And they know. We’re not a “city upon a hill”. We’re not exceptional. We’re not the model for others to follow. We’re a deeply divided country weakening our democratic principles and traditions while a public health crisis rages.
Things will calm down and improve in the months and years ahead, but we will never be a “city upon a hill”, or exceptional, or some idealized model for others to follow.
This is the kind of fealty I’m going to need in my Vice-President.
Administrivia. Every time I write critically about the President, a humble blog regular and close friend whose opinion I care about, rips me for spreading “hate” and sowing “division”. Given that predicament, I guess I shouldn’t link to any of the numerous articles about our President’s Saturday phone call to Georgia’s Secretary of State which Carl Bernstein called “way worse than Watergate”.
1. The Plague Year: The mistakes and the struggles behind America’s coronavirus tragedy. Lawrence Wright’s damning deconstruction of “America’s coronavirus tragedy” details the President’s complicity which my friend might think of as hateful and divisive. Not to worry though, it’s WAY too long for him. Everyone writing books about this simultaneously let out an “Ah shit!” upon finishing Wright’s piece. I could excerpt endlessly from it, but there’s other reading to get to.
3. Walk, run or wheelbarrow: We moved our bodies forward during the pandemic. Our second born walked 153 miles in December!
“. . . my eldest walks. She carries a backpack loaded with her journal, a beanie, whatever book she’s reading. She dons her mask and canvasses our Atlanta neighborhood at New York speed, striding purposefully as if she has somewhere to be. When the sun starts to set, she sits on a patch of grass or a park bench to catch her breath and stares into the sky, tracking the light until it bleeds into darkness.
She does this every evening because, as she explains, it gives her ‘something to look forward to.’
When she comes home, cheeks flush, hair windswept, my daughter does seem happier, lifted. The simple act of walking underscoring her autonomy, reminding her that she is still a human capable of breathing fresh air, of shuttling from point A to B, that she is still a human at all.”
4. Shearing Sheep, and Hewing to Tradition, on an Island in Maine. Love, love, love the pictures. They have the same effect as an engrossing foreign film, they totally transport me across the country to the island. Long live the Wakemans and their way of life.
Compliments of The New York Times.
They’re all great, like this one from Dylan Rhys Jubett-Bauer, age 8.
“If Joe called me, I’d be like, How did you get my phone number? Then I would say, save half of the money for later on. But then spend money on gardens and on a place for homeless people to live.”
“Donations would come from five tiers. For each tier, the mechanism is the same. People (or businesses on behalf of their people), donate money to get to the front of the Covid-19 vaccine line. There are limited available slots and getting the vaccine must be publicly documented so others can be motivated by these influential figures.
In the first tier, 100 of the wealthiest Americans each donate $100 million to be first in line for a vaccine, getting it within the first weeks of availability. This raises $10 billion.
In the second tier, 1,000 people each donate $10 million to get vaccinated within the first month. This raises another $10 billion.
You can see where this is going: The third tier requires a $1 million contribution for up to 10,000 people. The fourth, $100,000 for up to 100,000 people. The fifth and final tier requires a $25,000 donation from up to 400,000 people. Everyone participating in the program is vaccinated within the first two months of vaccine availability. The bigger the donation, the further toward the front one goes.
All told, this raises $50 billion for the cause by vaccinating just 511,000 people.”
Levine goes on to say he doesn’t “pretend to know the optimal ways to spend this money,” but knows there are a lot of places it can help, ultimately arguing “it can help get past the multitude of barriers to vaccine access, big and small, that exist in the U.S.”
Levine is a bold, clear-headed thinker, but damn, are we really ready to throw the towel in on the (dis)United States being a tax payer funded democracy that aspires to greater equality? Is social mobility so anemic we’re ready to officially acknowledge we’re more of an aristocracy than a democracy? Are people ready to drive on the Jeff Bezos Highway and live in Apple Incorporated affordable housing?
I’m definitely not ready to throw in the towel on our longstanding democratic ideals, but I can’t disagree with Levine about this:
“My proposal is neither conservative or liberal — or it can be portrayed as both. For conservatives, it is a free-market solution: People and businesses are making a choice on how they use their money. Liberals can view it as a wealth tax: People who can afford it pay for early access to a vaccine and, in doing so, pay for others to get vaccinated. I believe that the concept is inherently nonpolitical. Instead it is a solutions-oriented approach to concerns that have been raised about U.S. vaccination programs.”
Senior Trump advisers prepare to launch policy group.
White House domestic policy adviser Brooke Rollins and National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow are preparing to launch a nonprofit group to promote the president’s policies once he leaves office.
“The group, Rollins said, would promote the ‘legacy and consequences of this president’ and ensure ‘those ideas continue and are defended whether in one month or in four years from now.’”
What part of the legacy and consequences? The narcissism? The total disregard for the truth? The self-pitying and destruction of democratic traditions? The gross mismanagement of a devastating public health crisis? The demonizing of Democratic governors and mayors? The incessant talk of infrastructure? The dismantling of foreign alliances?
“’We’re really excited about it, we think it’s going to be a juggernaut,’” Rollins added.
Is juggernaut a fancy word for joke?
The answer to this question is yes, without a doubt.
Moderate Democrats are splitting with more radical leftists on Seattle’s plans to give misdemeanor suspects a pass for crimes committed to meet a basic need.
Jason Rantz, right wing radio host tells a precautionary story. Seattle CM called police she defunded to report crime she is effectively legalizing.
I guess I’m a moderate Democrat since I find the proposed legislation problematic for the reasons Rantz explains. However, since we already imprison a larger proportion of citizens than any other country, we know Rantz’s solution of locking up more people will do nothing to reduce crime or improve Seattleites’ quality of life. Because criminals aren’t rational. They don’t plan on being caught, and therefore, don’t ponder the odds of going to prison.
We also now know we can’t afford our prison population if we want balanced state budgets. I wish I could direct a larger proportion of my city, county, and state sales taxes to mental health and substance abuse treatment.
That still leaves the question of what to do with all the criminals of sound mind who commit property crimes and other misdemeanors. On that, I’ll defer to experts to propose smarter, more viable alternatives to prison.
“Moderate mush” appears to be the essence of Lili Loofbourow’s argument in her Slate piece titled “Barack Obama Sat Out the Past Four Years and It Shows”.
“But in these recent appearances, the most surprising thing might be that his political remarks about this moment feel stale. Maybe his absence from the fray over these past four years has cost him. Maybe he’s using a different timescale to measure progress (as he sometimes explicitly says he is). But even his harshest remarks about the right don’t capture the hysterical party we’re watching try to steal an election. His recent criticisms of ‘snappy’ leftist political slogans like ‘defund the police’ reflect an abiding faith in a theory of politics that seems passé—as several Black intellectuals and activists have pointed out. Boiled down to its essentials, Obama’s argument is that one shouldn’t ‘alienate’ people who might be converted to your cause if you say things in just the right way. In practice, that means tucking the political self into a package that a ‘reasonable person’—that usefully unmeasurable political fiction—cannot help but find acceptable and persuasive.”
Loofbourow doesn’t like his music either.
“Obama’s commitment to not alienating people is fascinating to the precise extent that it becomes a principle in its own right. It explains, I think, why there’s something so mystifyingly generic about his self-presentation when you take him out of the right-wing fever swamp. His music selections could be a Starbucks album, they’re so mainstream. Asked what someone should read to understand this bizarre, unprecedented moment in contemporary America, he recommends the fresh unplumbed perspectives of de Tocqueville and Thoreau. In other words: Obama sat the last four years out and it shows. He might be appearing on ‘Snapchat political shows,’ but his ability to adapt to new media forms does not extend to his political thinking. He isn’t bringing new tools or interpretations to the table and he seems to be overlooking the extent to which older tools do not work.“
Okay, let’s concede LL’s point, the historical moment has passed Obama by. But why then, does she end this way?
“Obama stayed away during the Trump years. Maybe he deemed it tactically wise. Maybe he was tired. Maybe he wanted to work on his foundation. But we could have used him during these four awful years.”
Loofbourow earns lots of points for critiquing a political icon, but I’m also deducting a few for a lack of internal consistency.
“Honoring the longstanding tradition of a peaceful transfer of power is paramount. I apologize to the American people for not respecting their will. I have called President-elect Biden and congratulated him on his win and offered to help his team in anyway I can.”
Pressing Pause 