find YouTube ads a necessary evil to get free content.  I almost never watch them through.  Last night I saw one that made me watch to the end.

It was a campaign ad.  The candidate was a former student, a MAGA fan who was an unconscionable pain in the ass the whole semester.  He’s running for county clerk, who is also the registrar of voters.

The spot itself was unremarkable though professionally done.  The candidate appears on camera throughout, first as a talking head then in footage of him walking down a farm road with his wife and preschool-age daughter.  He’s as I remembered him, receding hairline, beard, red face, beer gut, etc.  Same lack of an indoor voice. 

His pitch emphasized his military service and his commitment to faith and family.  (The usual conservative campaign ad tropes.)  He also promised to “clean up” the voting process in our county.  As a sometime poll worker in the county, I can assure you with certainty that our polling process is already clean. 

I’m not worried that he will win.  Although the long-time incumbent is leaving office, his deputy is running and appears the most viable candidate of the three in the primary race.  However, I don't like that many of the disturbing trends seen elsewhere are seeping into my community. 

The post-Trump era has not resulted in peace of mind.  Voter suppression efforts across the country are just one facet of what Bill Maher has called a slow-moving coup by the right.  Approximately two-thirds of Americans are white.  They make up three-quarters of registered voters.  To not see an underlying white supremacy behind voter suppression laws is willful blindness.  And yet the opposition flails impotently to stop them.

Trump-era hysteria permeates red state political culture.  Screening proposed textbooks (some of them math!) for “woke” themes or supposed references to Critical Race Theory is a distraction from serious policymaking while inflaming white ressentiment.  The “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida and the pending measure in Texas forbidding parents to seek gender-affirming care for their trans children are solutions to nonexistent problems.  (Concerning the latter, it strikes me funny that the same people who refused to let the government to coparent when it came to masks now support government coparenting transgender kids.)  Adam Serwer got it right; the cruelty is the point.

To add to the darkness enveloping our country, it came to light this morning that a draft majority opinion in the Mississippi 15-week abortion ban case written by Samuel Alito leaked from the U.S. Supreme Court.  It comes as no surprise that if issued as written, Roe v. Wade would be definitively overturned.  Still, I always figured SCOTUS would probably gut Roe rather than overturning it outright.  The Texas snitch law passed last summer was the shape of things to come from our 6-3 conservative majority Court; it’s doubtful there will be a happy ending in this case either.

During his confirmation hearings Chief Justice John Roberts stated that Roe was settled law.  Guess he’s changed his mind.  Despite her open religiosity, Amy Coney Barrett’s limited record of abortion-related rulings offers a faint glimmer of hope but I’m not holding my breath. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Thomas are lost causes.  If one believes Sen. Susan Collins, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh lied about their stance on reproductive rights during their respective confirmation hearings. I look upon this development with unsurprised disgust.  What do you expect from a pig but a grunt?

There’s been some hopeful commentary that the leak will damage Republican prospects for this year’s midterms and may even fend off a GOP (Trump?) victory in 2024.  Don’t hold your breath.  It is more likely that it will further energize and further embolden the base, as will the probable passage of the spate of anti-LGBT bills in the South.  Speculation on both sides of the divide predicts that Republicans will attempt to overturn results in states with Republican legislatures that go Democratic in 2024.  I don’t doubt that such attempts will occur.  Perhaps they will succeed. 

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.  Somewhere along the way, we took our eye off the ball.

 

 

© 2022 The Unassuming Scholar

Enemies in a Lifeboat

 

“Alright then, we are two nations.”

John Dos Passos, The Big Money

 

Dos Passos was referring to the ideological divide surrounding the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti nearly a century ago.  The statement could just as easily apply today. 

As we approach a third year of pandemic, the divisions in our society have become a gaping wound for all the world to behold.  Its successive waves have limited physical mobility making escape from the social upheaval a distant vision.  I’ve long dreamed of becoming an expat in my retirement, but the desire to travel the world has morphed into an urge to flee and not look back.  Unfortunately, that is no longer feasible for most of us.  And as time goes on creeping political repression may make it even less so. 

In the aftermath of the “stolen” 2020 presidential election, we are entering what Jason Stanley terms the “legal phase” of fascism.  Much of this is happening at the state level given the narrow Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, though the 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court will almost certainly enable these enacted and pending measures.  Restricting voting rights, limiting the right to publicly protest, gerrymandering which further entrenches Republican legislators in red states, and the de facto purge of anti-Trump Republicans in Congress and statehouses are all calculated to pave the way for the Orange Führer’s triumphant return in 2024.  (To further raise alarm, it has come to light that Boeing and Pfizer were among the corporations and trade groups which donated $8 million to Republican lawmakers who voted to decertify the 2020 electoral results.)  

Nor has the past year mitigated the threat of right-wing extremists or self-appointed “good guys with guns” taking the law into their own hands.  While the verdict in the Ahmaud Arbery murder trial may signal a renewed intolerance of vigilantism, the not guilty verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse case is disturbing.  (One reason I suppose the jury was inclined to acquit was that Wisconsin’s “stand your ground” law doesn’t apply to public spaces.  By initially attempting to flee a confrontation with an armed protestor, Rittenhouse was arguably fulfilling his duty to retreat.)  The brazen, high-profile antics of so-called militias give further cause for concern.  

Misinformation exacerbates the divide.  It helps further what Bill Maher has called the slow-moving coup.  Social media fueled hysteria over mostly nonexistent threats surrounding gun control, vaccines, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, Critical Race Theory, and so forth.  It also promotes anti-science attitudes and misinformation about COVID, leading to lowered vax rates and increased spread each time a new variant emerges.  

It is no wonder that Donald Trump loves poorly-educated people.  They are the most susceptible to the message and the least likely to understand how our constitutional system actually works.  While affluent, educated suburban whites supported Trump as well, it is the unruly mass of working class whites who pose the more immediate threat.  Gullible and hostile and ready to accept any sort of bullshit shoveled at them as long as it caters to their anger and prejudices, they are the most liable to resort to mob activity. 

What we are seeing is a progressive normalization of ignorance and rage-fueled rhetorical and physical violence, fueled by social media.  At its worst, this violence has taken the form of looting in cities to violence against protestors.  Legal consequences fall differently depending on the person and the offense.  One year on, few of the participants in the January 6^th Redneck Riot have suffered any meaningful punishment for having attempted to overthrow the government.  Most of the convictions have been for trivial crimes such as trespassing, rather than for sedition.  Had it been, say, a Black Lives Matter protest, the penalties would surely have been swifter and more severe. 

To quote Dos Passos again, “They have taken the words of our fathers and made them slimy and foul.”  Watching the recent New York Times documentary on the riot, possibly the most complete dissection of the event so far, we behold scenes of self-proclaimed “patriots” confronting law enforcement officers demanding they uphold their oaths to the Constitution notwithstanding they were doing exactly that.  At the risk of repetition, it was these “patriots” who sought the disruption of the very government prescribed in the Constitution. 

The transposition of surreality over mundane normalcy characterizes the present moment.  Life goes on as usual, but with a pervasive sense of dread.  And I am beginning to think there is (admittedly anecdotal) cause for worry.  A couple of years ago, just before the pandemic, I took a trip to Europe.  Not only was the flight delayed without explanation for nearly two hours after boarding, but we had to submit to two separate document checks before boarding.  Perhaps it was only a routine security precaution.  Perhaps it was a harbinger of future restrictions on Americans traveling abroad.  

Which brings me back to my deep-seated wish to check out of the mess our country has become. I fear my contrarian opinions may make that more difficult if not impossible as time goes on with the prospect of even more repressive measures.  I’ve learned having money of your own confers freedom, freedom which includes leaving home.  Security legislation since 9/11 has given the federal government greater oversight of bank accounts.  All of mine are in the U.S., which means my assets can be frozen or seized by the authorities on the slenderest of pretexts.  Goodbye, freedom.  Our sweet land of liberty may well become a lawless place where mobs of heavy-gutted, bearded white men armed with guns and superstition are calling the shots and where decent people will have no means of escape.  

More than ever in our contemporary history it has become a matter of us and them.  We are seemingly locked in a death embrace with our enemies at home and escape may no longer be no longer an option.  There is scant cause for optimism.

 

 

 

© 2022 The Unassuming Scholar

Headlong into the Past

 

It was only a coincidence, but a fitting one just the same.  This past week, I’ve been bingeing The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu.  Absently scrolling through my newsfeed as I watched, one headline caught my eye.  The U.S. Supreme Court has granted certiorari in a case involving a Mississippi statute banning abortion after the first fifteen weeks of pregnancy. 

While such a story is troubling under normal circumstances, the ideological shift of the federal judiciary to the right during the Trump administration provokes outright angst.  Before 2017, any ruling re Roe v. Wade was tempered by a reluctance to overturn it outright.  For instance, when Chief Justice John Roberts was undergoing his confirmation hearings in 2005 he noted that Roe was settled law. 

But perhaps not for much longer.  The influx of right-leaning judges into the federal courts, together with the new conservative SCOTUS supermajority, puts that into question.  A president’s lasting legacy are his judicial appointments.  In that sense, Donald Trump has created a threat to hard-won rights that will persist years after his tenure at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. 

The world of The Handmaid’s Tale is a funhouse mirror version of a right-wing utopia.  More to the point, it’s a reflection of present-day phenomena which, on a slippery slope, might result in something like it.  

Life in the postrevolutionary theocracy of Gilead is chockfull of slightly tweaked aspects of daily American life in 2021.  We have militarized law enforcement and omniscient public surveillance.  There is a growing tolerance of officially meted punishment in the guise of justice, with “othered” minorities particularly singled out.  Politicized evangelicals influencing public policy.  Propaganda and misinformation substituted for news.  

The series was especially prescient with Gilead’s backstory.  In the series universe, a terrorist attack against the White House and U.S. Capitol led to rule by decree by a cabal of religious fanatics. The Great Redneck Riot of January Sixth was an eerie evocation of an otherwise unthinkable event.  (Imagine what could have happened if the rioters had been organized…and planned ahead.) 

The rest of the quasi-fictional nightmare could be made more real through the law courts.  Central to the narrative of The Handmaid’s Tale is an unspecified environmental disaster affecting fertility rates.  Women who could still conceive were rendered as property, stripped of their old identities and forced into reproductive servitude to the male “commanders” who govern Gilead.  Although The Handmaid’s Tale is speculative fiction, it is also food for thought in the face of a gradual erosion of the personal rights gained by women over the past century.  

Concerning the pending abortion case, an outright overturning of Roe v. Wade seems attainable for the first time.  SCOTUS has bounded and further refined the legal protections afforded by Roe, but until now they remained comparatively slight.  No longer. 

Although it has no direct legal bearing on how the case is argued and decided, public opinion’s effect on politics cannot be ignored.  Over time I’ve detected a worrisome trend among my students, particularly the working class white males.  They are quite forward with their anti-abortion stance and their taste for authoritarian policies.  I think I know why.  Populist conservatism’s appeal stems from the feeling that the economic immiseration of white workers and America’s supposed loss of greatness is the result of our abandoning traditional values.  Traditional values which privilege men and subordinate women and people of color.  Things will get better if we just turn back the calendar.  After all, that’s what Jesus wants, right? 

The three most recently appointed justices were chosen with right-wing policy objectives in mind.  The views of Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett are no secret.  The touchstone issue, the long-running litmus test for the conservative base, is abortion. This in turn is prompted by a retrograde worldview informed by evangelical Christian tenets.  Taken literally, biblical law affirms ideas which privilege some and abuse many.  

Here is what is at stake.  Several states have enacted six-week abortion bans; a few more have passed bills imposing an outright ban in anticipation of Roe being overturned.  Should the Mississippi law be upheld, as it very well may, then we have taken the first step in rolling back equal rights for women.  We all must ask ourselves if this is the kind of society we want to live in.

If you want a nightmare vision of what that society may end up looking like if present trends persist, watch The Handmaid’s Tale. 

 

© 2021 The Unassuming Scholar