Experiencing the Joy of Reality

 WE KNOW, that there are at least four thousand planets orbiting stars other than the sun. The first such was discovered in 1995. We can safely extrapolate that there are trillions yet to be discovered. When one examines a bath tub filled with sea water taken randomly from the ocean,  whatever is in the sample can be presumed to exist throughout the entire ocean. Whenever some distant star slightly dims and brightens with precision, an orbiting planet is passing in front of it. The ultimate question is: how many stars are there close enough to the sun with a good enough view of the sun for intelligent life to similarly detect the presence of Earth? The answer, it turns out, is about seventeen hundred and fifteen. This is solid science at its exciting, empirical best. Scientifically, intellectually, the future of humanity beckons like a beautiful panoramic mystery unfolding, revealing the true nature of nature to those seeking access to reality. Sadly, sciences' noble, eternal quest for the truth seems to be insufficient mental stimulation for many people, people w ho choose to reject science in favor of their own, fabricated false realities. American culture, which has always been an incubator of false, fraudulent beliefs, is currently experiencing an epidemic of misinformation, intellectual nonsense. The internet, talk radio, and bookstores are full to overflowing of this vacuous, but profitable idiocy. Terms like "paranormal research" and "alternative cosmic paradigms" thinly conceal the senselessness with an intellectual sounding veneer which means nothing. Is it necessary to mention, for instance, that anybody who claims to not only know definitely of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent beings, but also wo know precisely where they come from and what activities they are engaged in, on Earth end elsewhere, is a charlatan? It shouldn't b necessary. To elucidate the deluded; the United States Federal Reserve bank is not operated advanced creatures from the Andromeda galaxy, the Democratic party does not operate a thriving pedophile business, and the interior of the planet earth is neither hollow, nor inhabited.

Land Filling At Sea

HOMO SAPIEN SAPIENS is using, and has long been using the world's oceans as a garbage dump, dumping anything and everything into the blue waters as if by so doing the trash magically disappears, does not accumulate, does no harm. Plastics in particular are the problem. so large are the oceans, so much of the Earth's surface do they cover, that for as long as people have gone down to the sea, which is essentially since people were even more primitive primates than they are today, they have assumed that there is no possible way a dead body here or a ship full of cargo there could have any lasing impact on the apparently endless ocean. Hence, over the centuries, the bottoms of oceans have become littered with thousands of ship carcasses, tens of thousands of human remains, and all manner of human made artifacts, including items made of wood, metal, and plastic, you name it, we throw it away. Were you to take a long walk on the sea bottoms of the world,  you would not have to walk far to see something which some indifferent human tossed overboard. The Atlantic floor is littered with Spanish cargo, including gold bullion, both world wars left their mark, hundreds of military vessels full of human remains and objects of human manufacture. We are now beginning to have an understanding that, just like the resources of a finite planet,  the oceans are indeed limited in their capacity to absorb our trash. And its only getting worse. Contemporary humanity is the worst of all. Each year several million tons of plastic are dumped into the oceans, plastic which begins benignly enough in  your shopping cart, then goes through your kitchen, then into your garbage bag, into your weekly trash, your local landfill, and onto a barge, and into a large river or ocean. It all flows in the same direction, downstream, and the ocean is the final destination. Plastic is the modern problem, and recycling is not the answer. Less than ten percent of all plastic is recycled the energy cost is prohibitive. The answer is to stop manufacturing and using single, one time use plastic objects, like trash bags. Whales get tangled up in them. Micro plastic particles are an even greater problem. Because much plastic is ground down to  smaller and smaller particles, which keeps flaking off into ever smaller particles. the whole world, oceans and land, is filled with micro plastic. This includes every human body on the planet. About every week a credit card's worth of plastic is absorbed into your sexy body. Environmental  plastic pollution is as insidious and as great a problem as atmospheric carbon pollution, and if you don't already now how great a problem that is, and precisely what it causes, then you've been living on some other planet, probably a planet less beautiful but fare less threatened by human beings than the one human beings inhabit, for the time being.

Forbidding Hatred

 AMONG THE CRAZIER DELUSIONS of the many embraced by American conservatives is that transgender people do not exist. Whatever the gender listed on one's birth certificate is the gender you are stuck with. Even if you transition to female surgically, complete with large breasts, vaginal orifice, and six inch heals, according to the righteous red neck right wing, god made you male, and male thou shalt remain. Whoa, Nelly, not so fast. Once again the tailor made by design supreme court has stabbed its evangelical benefactors int eh back side, legally, intellectually, by siding with the queer lovin' libs. The case involved a fourteen year old transgender boy who was told by his local school board to use the girl's bathroom, since according to his birth certificate she was still a she. He, however, didn't want to use the girl's restroom, because, well, he couldn't. Into the federal judicial system the matter went, up and down the appellate hierarchy for seemingly endless years, while he graduated and went on about his life. A federal appeals court ruled in his favor, that he is now a guy, and should use the guy's room, and the Supreme Court, six right wing justices strong, declined to hear the case, effectively ending the litigation in his favor. Thus is established the precedent. In essence, the high court informs the righteous right wing to shove their bathroom bills up their delusional, sanctimonious behinds. Now, all across freedom's land, folks'll be free to use the restroom to which their current, not former sex corresponds. Bathroom bills, a favorite perversion of the right wing, are now effectively flushed in every state, red or blue. Equal justice under law, the far right is once again painfully reminded, leans neither to right nor left, but remains precariously, tediously balanced in the hands of the blindfolded lady with the balanced scales in her wise hands.A cursory examination of recent supreme court renderings seems to indicate that justice favors favors progressive values as often as, if not more often than, conservative values. Recall, oh ye far right ideologues, that the conservative John Roberts court upheld Obama care three times and legalized gay marriage, sending conservative America into paroxysms of indignation and feelings of betrayal by their own kind. And now, this. Another blow to right wing religious righteousness. Not onlly that, but five'll get you ten that within the fairly near future, when the super conservative court, conservative by deliberate nefarious intent, upholds Roe v. wade, and women remain in control of their own reproduction, not because of any liberal conspiracy but because conservative jurists, well educated, usually can be counted to do the right thing, "right" meaning "correct". 

Fighting For Free Effing Speech

 THE HIGH SCHOOL GIRL was not selected for the varsity cheerleading squad, and was relegated to the JV. she was, like, soo totally pissed. She logged on to her device and begin tossing f bombs like confetti on new Year's Eve. Nothing escaped her Effing wrath. The school suspended fer from cheerleading altogether for one year. Egged on presumably by her parents, et al, She went to court, and the case worked its way all the way to the supreme court, where she won. the court ruled that the school had overstepped its legitimate authority, and had infringed on her free speech, since her bad mouth tweeting had taken place off campus, where the school administration lacked jurisdiction. By the time all this took place, it was too late for it to do any good for the  young foul mouthed lady, since she has long since graduated, gone to college, married, had a family, pursued a career, retired, and moved into an assisted living facility, without ever having been allowed to rejoin the varsity cheerleading squad. Still, it was worthwhile, because she gained the satisfaction of winning her war against her old alma mater, helped establish an invaluable precedent for the free speech first amendment rights of public school students in the digital age, and thus opened the door to other foul mouthed young scholars to verbally abuse their institutions of learning from afar. She has no regrets, according to her caregiver. this marks the first time in more than fifty years that the highest court in freedom's land has handed down a decision upholding the first amendment rights of America's youthful scholars. it seems to be boiling down to an understanding that schools my limit the free speech of students on campus, but not off campus, which seems reasonable. congress may not infringe, but parents, teachers, employers, and a whole host of other folks may infringe; free speech is not absolute. home owners may infringe upon anybody that damned well want to, on their own property, since they too are not congress. Most Americans do not understand this simple reality, that the constitution only limits what congress can do speech wise, and by extension government, but nobody else. but, take heart; there are ways to overcome tyranny. One must only become eighteen years old to cast off the chains of parental speech infringement, one must one graduate or quit school to cast off the bondage of in school speech infringement, and one need only quit one's job or retire to cast off the tyranny of enforced quiet in the workplace. Better yet, the only way an American citizen can lose free speech protection from congressional infringement is to leave the country.

Going Socialist

 BIG CITIES tend to be progressive politically, full of  Democrats. Republicans tend to dominate small towns, rural areas, and to lurk in wilderness areas, approximating savagery. the suburbs are up for grabs, are where the action is. since an increasingly high percentage of Americans live in urban areas, the U.S. is becoming a more progressive country, as indicated by the fact that the Democratic presidential candidate has won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections. In Buffalo new York, the first female mayor was recently elected, who is also the first Democratic socialist mayor. socialists have been elected to positions of high political office before, of course, but only relatively rarely. The next most recent socialist mayor was elected in 1960. Largely forgotten is that late in the nineteenth and early in the twentieth centuries, the so called "progressive era", a wave of socialism swept through the country, in response to America's industrial revolution, which brought about industrialization, an explosion of factories, urban laborers, exploitation of labor by the so called "robber baron" corporate owners, an incredible level of concentration of wealth, as incredible as today, and the resultant labor union formation and labor strife, including nearly strikes. In 1920 a socialist candidate for president, Eugene V. Debs, got more than one million votes, even though he was in jail on election day, for fomenting unrest among labor unions. In 1932 other socialist and communist candidates got a combined one million votes, and a socialist, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was elected president, and reelected three more times, although neither he nor anyone who supported him actually called him a "socialist". those who opposed and hated him openly called him a "socialist", which by that time had already become as bad an insult as could be aimed at anyone, particularly a politician. When I asked my mother, who was born in 1920 whether she voted for Roosevelt, she told me she would answer my question in two different ways, which she did; "No', and "Hell no". I came from a family of rock solid dairy farming republicans, who despised FDR and all he stood for. I consider him among my heroes. When, in an industrial society, the concentration of wealth becomes extreme and labor is exploited with low wages and poor working condition, socialism emerges. Socialism is reemerging today, Bernie Sanders has run for president twice, calling himself a "Democratic Socialist", and has done quite well both times. it is not inconceivable that he would have beaten Donald Trump, either in 2016 or 2020. the important thing to remember about socialism is that today's America is full of it. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting something which is socialistic, meaning "government" economics,  and despite what your average conservative will tell you, every one in the country, in one way or another, benefits from socialism, whether or not she chooses to acknowledge it.

Hiding Violently From the Reality of Racism

 CRITICAL RACE THEORY, awkwardly misnamed, is not "theory", but simply fact. It is the study of systemic racism, past and present, which means historical scholarship, research, and analysis. This of course is predicated upon critical, factual analysis of how systemic racism has influenced, and been influenced by,  American culture and history, within traditional American institutions. Critical race theory is nothing other than honesty abut racism, which is and has always been deeply embedded within those institutions, despite efforts by some to vanquish it, by others to perpetuate it, and by yet others to deny its existence altogether. Only the effort to vanquish it have thus far proven ineffective. The progressive movement is working to change that, the conservative movement is working to deny and perpetuate. The conservatives who perpetuate racism perpetuate it by denying its existence, as well as by promoting white supremacy. For most conservatives, the United States ended slavery long ago, then later ended Jim Crow and segregation, thus ending racism, case closed. This, of course, is simplistic hagiographic, self congratulatory nonsense, intended to assuage guilt and responsibility for todays' enduring racism, personal and systemic. "Critical Race Theory", which emerged as an area of scholarship in American universities in the nineteen seventies, is now receiving renewed attention  in the media an among the general public in the wake of the social unrest precipitated by the smart phone recording of George Floyd being murdered, and the consequent enhanced societal awareness of systemic racism, past and present. (Smart phones are proving to be valuable historical tools). Racism is now being generally broached in America's public schools, for the first time, and this is causing America's right wing to pitch a fit, so to speak, a typically false fit of righteous pseudo patriotic indignation. The conservative community is therefore currently engaged in a highly organized project to eliminate the study of racism in public schools. President Trump, himself a confirmed racist, actually signed an executive order forbidding it, with the the absurd justification that teaching students the truth about America's racist history and contemporary culture is both divisive and somehow unpatriotic. but President Biden reversed it, just as Biden has been steadfastly going about the business of undoing much of the damage done to the country by Trump and his gang-like supporters.  By so doing Biden spared Trump yet more lawsuits, which the former president can ill afford to contest. Angered and discontented by Trump's election defeat, refusing to accept either the reality of that defeat or of racism's traditional and continuing insinuation in American society, thousands of conservative groups at the local level are trying to remove progressive school board members from their elected positions, often by harassing them with threats of violence. This is hardly surprising; America's right wing is comprised largely of thugs.

Growing Trees in Ghettos

RACISM IN AMERICA is pervasive, systemic, a core value, despite pretenses to the contrary. It is evidenced ubiquitously. For decades every major American city, by design, has spent far less money on infrastructure in minority black and brown neighborhoods than in wealthy and middle class white neighborhoods. There is no disputing this. People segregate themselves partly by choice, party by the exigencies of circumstance, social, financial, and other. Government institutions traditionally encourage and reflect those choices. Black neighborhoods get far fewer trees and landscaping, green space and than do white ones. But now that we as a society are finally, belatedly beginning to acknowledge that reality, we the people are finally starting to do something about it, starting to eve things up a bit, aspiring to greater equality of civic investment. It may be that George Floyd's influence extends to municipal investment, inspiring greater racial equality from his grace in more ways then either he or anyone could possibly have imagined. In Cleveland, for instance, which like most American cities has a large African-American urban population, abandoned houses in black neighborhoods are being razed and replaced with green spaces, trees included. Trees clean the air, cool concrete cities, and make people happy, aw se all know. You can cruise around any American city and make a long list of places where trees could and perhaps should be planted, but have not been. Think about the thousands of miles of divided four lane highways along which there are no trees lining either the outside of the road nor the grassy area in between the pair of two lane parallel roads. The possibilities for future trees and green space development all across America's plain, urban, suburban and rural are nearly limitless. The process is already underway. Atop many skyscrapers gardens can now be found. With persistence, our descendants may look back on us in the early twenty first century and marvel at how little we cared for the beauty of our cities, just as we now look back on twentieth century cities amazed at how dirty, littered, and air polluted we allowed them to be. Nineteenth century American and European cities were graced with open sewers and ubiquitous horse manure, and western civilization has along history of dumping chamber post out of windows sharing the contents with everyone. If nothing else, we can say that we have come a long way.

Commiserating, Conservatively

  A PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL PLAYER calmly, confidently announces to all the world that he is gay, unapologetically. The civilized world, meaning the progressive community, responds with a heartfelt show of  support, applauding  his bravery, assuring him that he is a welcome member of society, and much admired and loved. "Pride Month" proceeds proudly, with parades and events in cities and towns all across America's fruited plain, the LGBTQ's  annual declaration of equality, with the support and approval of civilized, meaning progressive society. They demand to be treated like human beings, rather than outcasts, and they are gradually getting their demand met. On another equal treatment demand front, a new national holiday comes into being, commemorating the end of slavery, if not racism. George Floyd involuntarily and unwittingly gives his life to inspire a global movement demanding equality for people of color, Black Lives Matter minions parade through the world's streets by the million, demanding racial equality, and soon thereafter statues and monuments to Confederate slave owning racist traitors come a tumblin' down. The lost cause is truly lost. Donald Trump and his reprehensible followers, bleating their usual hateful, lying blather, are laughed off society's stage, while viewership of FOX news, conservatism's central disinformation center, declines precipitously in popularity. All the while, America's ongoing mass murder slaughter belies the insane conservative contention that a general public armed to the teeth will prevent  killing sprees by giving "good people" a chance to gun down "bad people" before the bad people can start firing away. American Christian churches, the bastion of the far right, are declining rapidly in membership, as sanctimonious superstition goes out of style, amid the scientific secularization of American culture.  Desperate, the white Christian conservative Republican paarty is reduced to legislating voter's right out of existence, desperately trying to silence the progressive opposition it cannot defeat honestly at the ballot box. Oh, what a terrible time it must be to be an American conservative! No wonder conservative America elected, with Russian assistance, a crass, classless, ranting demagogue as president, and proceeded to approve his every vicious act and utterance. Then, when he tried to usurp the democratic process and overthrow the legitimate government of the United States, by instructing a violent mob of his supporters, good right wing Christian conservative Republicans, to attack and occupy the nation's capitol building, seventy five million Christian conservatives gave their whole hearted approval. That is desperation. That is deplorable. that is depravity. Welcome to the world of declining American conservatism.

Suppressing the Vote

 IT IS WORTH REPEATING that Republican legislation sweeping across red state America reducing access to voting, is not motivated by any urgent necessity nor intention of eliminating voter fraud, which does not exist.  It is a solution in search of a problem. The true intent, everyone knows, is to decrease minority, Democratic voter turnout. Nor is Republican resistance to  resistance to federal legislation  to counteract this voter suppression by expanding and make voting easier based on an idealistic crusade to protect the right of states to control their own elections. The resistance is intended to prevent any federal antidote to  voter suppression. the state's right" argument, if it sounds familiar is: It has been used to justify the Confederacy, the true reason for the existence of the Confederacy to preserve the institution of slavery. The white conservative Christian Republican party wishes to make the American electorate as white conservative Christian as possible, to win elections, and remake America in its conservative image. This objective is of course, unspoken, but very real. The most cursory glance at the make up of the Republican party makes its white Christian conservative nature glaringly obvious.  All this voter suppression legislation is being enacted in the same states which are attacking transgender people with new laws, and enacting other far right wing legislation. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell asserted that the proposed legislation, supported by al Democrats and opposed by all Republicans, is intended to win elections for Democrats, which proves that McConnell is fully aware of the true motive for voter suppression. The federal legislation would mandate a certain minimum number of early voting days, make national election day a federal holiday, and limit opportunity for gerrymandering, in which the prevailing political party redraws congressional districts every two years so as to maximize its opportunity of electing congresspersons. there is no reasonable reason anyone could possibly be opposed to this. the Republican party, faced with its minority in which registered Democratic voters far outnumber registered Republicans nationwide, cannot win future elections in which the voter turnout is high. their only recourse is to reduce voter turnout, and to increase the likelihood that the voters who stay home are those who are most likely to vote Democratic. The Republican party is the single greatest threat to Democracy confronting the United States.

The Conservative Court, Coming Through

 "HUZZAH"!, as folks used to say during the Civil War era, for the U.S. Supreme court, the hard wired hard packed conservative Supreme Court, conservative by design and by deceit. (Remember Merrick Garland). One again, as it often has during the last few sessions, it has been demonstrated that placing right wing magistrates  on the high court by a gang of Republican legislators attempting to use the court to implement their conservative agenda is a futile tactic, since a good jurist will often render reasonable decisions, despite the nefarious intentions of the far right court-packing law makers. A conservative court upheld Obamacare and legalized gay marriage, for example, because doing so was proper and constitutional, albeit progressive in nature. Now, conservative court members have once again come through in the clutch, outlawing the enslavement of college athletes, athletes who for over a hundred years have labored in a state of essential bondage, making billions for their corporate masters, working for free, almost. This reminds the serious sports fan of the time forty five years ago when the court gave major league baseball players their freedom, eliminating the exemption from anti-trust legislation enjoyed by team owners for over a century, who used the "reserve clause" to bind a player to one team for eternity, depriving him of the fundamental right to sell his labor on the free market. When the reserve clause was ruled illegal, the billionaire baseball team owners predicted dire consequences, ranging from bankruptcy to abandonment by the fans, to utter chaos and destruction of the sport. Nothing of the sort happened. Instead, professional baseball entered a period of unprecedented prosperity, where today it remains.  Now, the multi-millionaires who run the NCAA are screaming the same tired, false bloody murder; as if allowing athletes to actually benefit financially from corporate use of their name and image instead of sucking all the money into the coffers of the respective universities will spell doom. It will not. The traditional condition of college athletes is to barely scratch by, relying on checks from home, making it through the week by eating in the school cafeteria and walking to class from the athletic dormitory. (Athletic dormitories are now illegal). One of my students, a  superior athlete destined for a lucrative professional career but at the time still struggling to get by in college, informed me one day that he had become a bit tired of seeing hundreds of other students around campus wearing his jersey with his number on it, while he had thirteen dollars in his pocket, which he must make last through the week. I told him to just hang in there a couple of years, and his ship would come in, which it eventually did. But the college kids who never make it to the pros are still responsible for tens of millions of dollars of revenue, revenue which should be shared with those responsible for it, as well as the coaches, administrators, and attorneys. Our glorious conservative Supreme Court pointed out that college football coaches do very well for themselves, as do college administrators. Huzzah! for the conservative court!

Liberating The Self, Killing the Community

 MOE THAN SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND Americans have died from Covid 19, with many more to follow.  More than four hundred thousand of them are senor citizens. At this point, indeed well before this point,all Covid 19 deaths are caused by what can be tactfully termed "vaccination hesitancy", and more appropriately called "vaccination lunacy". Most insane of all is that all across the land of liberty, staff members at hospitals, assisted living facilities, and senior centers are not vaccinated, by right of refusal, in the land of personal freedom and social irresponsibility. Those who refuse are a great danger to themselves and to everyone else not vaccinated. Those who refuse are doubtless well aware that more than half the American population has been fully vaccinated, that vanishingly few recipients of the shots have experienced anything other than minor side effects, and that therefore the vaccination is perfectly safe. They know all this, and yet choose, for fabricated nonsensical selfish reasons, they prefer to endanger the lives of others and themselves. They know no shame, and yet are covered with it. Surveys indisputably verify that vaccination refusal is overwhelmingly a behavior practiced by white conservative Christians, the same community which has always supported and still does support Donald Trump, even after his attempted overthrow of the U.S. government, the same community which denies the severity of the pandemic, often refuses to maintain social distancing or wear face masks in public, and, equally crazy, denies the very existence of what the Department of Defense has long labeled the greatest single threat to American national security, climate change. Evangelical Christians of the Trump kind never fail to find reasons to betray their country, and all humanity, by embracing false beliefs, refusing to abandon those beliefs, even when, especially when confronted with irrefutable proof of their absurdity. They refuse vaccinations because the lord will protect them, but they carry automatic weapons because the lord's protection is suspect. Those who refuse Covid 19 vaccination by using "personal freedom and responsibility" as an excuse conveniently ignore the moral reality that personal freedom ends where responsibility for the health and safety of others begins. The evangelical vaccination refusers are quick to condemn other to eternal damnation in hell for a side variety of alleged offenses, all in the service of their lunatic fantasies, but jeopardizing the health and well being of the entire community in the name of "liberty" might be well advised to concern themselves less with the personal salvation of others, and more time considering their own moral responsibilities, and to talk about eternal damnation only when gazing deeply into a mirror.

Trumpers Regrouping, Retrenching

MORE THAN FIVE MONTHS into the Biden administration there are no indications that the Republican Army of Trump (R.A.T.)  had any further plans to overthrow the United States government and reinstate their cult leader, the criminal traitor Trump, as president by force. For that, we can be grateful. The failed assault, occupation, and ransacking of the nation's capitol building seems to have been sufficient deterrent to any further treasonous violence by the conservative community. The RAT pack only killed five people, perhaps its greatest disappointment. A large majority of conservative Republicans not only still believe that Trump won the election and that it was stolen from him, according to many surveys, but they also still believe that the capitol insurrection of January sixth was well intentioned, a good idea which unfortunately did not succeed in accomplishing its purpose, the overthrow of the United states government. This speaks volumes about their honesty, integrity, moral character, not to mention sanity. but Trump supporters had no decency to begin with: they elected Trump in 2016, despite his famous Hollywood Access statement released a month before the election, the one in which he bragged about being able to sexually molest women without consequences because of his wealth and fame. All  things considered, the best course of action for Trump supporters might be to spend the rest of their pathetically misguided lives screaming to high heaven that the election of 2016 was rigged against Trump, just to find out if by so doing they benefit in any other way than venting anger and stress, and to indulge  their misery, which they deserve. With regard to moral decency, barely half the American population is now fully vaccinated against Covid 19,a vast majority of the unvaccinated being clustered together in "red" states,  Trump supporters who value personal freedom over the public good, moral decency, and sanity. Trump and his R.A.T.supporters facilitated the disastrous spread of the virus, by ignoring it, refusing to wear mask or maintain social distance, and refusing to get vaccinated. The result is six hundred thousand american dead, Trump survived the virus by receiving the best medical care in the world, as Covid 19 spread through his White House. The conservative evangelical Trump right has now turned its attention to facilitating climate change, using the same denial tactic which worked so well for them during the pandemic. They seem to see the collapse of the earth's ecosystem as having a desired effect of hastening their entrance into heaven. It is the habit, indeed the perceived requirement of the Trump far right to deny reality, and to embrace the existence of whatever invented reality suits their diabolical aims. The moral bankruptcy required for this is manifestly evident. Trump and his supporters vigorously defend their various denials of reality and their fabricated false versions of it.Dispelling their malignancy is crucial, but a difficult task, for they are numerous, and, as Agathon said "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain."

Busting and Evicting Darkly Pigmented People

 AFRICAN-AMERICANS receive eviction notices  at more than twice the rate of European-Americans. they pay their rent, or don't pay it, at roughly the same rate, with drastically different outcomes. The difference, obviously, is race. That, for the elucidation of mainstream racism denying conservatives, as well as the openly racist far right, is but one if innumerable examples of systemic racism in the United States, which conservatives of all degrees tend to deny exists. Not so very long ago in the United States of Apartheid housing discrimination based on race was federal government policy. it ended, in theory, only as recently as 1968, with the passage of the Fair Housing Act, which received  no conservative support at the time. If one thousand juvenile delinquents, half of them white and half of them black, commit or are charged with committing the same crime, the white culprits get a warning, probation, or short sentences, the black folks get long sentences. The facts, confirmed repeatedly and available to all, bear this out. The demonstrable manifestations of systemic racism in the U.S. within the criminal justice, legal, educational, medical, financial, and corporate systems are too numerous to articulate in anything less voluminous than an Encyclopedia Britannica lavishly illustrated, on paper. I should be neither shocked nor surprised when I behold some good ole red neck racist of the conservative sort exhort some garbage like "slavery was a long time ago", as it if were, or, "them lefties just caint leave it alone", as if mentioning racism is what causes it. and yet, alas, I am and always (shocked and surprised) have been. Strangely fondly I recall the the time when my uncle, who was born in 1924, which is how I excuse him, walked into my parent's house, greeted us warmly, then continued with : "y'all talk like niggers". He lived in Minnesota, and we lived in the lower Midwest. I guess he thought we had southern accents, and that black people did too. Personal racism America has largely been shamed into the closet, where homosexuality until recently lurked, and sometimes still does. I recall when my beloved uncle was middle aged, and proud of his racism. As he aged, he had his sociological antennae well enough raised to know to conceal it. Our current progressive endeavor to root out systemic, institutional racism is nascent, and will accomplish nothing until conservatives join the fight, or at least begin to acknowledge the existence of the racism deeply embedded in America's institutions. To date, they still deny all forms of racism, for convenience. Once upon a time America's right wing accepted and celebrated it, and just the other day some ofthe conservative legislators voted to commemorate the end of slavery, and whatever kicking and screaming they did, they did in private. That's progress.

Federalizing Juneteenth

 I LEARNED ABOUT "Juneteenth" only late in life. I h ad heard the terms "Jubilation Day", Freedom Day", Emancipation Day", among others, and had correctly assumed that they were all informal "African-American terms associated with the end of slavery, whenever, however, wherever, and  assuming it ever truly ended. Its always been vague and confusing to me, and to all historians. Lincoln issued the "Emancipation Proclamation" at least twice, slaves were "freed" (freed to live lives of torment and rejection for decades), on many different days, and in may different places, and in many different ways, depending upon the state, locality , and moment in which they were freed, and by whom, in context with various military situations. My education began in earnest when I overheard a white southern redneck racist say to a friend of his one bright June day a couple of years back: "Hell, today's nigger day". I can't help but wonder whether the disgusting old racist managed to survive Biden signing into law the bipartisan legislation making June (nine)teenth a national holiday, our eleventh such and first new one since MLK Day broke through the race barrier thirty eight years ago. Under Trump, it never would have happened. With a Republican congressional majority, it never would have happened. With Biden and the Democrats enjoying narrow majorities in both houses, the Republicans, who no longer even remotely the party of Lincoln, were forced to posture and pretend , for appearances. Even better, we still have time to decide exactly what the new holiday should be and will be called, preferably "Emancipation Day", or "Freedom Day", rather than the distinctly goofy, frivolous sounding "Juneteenth". When I was a child, more than half a century ago, we celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of the "War Between the States",  America was fully segregated essentially by law, confederate flags proudly adorned most fraternity houses on southern university campuses, half the Democratic party consisted of far right racists, African-Americans appeared on television only as tokens portraying menial laborers, and there were no black college football players in the south, not one. Cassius Clay had spent his childhood in Louisville, Kentucky drinking at "colored only" water fountains, saving his justifiable hatred of white folks for expression in the boxing ring. tome, it seems amazing the progress I have witnessed, and even more amazing the progress we have not yet made, but should,  must, and it is to be hoped, someday shall. For that matter, as a child I would never have expected to see MLK become a national hero with his own holiday, "Jubilee Day" become a national holiday, and, most of all, to become a national holiday not only without noticeable conservative kicking and screaming, but, alas, with some measure of conservative acceptance, if feigned.

Forgetting the Alamo

  I LOVE DAVY CROCKETT, the real one, not the legendary one. The real one always called himself and crudely signed  his name "David". He didn't like being called "Davy". I love him for many reasons. He taught himself to read, turned a dirt poor upbringing into a life of achievement and success, was a real sweetheart of a guy, and when an attempt to ridicule him turned into fame for him instead, he embraced it, and had fun with it, thereby turning the condescending ridicule back onto the haughty Easterners who initiated it. A recently published monograph "Forget the Alamo", by three eminently forgettable historians, tries to assert that since the truth about what happened at the Alamo in March of 1836, and the motivations of the people involved, were in fact considerably different from the Hollywood version, in which brave martyrs died valiantly defending liberty against tyranny, the iconic historical event is best devalued. So, the Fess parker and John Wayne version are phony. So what? Isn't much that is revered in history? What they actually died for was a Texas independent of Mexico rule, where slavery was illegal, a version of Texas in which slavery would be the basis basis of a southern style plantation agrarian economy. They didn't die fighting heroically.  Half the Alamo's defenders fled when the odds became overwhelming, preferring to take their chances on the open prairie. They were hunted down and killed by Mexican cavalry. They could have and should have either abandoned and fled the old mission, which they had been ordered to do by General Sam Houston while he was building up his army's strength to the east, or surrendered it to the huge advancing Mexican army, which they knew well in advance was on its way. that they did neither, but instead chose to stay and fight is a testament to unbridled human optimism, and peer pressure, personified. Billy bob Thornton is the best, most accurate Davy Crockett in film yet.  Crockett wanted  to leave before the Mexicans arrived, and said so, but was trapped by his reputation for frontiersman bravery, his desire for wealth and political power in the emerging new nation of Texas, and, peer pressure. Rather than being the last man standing and fighting to the death, surrounded by a pile of dead Mexican soldiers, Crockett was most likely captured by brute force as he was about to surrender, and executed. This more accurate, less fantastic version proves only that the Alamo was defended by human beings, not cartoon characters. "Forget the Alamo" is a book which, by shedding light, dispelling myth, and telling truth, actually, if accidentally  gives us cause to remember and continue to venerate the Alamo and the people who died there,  by turning them back into the real people they were. David Crockett really was a hero. He opposed slavery, believed in justice, and fought in congress, albeit unsuccessfully, for the rights of poor people in a country ruled by and for the wealthy. ("It is my firm belief that Congress ought to at least occasionally legislate for the poor"). After David died at the Alamo, his existing fame as a frontiersman bear hunting rough hewn politician blossomed into full fledged national sainthood, deservedly so, in the final analysis. His oldest son John Wesley Crockett ran for and was elected to his father's old seat in congress, and, in his father's honor, was able to get passed the squatters rights land bill his father had fought so hard to pass.  David Crockett,, and everything in which he was involved, including the Alamo, is well worth remembering.