This Week in America

This Week in America (Special Monday Edition)

This Week in Putting the Pulpit in the "Bully Pulpit"

We first became aware of Barack Obama at the 2004 Democratic National Convention,when he--then a candidate for the US Senate from our home state of Illinois--delivered a speech that was rousing and inspiring and emotional. In that speech, he introduced himself to the nation, describing his parents, his upbringing, and what drew him to public service: love of the country. "I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible."

He talked about government and its limitations:

"Now, don't get me wrong, the people I meet in small towns and big cities and diners and office parks, they don't expect government to solve all of their problems. They know they have to work hard to get ahead. And they want to.

Go into the collar counties around Chicago, and people will tell you: They don't want their tax money wasted by a welfare agency or by the Pentagon.

Go into any inner-city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can't teach kids to learn.

They know that parents have to teach, that children can't achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. They know those things.

People don't expect -- people don't expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all. They know we can do better. And they want that choice.

He ended with a vision of America as he saw it; a vision he wanted us to embrace:

Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America.

There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.

The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.

We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states.

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.

We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."

Watching that night, we said, "There's the first black president of the United States."

We were proven correct, just four years later.

President Obama has always been a masterful orator. When future books are written about the speeches of American presidents, or great speeches from American history, Obama will be well represented there.

Some Americans saw little value in those speeches. They didn't consider being a good speaker to be a hallmark of a good president. Actions matter, not soaring oratory.

They wouldn't be wrong on that point. Actions matter. Results matter. And when those future historians look back at American presidents who achieved much, who left the nation a better place than they found it, Obama will be there, too.

As Dylan Matthews writes at Vox.com, President Obama is "officially one of the most consequential presidents in American history."

That fact is now inarguable. Some won't think his contributions are good ones, and will believe he steered us in the wrong direction. But nobody can look at the record and say that he didn't act, or that his actions didn't make a difference.

The big one, of course, is the Affordable Care Act, which the Supreme Court has weighed in on multiple times, now, strengthening the law into the future. For a century, American presidents had tried to do something about universal health care, and failed. Against the stiffest opposition yet, Obama succeeded. Matthews writes, "When you consider the law in the context of 100 years of progressive activism, and in the grand scheme of American history, it starts to look less like a moderate reform and more like an epochal achievement, on the order of FDR's passage of Social Security, or LBJ's Great Society programs. It is, to quote Harvard political scientist Theda Skocpol, 'a century-defining accomplishment in the last industrial democracy to resist using national government to ensure access to health coverage for most citizens.' FDR failed, Truman failed, Nixon failed, Carter failed, Clinton failed — and Obama succeeded."

Theodore Roosevelt, who coined the phrase "bully pulpit" to describe the power of the presidency to advance an agenda, tried in 1912 to achieve universal health care. The platform of his Progressive Party (or Bull Moose Party, if you prefer) that year included this: "We favor the union of all the existing agencies of the Federal Government dealing with the public health into a single national health service without discrimination against or for any one set of therapeutic methods, school of medicine, or school of healing with such additional powers as may be necessary to enable it to perform efficiently such duties in the protection of the public from preventable diseases as may be properly undertaken by the Federal authorities, including the executing of existing laws regarding pure food, quarantine and cognate subjects, the promotion of vital statistics and the extension of the registration area of such statistics, and co-operation with the health activities of the various States and cities of the Nation."

And Obama's legacy includes not just the ACA. Matthews cites several examples, and only scratches the surface. The stimulus program that reversed the precipitous collapse of the economy and saved us from depression (while also funding clean energy initiatives, anti-poverty programs, and preventing the American automobile industry from disappearing altogether). Our first serious efforts to curb greenhouse gases. Dodd-Frank. Relations with Cuba. By ending discrimination against LGBT people in the armed forces, helping end DOMA, and putting the weight of the DOJ into supporting equal rights instead of attacking them--and by appointing justices Kagan and Sotomayor to the Supreme Court--he made possible last week's ruling on same-sex marriage.

It hasn't all been rosy. Matthews adds, "There are obviously places Obama fell short. I think he didn't take monetary policy nearly seriously enough, that the drone war is a moral catastrophe, that he's fallen short on combating HIV/AIDS and other public health scourges abroad, that the 2009 surge in Afghanistan was a mistake, and that perpetrators of torture and other war crimes from the Bush administration should have been criminally prosecuted. But while Obama could have accomplished more, it could never be said that he accomplished little."

On Friday, President Obama delivered the eulogy for pastor and state senator Clementa Pinckney of the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC.  His eulogy was a speech, but it was also a sermon. He spoke frankly of faith, of grace, and of God. He praised the deceased in no uncertain terms, described his mission in life, and called upon us all to continue that unfinished work. He discussed the tradition of black churches, showed his own comfort in that setting, and brought his audience to laughter, to tears, and ultimately to joyous harmony.

He began:

The Bible calls us to hope. To persevere, and have faith in things not seen.

"They were still living by faith when they died," Scripture tells us. "They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on Earth.

We are here today to remember a man of God who lived by faith. A man who believed in things not seen. A man who believed there were better days ahead, off in the distance. A man of service who persevered, knowing full well he would not receive all those things he was promised, because he believed his efforts would deliver a better life for those who followed.

Talking about Reverend Pinckney, he said:

Clem was often asked why he chose to be a pastor and a public servant. But the person who asked probably didn't know the history of the AME church. As our brothers and sisters in the AME church know, we don't make those distinctions. "Our calling," Clem once said, "is not just within the walls of the congregation, but...the life and community in which our congregation resides."

He embodied the idea that our Christian faith demands deeds and not just words; that the 'sweet hour of prayer' actually lasts the whole week long -- that to put our faith in action is more than individual salvation, it's about our collective salvation; that to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and house the homeless is not just a call for isolated charity but the imperative of a just society.

What a good man. Sometimes I think that's the best thing to hope for when you're eulogized -- after all the words and recitations and resumes are read, to just say someone was a good man.

After speaking about the nature of the black church, and its history standing up to oppression and violence and creating a sanctuary where black people could seek solace and safety and the presence of God in an often hostile nation, he spoke of the murders:

We do not know whether the killer of Reverend Pinckney and eight others knew all of this history. But he surely sensed the meaning of his violent act. It was an act that drew on a long history of bombs and arson and shots fired at churches, not random, but as a means of control, a way to terrorize and oppress. An act that he imagined would incite fear and recrimination; violence and suspicion. An act that he presumed would deepen divisions that trace back to our nation's original sin.

Oh, but God works in mysterious ways. God has different ideas.

He didn't know he was being used by God. Blinded by hatred, the alleged killer could not see the grace surrounding Reverend Pinckney and that Bible study group -- the light of love that shone as they opened the church doors and invited a stranger to join in their prayer circle. The alleged killer could have never anticipated the way the families of the fallen would respond when they saw him in court -- in the midst of unspeakable grief, with words of forgiveness. He couldn't imagine that.

The alleged killer could not imagine how the city of Charleston, under the good and wise leadership of Mayor Riley -- how the state of South Carolina, how the United States of America would respond -- not merely with revulsion at his evil act, but with big-hearted generosity and, more importantly, with a thoughtful introspection and self-examination that we so rarely see in public life.

Blinded by hatred, he failed to comprehend what Reverend Pinckney so well understood -- the power of God's grace.

He spoke about the Confederate flag and the message it sends, about systemic bias that keeps so many black Americans impoverished and imprisoned, about the continuing scourge of gun violence, couching it all in the context of God's grace. "We don't earn grace. We're all sinners. We don't deserve it. But God gives it to us anyway. And we choose how to receive it. It's our decision how to honor it."

He ended by bringing the audience to their feet, involving them in the speech in a way we've rarely seen done by a politician, but can often be achieved by a preacher:

Reverend Pinckney once said, "Across the South, we have a deep appreciation of history -- we haven't always had a deep appreciation of each other's history." (Applause.) What is true in the South is true for America. Clem understood that justice grows out of recognition of ourselves in each other. That my liberty depends on you being free, too. (Applause.) That history can't be a sword to justify injustice, or a shield against progress, but must be a manual for how to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past -- how to break the cycle. A roadway toward a better world. He knew that the path of grace involves an open mind -- but, more importantly, an open heart.

That's what I've felt this week -- an open heart. That, more than any particular policy or analysis, is what's called upon right now, I think -- what a friend of mine, the writer Marilynne Robinson, calls "that reservoir of goodness, beyond, and of another kind, that we are able to do each other in the ordinary cause of things."

That reservoir of goodness. If we can find that grace, anything is possible. If we can tap that grace, everything can change.

Amazing grace. Amazing grace.

(Begins to sing) -- Amazing grace -- how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me; I once was lost, but now I'm found; was blind but now I see.

Clementa Pinckney found that grace.

Cynthia Hurd found that grace.

Susie Jackson found that grace.

Ethel Lance found that grace.

DePayne Middleton-Doctor found that grace.

Tywanza Sanders found that grace.

Daniel L. Simmons, Sr. found that grace.

Sharonda Coleman-Singleton found that grace.

Myra Thompson found that grace.

Through the example of their lives, they've now passed it on to us. May we find ourselves worthy of that precious and extraordinary gift, as long as our lives endure. May grace now lead them home. May God continue to shed His grace on the United States of America.

The audience joined in the singing, the organist played, and the smiles on the faces of the congregants were as real as the tears had been earlier. As real, but more powerful. Because those smiles, those voices lifted in song, were manifestations of the joy his audience finds in the grace of God, in His presence in that church, and that presence is so much stronger than the presence of the small young man who sat there for an hour, a week earlier, and out of twisted racial hate, murdered nine decent human beings.

The full text of the speech is here, and the video is here. Watch it if you can, because reading the words is a wan substitute for hearing their delivery, for seeing the faces of those present. The distinguished reporter James Fallows echoes our sentiment, in a piece that vividly deconstructs the speech--its writing and its performance. "Here is another reason to watch rather than just read about the presentation. It reinforces the fact that this was a major national ceremony, involving fundamental discussion of national issues and prospects, in which all the major participants were black: president, preachers, mourners, congregation. I can’t think of a comparable previous event. Someone writing about our time will, I think, note it as an important step that this was treated not as a 'minority' commemoration but as a central American discussion."

There have been a few genuinely powerful speeches about race delivered by our presidents. Abraham Lincoln gave one. So did Lyndon B. Johnson. Now Barack Obama has joined them.

President Obama is a world-class orator, but he is much more than that. He has spent his presidency trying to heal divisions, trying to bring people together, trying to show that we are not a red America and a blue America, but a United States of America. That effort has been met with cynicism and partisan opposition, even unreasoning hatred. He has been frustrated at many turns, and has done what he can to overcome those obstacles in his path. Speech-making isn't everything a president does. Actions matter. But words matter, too.

His presidency has not been perfect--no one's could be. He has, as we guessed before he took office, disappointed in some areas. But he has accomplished much, and he has tried to do more. Ultimately, it's the historians who will decipher what impact he had on American progress. But we suspect that, whatever their judgment of his presidential administration, when it's time for eulogies, people will be able to say that he was a good man.

 

Side Note 1: We here at TWiA World Headquarters are not religious, not believers. But watching this speech/sermon, we can understand why many people are, and we respect that decision.

Side Note 2: Although there's no evidence that they're connected, the past few days have seen a rash of arson fires (and some of as-yet-indeterminate origin) at (mostly) black churches in the South, and in Ohio. The FBI and ATF are joining local officials to investigate.

 

This Week in America (Vol. 3, Week 26)

 This Week in Love

June 26, 2015. Love is love. Family is family.

This Week in Race

The murders of nine people at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston last week have rekindled the conversation about race in America. That conversation which has been growing ever since George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin. It died down for a while, but this year reignited it, following a series of young black men being killed--often by cops--for stupid reasons or none at all. Black Lives Matter became the rallying cry of this movement, of this moment in the fraught history of race in America.

We might want to adapt that to All Lives Matter, because that's a true statement. They do. And we live in a country where there's a lot of unnecessary dying. Around 30,000 lives are lost each year to gun violence, another 30,000 to automobiles, maybe twice that to heart disease, more to cancer, and a whopping 70,000+ to alcohol-related causes (which also plays an major role in those gun deaths and car deaths), and so on*. Some of these factors we could do something about, if we cared enough to put effort and money into research, if we were willing to pass laws that reflect the value of human lives.

But Black Lives Matter is a specific statement about a specific issue. Not being all-inclusive doesn't make it any less true, or less necessary to say. It addresses a separate situation--the fact that, almost since our founding, we have placed less value on black lives than on white ones. Our original sin of slavery taught us that black lives were worth whatever they could fetch on the open market, and no more. After emancipation came Reconstruction and Jim Crow and the Great Migration, and whether blacks were in the South being terrorized by lynchings and night riders, or in the North being underpaid and redlined into segregated urban pockets, they were still seen as something other, as if skin color was the sole--or at least the most important--factor in determining who people are and how they should be treated.

It's true that we don't tend to investigate or prosecute black-on-black crimes (or white-on-black crimes) with the same zeal that we do black-on-white crimes. It's true that the justice system is rigged against the poor--an economic class that disproportionately includes blacks, because their employment prospects are limited by geography, by transportation, by quality of education, and by employer bias. It's true that de facto housing and school segregation is still commonplace. It's true that polluted air is more common in minority neighborhoods. It's true that there's an ongoing effort to limit voting participation by blacks. And it's true that young black men are more likely to be shot by police than any other group. Systemic racism is still a problem.

All Lives Matter, but Black Lives Matter, too, and those two statements aren't mutually exclusive.

* The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has an awesome website where you can put in the type of death or injury you're interested in, and it will give you statistics on that subject. Play with it here.

* * *

Last week, we wrote this about Hillary Clinton: "... she's much more of a policy wonk than an orator who can deliver sweeping, inspirational speeches, like President Obama."

This week, she schooled us by delivering a speech that included this passage:

“Now, it’s tempting, it is tempting to dismiss a tragedy like this as an isolated incident, to believe that in today’s America, bigotry is largely behind us, that institutionalized racism no longer exists. But despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America’s long struggle with race is far from finished.

“I know this is a difficult topic to talk about. I know that so many of us hoped by electing our first black president, we had turned the page on this chapter in our history. I know there are truths we don’t like to say out loud or discuss with our children. But we have to. That’s the only way we can possibly move forward together.

“Race remains a deep fault line in America. Millions of people of color still experience racism in their everyday lives…. More than a half century after Dr. King marched and Rosa Parks sat and John Lewis bled, after the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and so much else, how can any of these things be true? But they are.

“And our problem is not all kooks and Klansman. It’s also in the cruel joke that goes unchallenged. It’s in the off-hand comments about not wanting ‘those people’ in the neighborhood.

“Let’s be honest: For a lot of well-meaning, open-minded white people, the sight of a young black man in a hoodie still evokes a twinge of fear. And news reports about poverty and crime and discrimination evoke sympathy, even empathy, but too rarely do they spur us to action or prompt us to question our own assumptions and privilege.

“We can’t hide from any of these hard truths about race and justice in America. We have to name them and own them and then change them.”

That's some serious speechifying. Her delivery isn't soaring, but the writing is good.

* * *

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote about race this week, too, and described some of the ways in which the former Confederate states still stand out from the rest. He writes:

". . . the working-class turn against Democrats wasn’t a national phenomenon — it was entirely restricted to the South, where whites turned overwhelmingly Republican after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Richard Nixon’s adoption of the so-called Southern strategy.

"And this party-switching, in turn, was what drove the rightward swing of American politics after 1980. Race made Reaganism possible. And to this day Southern whites overwhelmingly vote Republican, to the tune of 85 or even 90 percent in the deep South."

And follows that with this:

"For those who haven’t been following this issue, in 2012 the Supreme Court gave individual states the option, if they so chose, of blocking the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid, a key part of the plan to provide health insurance to lower-income Americans. But why would any state choose to exercise that option? After all, states were being offered a federally-funded program that would provide major benefits to millions of their citizens, pour billions into their economies, and help support their health-care providers. Who would turn down such an offer?

"The answer is, 22 states at this point, although some may eventually change their minds. And what do these states have in common? Mainly, a history of slaveholding: Only one former member of the Confederacy has expanded Medicaid, and while a few Northern states are also part of the movement, more than 80 percent of the population in Medicaid-refusing America lives in states that practiced slavery before the Civil War. 

"And it’s not just health reform: a history of slavery is a strong predictor of everything from gun control (or rather its absence), to low minimum wages and hostility to unions, to tax policy."

* * *

To her credit, this week SC Gov. Nikki Haley (R) called for the Confederate Battle Flag to be taken down from the state capitol grounds. It's up to the legislature, but she said she would force the legislature back into session if they don't deal with it right away. She defended the flag a little too vehemently for our tastes, but the action is more important than the words. That flag is a celebration of brutal tyranny, of literal treason, and it should not fly in any official capacity anywhere. Until the church shootings, she had defended the flag's place at the capitol, so this is an abrupt about-face. One hopes it's genuine enlightenment, and not just a desire to take the flag issue off the table so Republican presidential hopefuls won't have to thread any more needles on that topic. Anybody think she's running for VP?

And to his credit, presidential candidate and far-right goofball Dr. Ben Carson doesn't have any patience for his fellow candidates who refuse to admit that what motivated the killer was racism, not insanity or anti-Christian bias. "Not everything is about race in this country. But when it is about race, then it just is," Carson writes. "So when a guy who has been depicted wearing a jacket featuring an apartheid-era Rhodesian flag walks into a historic black church and guns down nine African-American worshipers at a Bible study meeting, common sense leads one to believe his motivations are based in racism."

* * *

In what was almost certainly not intended as irony, a Fox "News" panel this week discussed whether the fuss over the flag was a "slippery slope" toward sterilizing the history of the Civil War. One of the hosts said, "“When you talk about wiping away history, how ignorant do you want us to become? Do you want us not to have any memory at all?”

The problem with that, of course, is that the people who object to the fetishization of the Confederacy are the ones who have the history right. They're not suggesting that the history be whitewashed (as it were), but that it be remembered correctly. The Confederacy's "heroes" were fighting on behalf of slavery, and the South's postwar period was rank with hatred and white supremacy--a cause that for many Americans still exists today. To honor those "heroes' is to celebrate men who turned against their own country, soldiers in an illegal, unconstitutional attempt at rebellion against the United States of America. Fox hosts who refuse to understand that are the ones spreading ignorance. And we don't understand how anyone who truly loves America can also root for those who tried to rip it in two. To fly the American flag next to a Confederate one is a  hopeless contradiction.

* * *

The people who manufacture Confederate flags and other articles using that design are no doubt having a very good bad week this week. Good because folks in certain parts of the country are falling over themselves trying to buy as many such items they can before their favorite stores stop selling them. Walmart, Sears/Kmart, Target, and Amazon are all pulling Confederate flag merchandise from real and virtual shelves. So are eBay and etsy, and the Valley Forge Flag Co.--if you have an American flag at your house, it was likely made by Valley Forge, unless it was made in China--will no longer manufacture them. Bad because the profits from this spasm of pro-slavery, pro-treason sympathy will be obliterated when the remaining quantities of those products are all returned to the manufacturers by said retailers.

It's a sad statement that it took the murders of nine good people to make these companies understand that selling a symbol that, for at least 10% of our population, is a vivid reminder that their ancestors likely came here in chains and lived here as property, is probably in bad taste at best. No doubt some conservatives will claim that this is an example of political correctness run amuck, having forgotten that they're supposed to believe in the invisible hand of the free market to make such corrections, and that's really what's happening here. Those businesses weren't ordered to do that, they made a commercial decision to do so. If people want to complain about states making moves to dump Confederate symbolism, that's a better argument. But we still believe it has more to do with having suddenly become aware of the fact that for so many of us, that flag stands for hate, not heritage. Others of us understood that by the third grade, and could never understand why the states were so slow to catch up.

Side Note: In what is probably a step too far, in the minds of Dukes of Hazzard fans, Warner Bros announced that they would no longer license the image of the "General Lee."

* * *

Here's an important history lesson that describes how all that Confederate symbology ended up all over the South. It hasn't been prominent since the Civil War--it's mostly been so from the late 1950s/early 1960s, as a white segregationist response to the Civil Rights movement. The flag we typically see, the Confederate Battle Flag, was for decades a symbol of the losing side in a failed rebellion against the United States, and a rallying point only for white supremacist groups like the KKK. Its comeback was the racist response to the prospect of black Americans getting the right to vote, the right to fair housing, the right to go to "white" schools and eat at "white" lunch counters, and so on. If it symbolizes the Confederacy at all, it also symbolizes this more recent interpretation, and either way it's about white people thinking that black people are less than human.

* * *

And here's another historian's take on how the South won the battle over how the Civil War would be perceived. The South has been mythologized, glamorized, Gone With the Wind-ized, to the point that more Americans believe the war to have been about states' rights than about slavery. As Tony Horwitz writes here, those who wrote down their reasons for breaking from the union "left no doubt about the state right at issue." The war was about protecting their slave-based economy, and the rest is window dressing.

Below the fold: Guns, terror, straw men, bears, and more!

This Week in America (Vol. 3, Week 25)

TWiA explores the intersection of policy and politics, and most importantly, how that intersection affects real people. It's dedicated to the proposition that good government is possible, it matters, and taxpayers deserve nothing less. Its starting point is that facts are facts, science is real, data are real, and we can and must learn from history. Below you'll find facts and opinions that derive from fact, informed by a close and careful study of these issues that began in 1968 and has never stopped. Note, when we discuss generic "Democrats" and "Republicans" or "conservatives" and "liberals," etc., we're generally talking about elected officials, unless otherwise noted. Also, bonus bear news and other awesomeness. We appreciate comments and arguments, so please chime in, and if you like it, spread the word.

 

This Week in South Carolina

We grieve for Charleston, SC, and especially for the congregants of the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, where on Wednesday night a 21-year-old while male sat in on a Bible study group for an hour, then opened fire on those gathered there. He killed six women and three men, one of whom, Clementa Pinckney, was not only the church's pastor but a dedicated state senator and a genuinely righteous man.

"Mother Emanuel," as the church is known locally, is a landmark of civil rights--active in the Underground Railroad and throughout the more recent civil rights era. A mass shooting is a tragedy anywhere, but a white man on a rampage in a black church, particularly one with Emanuel's history, is a different level of outrage. Our hearts are broken.

The murderer was captured the following day, and has since confessed. He has said that his goal was to start a race war. Here's the story of Debbie Dills, the florist who spotted him and stayed on his tail until the cavalry came.

 
Photograph from the Emanuel AME Church website

NBC News identifies the other victims as:

•Tywanza Sanders, 26, a 2014 graduate of Allen University in Columbia, which Pinckney also attended.

•Cynthia Hurd, 54, manager of St. Andrews Regional Library.

•The Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45, an assistant pastor at the church and girls track coach at Goose Creek High School.

•Susie Jackson, 87, a longtime church member.

•Ethel Lance, 70, a sexton at the church.

•The Rev. Depayne Middleton, 49, a church singer and former Charleston County community development employee.

•The Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., 74, a member of the church's ministerial staff, who died in the operating room at the hospital.

•Myra Thompson, 59, wife of the vicar of Holy Trinity Reformed Episcopal Church

 

Here's President Obama's statement on the tragedy.

He's right to speak about it in the context of gun violence. And he's right that gun violence happens much, much more in the US than in other developed countries. We have, collectively, far more guns than the populations of those other countries, and we have far more crime and far more gun deaths. The Washington Post has compiled the data and offers 11 essential facts on guns and mass shootings, showing just how bad the problem is. And yet, even when gun safety measures are broadly popular, Congress is too afraid of death merchants like the NRA to act.

We'll never be able to chase all the demons out of the hearts of humans. We'll never eliminate racism altogether. We'll never be able to scour mental illness from the earth. We can make progress, but that's all.

We could make it harder to get guns, though. That's the only factor here that's within our control.

But politicians are afraid of those who speak out in favor of death.

So the killings will continue.

We could change that.

But we won't.

 

Side Note 1: The killer is a racist who sports the Confederate flag design on his car's front license plate. Coincidentally (?), the day he was captured, the US Supreme Court announced a decision in a case in which a group called the Sons of Confederate Veterans was trying to force Texas to approve license plates featuring the Confederate flag. Texas, for a change, did the right thing and refused, and the group sued. SCOTUS rejected the group's plea--Texas can't force anyone to put a Confederate flag on their car if they don't want to, so nobody can force Texas to allow a Confederate flag on their license plates if they don't want to. And they don't.

Side Note to Side Note 1: Only one of the Court's conservatives sided with the liberals to make a majority in this case. That conservative was Justice Clarence Thomas. It's almost unheard of for him to be the only one siding with the liberals. Thank you, Justice Thomas, for standing up for what's right.

Side Note 2: The killer and his victims grew up in South Carolina, where a Confederate flag still flies over the Capitol. American flags there are flying at half-mast, but the Confederate flag remains at full-mast. That flag symbolizes hatred and violence and tyranny. It defines black people as property, as less than human. It stands for armed rebellion against the United States of America. That flag inspired the murders of nine people this week. It should come down.

Side Note 3: Josh Marshall, who publishes Talking Points Memo, is a political journalist, but by training he's a historian. His piece on the history of racial violence in America--and how this week's massacre is a "lineal descendent" of past horrors--is well worth a read.

Side Note 4: Politicians and pundits tell us scare stories about Muslim extremists, but in the US, the threat from right-wing extremists is much more real and immediate.  And of course, both dangers pale in comparison to the number of deaths--more than 30,000 annually, on average--from gun violence in general. Some want us to spend millions of dollars or more fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria so they won't come over here and behead us, but that ignores what's really killing Americans every day.

This note comes after the one about Josh's historical piece because--although it's not a connection he makes--the right-wing extremism we see today is also directly descended from southern racial violence, particularly the kind of organized vigilantism that sprang up after the Civil War, during Reconstruction and into the Jim Crow era. You can still hear its echoes in talk about states' rights, disputing the federal government's legitimacy, even secession. Today's "Patriot" movement and the Sovereign Citizen movement discussed in the article linked above grew out of the Christian Identity movement of the early 1970s, which advocated armed resistance to the federal government and violence toward those people it considered subhuman (blacks) and the progeny of Satan (Jews). That movement spawned the Posse Comitatus, which originated the kind of "paper terrorism" (false liens and financial instruments, their own arrest warrants and driver's licenses, etc.) so common among Sovereign Citizens now. All of the militias and white supremacist groups, even the armed morons who came to deadbeat rancher Cliven Bundy's defense, can ultimately be traced back to the ideas that energized post-Civil War Klansmen. And--all too tragically--that still motivate killers today.

Side Note 5: Almost no one is talking about it, but that same night, somebody shot at a black church in Memphis. Fortunately, no one was injured there.

Side Note 6: Bloomberg News has just launched a new site, The Trace, that will focus exclusively on the issue of guns. "It is our mission to expand understanding of the policy, politics, culture, and business of guns in America through daily reporting, investigations, analysis, and commentary." Currently on the front page are articles about the gun violence problem in Charleston even before the shootings at Mother Emanuel, the fact that South Carolina has some of the nation's weakest gun control laws, and a data-packed debunking of the myth--already being spread again by pro-gun death enthusiasts in the wake of Charleston--that the people in that Bible study group would have been safer if they'd been armed, and the only reason they were killed is that the church was a gun-free zone.

More gun data, this time from the Washington Post: In 2012, when these statistics were compiled, for every single incident of someone using a gun for self-defense, there were 35 gun homicides, 78 gun suicides, and 2 accidental gun deaths.

Side Note 7: Former Texas Governor and seemingly perpetual presidential candidate had a classic response to the killings, if by "classic" you mean ignorant and dishonest. He said that President Obama wants to use the event to "take the guns out of the hands of everyone in this country. This is the MO of this administration, any time there is an accident like this — the president is clear, he doesn’t like for Americans to have guns and so he uses every opportunity, this being another one, to basically go parrot that message."

Not only is that not remotely true--the president has never indicated that he wanted to take the guns away from anybody--but "accident?" A white racist goes into a black church, sits there for an hour, then pulls out a gun and kills nine people, and that's an "accident?" Perry thinks maybe the guy was just cleaning his gun while he learned about the Bible, and he dropped it and it went off, shooting some people, reloading itself, and shooting some more?

Governor Perry, mass murder is no accident. Being unable to remember the names of three federal programs you're committed to destroying? That might be an accident. Taking a gun into a church and shooting people you don't know, just because of the color of their skin? That's a deliberate act. Calling it an accident is to diminish it, and if nothing else, that's disrespectful to the victims and the survivors. I hope we'll hear you take that back, and apologize profusely. Now would be good.

Perry's statement reminded us of this, which we saw in the Weekly Sift this week:

 
(Special thanks to TWiA special WWW correspondent Marcy Rockwell for introducing us to the Sift.)

Below the fold: Science, torture, Kansas, clowns, dynasties, and bears.

This Week in America (Vol. 3, Week 24)

This Week's TWiA is abbreviated for lack of time, not for lack of news. 

 

This Week in 2016

Terminator for president? Not Arnold--he's not eligible, although for a while Republicans were talking about trying to amend the Constitution so that he would be. In recent polling, the Terminator, Darth Vader, and the shark from Jaws are more popular than any of the current presidential candidates, from either party. Voldermort ranks beneath all the Democrats, but above most of the Republicans in the field.

* * *

Gov. Scott Walker (R/WI), a rare presidential candidate who never graduated from college, hates universities.

* * *

Just how bad a president would Sen. Ted Cruz (R/TX) be? In an interview with the Washington Post's brand-new site PowerPost, Cruz reveals the truth: he'd be terrible. According to the Post: "Cruz promised to do whatever it takes to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, which he calls 'the single greatest national security threat to the United States.'”

That's crazy talk. Even if Iran had a nuclear weapon, they wouldn't use it, for the same reason nobody else has used one since WWII, even though multiple countries have them. They know to do so would be suicide. As for the idea that they would provide one to Islamic jihadists--most of those are Sunnis, and Iran's leadership is Shiites. If terrorists want nukes, they'd be far more likely to get them from sympathetic Pakistan, or from thoroughly insane, cash-poor North Korea, than to go begging from the hated Shiites. Iran is fighting ISIS on the ground in Iraq; why would they provide their enemies a nuclear weapon?

In a world with ISIS, North Korea, a newly power-mad Putin in Russia, an emergent and aggressive China, and a nuclear Pakistan, to claim that Iran is the biggest threat shows that Cruz is reacting to what's in the right-wing media rather than thinking through our various foreign policy issues.

Of domestic affairs, he says, "“I intend to do everything possible to make 2016 a referendum on repealing Obamacare and adopting a flat tax.”

Also crazy. Millions upon millions of Americans now have health insurance, because of the Affordable Care Act. When the law first went into effect, right-wing media played up every conceivable story of people who "lost" their insurance plans "because" of it. Never mind that most of them were eligible for better, cheaper plans. Never mind that under the old system, people lost plans all the time--employers could, and did, often change insurance companies, and insurance companies could, and did, drop old plans and offer new ones. But that was big news on the right. If the Supreme Court guts the subsidies in King v. Burwell (which Cruz says he's "cautiously optimistic" about), at least 6 million Americans will lose their plans. If Cruz succeeded in "repealing Obamacare," many more millions would lose their plans. Republicans have had five years to propose a working alternative; they have yet to do so. Cruz literally wants to see Americans once again face bankruptcy or death because they couldn't afford the medical care they needed, all in service of some extreme ideology.

The flat tax idea is also insane--it's a huge giveaway to the rich, paid for by the rest of us. Marie Antoinette couldn't come up with a worse tax plan.

There's more, but it all adds up to this: Cruz is completely unsuited to the Senate, much less the presidency. He should be running a Republican committee in some Texas county, where he can spew his ideological nonsense all day long without hurting anyone.

Side Note: Rep. (and former VP candidate) Paul Ryan (R/WI) also thinks taking health insurance away from 6 million+ Americans is a good thing, because somehow, by enabling them to get health insurance, we've put them "at risk." Yeah, we don't get it, either.

This Week in Strange Bedfellows

The Republican Party gave up its independence years ago. Too many people and organizations outside the party have power and influence over too many of those the party is supposed to represent. Elected officials pay more attention to what Rush Limbaugh says than to the party leaders who are supposed to be working on their behalf. Now two of those organizations, believing they run the party altogether, are giving the RNC fits. Fox "News" wants to run the presidential debates, and the format they've come up with is one that allows Fox to "winnow the field," a task meant for Republican primary voters. And the Koch brothers want to run the party database, control its ground game, and maybe supplant it altogether. The RNC is pushing back on both fronts, but it might be too little, too late.

When a political party cedes control of its own operations to outsiders, what is its purpose? 21st century elected Republicans have become so extreme and at the same time so beholden to moneyed interests that it's no longer hard to see them fading away into obscurity over the next few cycles, while some other party finally becomes the competition for the Democrats.

We're not saying it's too late for Republicans. But if they can't break those ties, it might well be.

This Week in Gun Safety

This was reported last week (and happened in April) but we didn't see it until this week. The executive director of Gun Owners of America--a group so extreme they almost make the NRA look sane--finally explained why people need guns. "The Second Amendment was designed for people just like the president and his administration. And yes, if the New York Times and the Rolling Stone, and whoever else wants to have a hissy fit, yes, our guns are in our hands for people like those in our government right now that think they wanna go tyrannical on us, we’ve got something for ‘em. That’s what it’s all about. The Second Amendment is not about hunting, it’s not about target shooting, it’s about Democrats who want to take our rights.”

So that makes sense, right? People need guns to prevent other people from taking away their guns. Of course, if they didn't have guns, nobody would want to take them away, so then they wouldn't need guns. Guy's obviously a genius.

This Week in Bears

Mama bear and five (!!) cubs.

We've always said that bears are smart, so it's no surprise that so many of them want to go to school. That said, this one should have known better than to try to enroll in Man Elementary, because it's obviously species-intolerant.

This Week in America (Vol. 3, Week 23, "America is not some fragile thing" edition)

Far too much media coverage of politics focuses on the horserace angle--who's ahead, who's behind, who's up or down. It relies on false equivalency: if Politician A says X, then the reporter goes to Politician B, who's sure to say Y. That's lazy journalism, and it doesn't actually inform the public about which position (if any) is actually true, or adheres to the facts as we know them. At TWiA, our mission is to discuss politics through the prism of policy--to look, in other words, at the real-world implications of the things that politicians say and do, to make connections others might miss, and to explain it all in language a lay person can understand. Also to offer suggestions of how you can help somebody in need, to report on what's awesome, and to keep tabs on bears. If you like TWiA, share or repost or tell a friend, and be sure to leave comments, even if they're arguments. Especially if they're arguments.

 

This Week in Delaware

At the beginning of Joe Biden's (D/DE) Washington career--between the time he was elected to the Senate and the time he began to serve as senator--his wife and three children were in a car accident. His wife and one-year-old daughter Naomi were killed; two sons, Beau and Hunter, survived.

Biden had just won an unexpected Senate victory against a popular, powerful Republican incumbent. J. Caleb Boggs had the money, the name recognition, and the full force of the Republican Party machine behind him. Biden had youthful energy, an attractive family, and a gift for connecting with regular people. Because Delaware is a small state, he was able to travel through most of it, exercising that gift, and he eked out a win.

Then his wife's car was hit by a tractor-trailer rig while she and the children were Christmas shopping. Biden considered resigning his seat before ever serving, so he could stay home with the boys. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D/MT) and Senator Edward Kennedy (D/MA) persuaded him to keep the seat and commute. For 36 years, Biden did just that, taking the train to DC in the morning, serving in the Senate, and going home at night to be with his family. His staff had standing orders--no matter what was going on in the Senate, if one of the boys called, Biden was to be interrupted so he could take the call. At a recent Yale University commencement address--delivered while he knew Beau was dying of brain cancer--Biden said, "I came to realize that a child can hold an important thought, something they want to say to their mom and dad, maybe 12 or 14 hours, and then it’s gone. And when it’s gone, it’s gone.”

Biden's deep Catholic faith was shaken, and previously unknown anger filled him. But that passed, his faith returned, and he became one of the most consequential senators of our time. 1994's Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (a.k.a. the "Biden Crime Act," after its principal author) included the federal assault weapons ban and the Violence Against Women Act, the first major federal legislation aimed at combatting domestic violence. He backed that up with federal assistance to the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

Known as a moderate who worked easily with Republicans as well as fellow Democrats, Biden also had a profound impact on foreign policy. In 1993, during a trip to the troubled Balkans, he told Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic--to his face--"I think you're a damn war criminal and you should be tried as one." He pushed for engagement in the Balkans, and that engagement ultimately brought peace to the region. Milosevic--in fact a war criminal--was tried as one, but died in prison before the trial's completion. In 2002, Biden and Republican Senator Richard Lugar (IN) passed a resolution that authorized military action in Iraq only after diplomatic efforts had been exhausted, but President George W. Bush vetoed it so he could begin his war. In 2006, Biden advocated for a division of Iraq into a federation of three separate ethnic states--a division that might still come to pass, and that could have saved tens of thousands of lives if it had happened before renewed sectarian violence gripped that country.

In the Senate, Biden maintained a reputation as a regular guy who commuted by train and was one of the least wealthy senators (the "second poorest," in his words), which kept him in touch with his mostly working-class constituency and the needs of ordinary Americans.

And now, as Biden's second term as Vice President of the United States enters its closing months, he has lost another son.

Speaking to the TAPS Military Survivor Seminar in 2012, Biden said, "Just when you think you're going to make it, you're driving down the road and you pass a field and you see a flower, and it reminds you. Or you hear a tune on the radio. Or you just look up into the night and, you know, you think, 'Maybe I'm not going to make it, man.' Because you feel at that moment the way you felt the day you got the news."

But he also reminded his audience that there was hope for the future. "There will come a day, I promise you and your parents, as well, when the thought of your son or daughter or your husband or wife brings a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye. It will happen. My prayer for you is that day will come sooner or later. But the only thing I have more experience than you in is this: I’m telling you it will come.”

Here is his statement on the loss of his son Beau:

"It is with broken hearts that Hallie, Hunter, Ashley, Jill and I announce the passing of our husband, brother and son, Beau, after he battled brain cancer with the same integrity, courage and strength he demonstrated every day of his life.

"The entire Biden family is saddened beyond words. We know that Beau’s spirit will live on in all of us—especially through his brave wife, Hallie, and two remarkable children, Natalie and Hunter.

"Beau's life was defined by service to others. As a young lawyer, he worked to establish the rule of law in war-torn Kosovo. A major in the Delaware National Guard, he was an Iraq War veteran and was awarded the Bronze Star. As Delaware’s Attorney General, he fought for the powerless and made it his mission to protect children from abuse.

"More than his professional accomplishments, Beau measured himself as a husband, father, son and brother. His absolute honor made him a role model for our family. Beau embodied my father's saying that a parent knows success when his child turns out better than he did.

"In the words of the Biden family: Beau Biden was, quite simply, the finest man any of us have ever known."

We here at TWiA World Headquarters appreciate and honor the Biden family's decades of service to our nation, and we mourn the loss of Beau Biden.

Below the fold: 2016, right vs. left, Selma revisited, how you can help, and bears.