Voting Rights

[from www.cografyaegitimi.biz ]

There's obviously lots of good stuff to read on this breath-takingly terrible Supreme Court decision. Ms Ginsburg said it best, and Mr. Justice Thomas, in his looking-glass logic, came a close second. The worst remarks were those of the NAACP folks who tried to stop this gawd-awful day--Charlie Pierce calls it Justice Roberts' Day of Jubilee--who were opining all night on MSNBC that this simply offers a terrific opportunity for the United States Congress to write a better law.

Wouldn't that be a nice world to live in. It's hard to square any short term optimism with the fact that some 41 states are hard at work fashioning various new road blocks to a wider path to the ballot box. It's hard to imagine this particular Congress, unable to make even the smallest edit in our pitiful, weak gun laws in the face of the massacre of 20 children in 5 minutes last December, taking up something as serious as some sort of national voting rights guarantees. We are, as many have noted already, embarked on a period of nullification. The right wing oligarchs who already run most things (see, e.g., the vanishing blue collar labor "market") understood, perhaps decades ago, that the basic legal architecture of the united "states" opened the door to all manner of governance on a state-by-state basis. The great civil rights legislative victories of the mid-'60s were driven by an incredible decade-long drive consisting of probably millions of otherwise silent and in the case of black people, disenfranchised American citizens. This people's army was led by several virtual geniuses, including Martin Luther King and Bayard Rustin. Three years after the successful passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1968, Dr. King was assassinated, as was Robert Kennedy, who seemed at the time at least to be the most eloquent white establishment defender of the powerless. Meanwhile, the Vietnam War slowly ground away all evidence of optimism and idealism remaining in the general population, and ended the career of the President who fashioned a path to the Voting Rights Bill we had, until yesterday. We will likely not see such a configuration of positive forces again in our lifetimes.

And the Right did not rest. They theorized a legal strategy which would utilize the fact that in the United States, "states" are endowed with great power. Consider just the nature of the United States Senate, where two men representing, say, Wyoming, have exactly as much voting power as two folks representing New York or California, population variations notwithstanding. George Wallace did not succeed in his efforts to stand in the "school house" door, but it was a specific loss. Symbolically, he represented the structural power the states hold in our constitutional framework.

The appointments of George W. Bush, not to mention his more subtly conservative and subversive father to the Supreme Court will likely be one day viewed as the most lasting legacy of the Bush family, enduring even after the last brain-damaged, one legged veteran of his deluded wars of choice has passed on to a better, or at least quieter, place. Mr. Clinton gave us Ms Ginsburg, who now shines like Justice William Brennan, eloquent but mostly powerless. H.W. gave us Clarence Thomas. George gave us Roberts and Alito.

Meanwhile, in the newly enlightened South, the Zimmerman trial proceeds. Convicted he'll be a martyr for Hannity and the rest of these revolutionaries. Acquitted, he'll be the cherry on this poisionous sundae we've now been served from on high. The counter-revolution will not, for the most part, be televised. It's happening in dim legislative hallways, and ALEC symposiums which now crank out new legal strategies far faster than any ham-strung Federal Justice Department can react.

It's a shame the people who crafted the Voting Rights Law didn't simply create a Federal Elections Board to oversee all elections in this country. Getting to such a place now is going to be like climbing Everest.

The Replacements

I'd like to repost this page here, but I'm not sure if I can do that given my limited web skills, so here's the link, which will be active until it isn't.

http://www.thepilot.com/news/features/article_aabbc64c-d383-11e2-9a3b-0019bb30f31a.html

The guys in the photo with the story are not identified, but the "Clay Buckner" mentioned as opening with the "Clackalacky Sisters" replaced me in the combo back in the winter of 1981. They appeared at a great venue in the little town of Aberdeen, NC, where I've played as well. Janet Kenworthy, the proprietor, does really wonderful work in keeping such an outstanding venue afloat in a little railroad town that is probably paddling pretty hard these days itself, particularly with our current state Rethuglican Government working in a veritable frenzy to outpace Wisconsin in its Kochification efforts.

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I started out the year thinking to chronicle the various remarkable efforts of our Legislature, but it's been too big a task, and if you want to follow the doings you can read daily reports at www.wral.com. Probably you have better things to do. I've been around long enough to have sat on a bench at the State Capitol Building in Raleigh and watched a Klan Rally in full pointy-capped regalia march past on a cold winter day--it was some sort of show of force re the uppity negras or something, I have no idea now. I was just sitting there on a bench enjoying the day and around the corner they came. I do know that back then we had the relatively liberal governor, Terry Sanford in office. John F. Kennedy had just been assassinated too. Anyways, so far things aren't quite that bad, and the Vietnam War had not even kindled in earnest on that winter afternoon in 1963. I won't be surprised, however, if we continue, or are dragged kicking and screaming, down this same hell-path a good piece farther. People are rallying in Raleigh each Monday to protest the appalling legislative arbeit, and many are being arrested. Our Governor, who hails originally from Ohio, mutters about "outside agitators." It all looks to me rather like what my dear old mother used to describe as the doings, post Civil War, of the "carpetbaqgers" and "skallywags." This is of course the bland demographic story of North Carolina--since I was born in the early '40s we've gained many millions in population, the greater proportion coming from the North and West. Far too many of these immigrants find it far too easy to make much of some Mexican and Central American people who came here in the '90s to work odious, difficult jobs that nobody else would work for the bad pay available, and certainly not someone hailing originally from a union state. (NC beat Wisconsin to the "right to work" punch by some 50 years.) It's really pretty sad.

Further Reading: http://www.theygaveusarepublic.com/diary/11594/no-nation-can-endure-permanently-half-slave-half-free

Mokey

'Mokey (at One and One-Half)

The other brothers, two big black beasts,
Eat, play, hunt, sleep. Puzzle, your box mate,
Still clumsy and headlong, will leap on a
Shoulder like it's a chair back, and down
Onto an unsuspecting belly, from his perch.
He'll nuzzle you, face to face, and purr at a
Touch, and go out and get lost in the woods.

Wuzzy, the little lost kitten, always in a different
Place than Mokey and Puzzle when we'd look
Turns out to be most perfectly a Cat,
He's calm, confident, happy.
He hunts, likes to eat but not needy, noble, lithe.
He doesn't get lost, but sometimes (we theorize)
Goes far away to see what's there. And he's the
One that treed himself on New Years Day, and
Got rescued by a very expensive boom truck operator,
Which he thought I think was just his due.

Mokey is the most attentive. He must have kept
An eye peeled, in those mysterious two months, the
First two, in the shed. Mother coming and going.
She'd tell him to watch out for the brothers, or
Maybe he just knew that was his task. He might be
The oldest. He might have a different father, judging
By his coat. Now he knows, when the light comes,
That there are little creatures stirring, and he must
Catch them. It's about food, it's about survival: for
Him, his brothers, maybe even us. He looks under
Everything, and climbs the refrigerator. He finds
A wrapped cough drop on a shelf, and picks it down.
He jumps on my keyboard, and has learned that
Just the tiniest flick of a claw
Will make things happen.

I think of him back in the shed. In the dark.
Mother has gone out to hunt. The wind blows
And the trees creak in the cold early March, late
Winter that is all he knows of life. His brothers
Sleep, snuggled together. He leans against them
For warmth. He watches the crack in the door.
He must be prepared. So it is every morning,
At first light.

Wednesday Update:

Write a nice poem elevating the little bugger to Homeric status and what does he do (see comments)? Immediately falls out of a tree like a silly squirrel. He did land well at least, and is fine, and last night snuggled all night against my leg without deciding I needed to get up at 3 AM. We still love him unconditionally.

The Pit of Hell

The magazine "Commentary" is probably more or less what "National Review" used to be with Mr. Buckley at the helm. Here is a comment on a recent piece by the conservative Max Boot, who argues that Mr. Snowden is not a hero:

Here, a parable. In Chile, in 1973, a man on a white horse came riding up to the Presidential Palace, killed the Marxist living there (Salvador Allende, who was Chile's Barack Obama!) and moved in. For the next 18 years, Augusto Pinochet murdered, imprisoned, sent into exile, tortured, persecuted and in general "did away with" the Left in his country. What emerged was a democratic republic that today is the freest and least corrupt nation in Latin America. That's where we're heading---if we're lucky.

This is the stark reality of right wing American politics today. This is pretty much what Beck and Limbaugh and Boortz and Hannity and the rest of the ranters and Fox Network people believe and assert and argue every day.

Let's hope they keep the price of gas at affordable levels.

[Hat tip to Edroso for the quote: http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-torturers-apprentice.html ]

Meanwhile, in the reality based universe, here's two things you might want to peruse:

http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/06/10/if-wanting-to-reveal-that-all-americans-metadata-gets-swept-up-is-treason-edward-snowden-is-in-distinguished-custody/

And note Mr. Simon's well grounded views, quoted in the Driftglass piece:

http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-difference-between-lightening-bug.html

What if La Palin had Sam Ervin's eyebrows? Just sayin'.

Wednesday Update: As any number of folks have commented on the Snowden leaks, it's pretty hard these days not to have already known, at least in a general way, that something like what Snowden revealed was going on. Surely enemies of the United States would have presumed, as would our friends. Espionage is not a fresh concept after the last century. It strikes me that perhaps the biggest "leak" Snowden is responsible for is revelation of the fact (if it's true and not just fantasy on his part) that people like him--people subcontracting and without particularly good security clearance, are much too close to far too much. Snowden is an example of the problems that come with the privatization cult which our right wing true believers have brought with them into government whenever they manage to gain power. Possibly the Snowdens are cheaper (though not necessarily), but they come more unattached to authority. (For other examples, see, e.g., "Blackwater; Iraq, New Orleans). Do we really want people like this confused libertarian dweeb actually holding such power? It is policy that puts him in this position. Thus, his fairly absurd activities raise deep questions about how we want to run our intelligence services. There's an "in short" in this even: after all, Snowden has fled to China, imagining he'll find safety there.

Thursday Update: The conversation on MSNBC last night, concerning Snowden and surveillance was instructive. The most interesting moments, in my book, occurred on Lawrence O'Donnell's hour. He approaches the story like a lawyer, and had quizzed a dangerously unprepared lawyer-friend of Snowden's, who realized after the first question or two that she was "on the stand," and began to remind me of Miss Teen South Carolina in her answering style. O'Donnell felt he'd found a fulcrum in Snowden's remark that the surveillance system in place amounted to an "architecture of oppression." That's his finely wrought phrase. O'Donnell objected, and tried to push his character witness into the corner of judging Snowden overwrought in his analysis.

This seems to be one of the tacks used by our various pundit observers to try to make sense of Snowden. I more or less took the same line yesterday. This guy may have good intentions, but is he seeing the world "aright." There was quite a lot of talk in this regard about Snowden's credentials. His character witness pointed out that often IT people teach themselves. She offered the example of Bill Gates. O'Donnell felt that nontheless this was Snowden's problem--a too quick leap from "overreach" to "oppression." After the character witness left the stand, Howard Dean arrived. Gov. Dean made an excellent point concerning Snowden's phrase. An "architecture of oppression," he opined, was not the same as actual oppression, but a precurser, a necessary framework. Possibly that was Snowden's point and concern, the underpinning of his current self and otherwise destructive actions.

O'Donnell would have none of it, and dismissed Gov. Dean. That's a lawyer for you. Understood as Dean parsed the phrase, Snowden becomes at the least a person to be taken seriously. This might be a better stance, for all of us, as we try to understand what's going on. There's a mighty vested interest in stuffing Mr. Snowden back in some box or other. It doesn't make him a hero or a superman to see his point. There's nothing at all new about good intentions going awry. Possibly Mr. Snowden's intentions are an example. So, possibly, are the intentions of our intelligence institutions.