This is just one step. And it's very symbolic: it doesn't change the fact that racism remains a troubling wound to the nation's soul.
But this step is a big one.
Getting South Carolina - the hotbed of secession since the days of John C. Calhoun, the source of discord and segregation for more than a century - to lower the Confederate Battle Flag is a BFD. The symbol of hating a federal government that insists on equality before the law and between all citizens, the symbol of a Lost Cause far too many want to keep fighting, a flag that flew in public as a sign that the hatred supporting that heritage was tolerated at the least... That symbol no longer flies. Racism no longer carries an official seal of approval.
As for that flagpole, I recommend flying the Moultrie Flag as it has historic value.
Now for the hard part: convincing more people to stop being haters over race, stopping the fear-mongering out there causing unjust division among Americans.
In the historic 5-2 ruling, the court not only ruled the maps were the product of an unconstitutional political gerrymandering, it signaled its deep distrust of lawmakers and provided detailed instructions on how to repair the flawed map in time for the 2016 election.
Writing for the majority, Justice Barbara Pariente said the court found that the initial maps drawn by state lawmakers "were tainted by unconstitutional intent to favor the Republican Party and incumbents."
"This is a complete victory for the people of Florida who passed the Fair District amendment and sought fair representation where the Legislature didn't pick their voters," said David King, lead attorney for the League of Women Voters and the coalition of voter groups that brought the challenge.
Woot.
Even though the Court is ordering just 8 of the 27 districts redrawn, the connectivity of district borders make it clear all the neighboring districts - up to 14 - will change, so that almost the entire map should get redrawn in order to fill a core requirement of districts being evenly populated.
The key one - and the one pretty much every court has railed against - will be that hideous 5th District that stretches through TEN counties and three (maybe four) separate major cities. It's so infamous it's been one of the Top 10 Gerrymander examples for the Washington Post this decade:
Take Florida’s infamous 5th Congressional District, for example. It runs from near Jacksonville in the north, hooks east for a few miles, then west for a few miles, narrows to the width of an interstate highway for a while, cuts west all the way over to Gainesville, then swivels back east and southeast, finally arriving at Orlando, a distance of about 140 miles, sweeping in black neighborhoods along the way in order to create a “minority-majority” district.
It’s been described by a federal judge as “visually not compact,” “bizarrely shaped” and defying “traditional political boundaries” with what critics called “finger like extensions,” “narrow and bizarrely shaped tentacles” and “hook-like shapes.” It resembles no known species or geometric form. It does look an awful lot like the Potomac River from the air, however.
The 5th was recently ranked by the Post’s Christopher Ingraham as one of “America’s most gerrymandered” congressional districts.
In siding with a coalition of Democrat-backed voter groups, the court majority concluded that lawmakers violated the Fair District amendments to the Florida Constitution. The amendments were approved in 2010 by more than 63 percent of voters — over the objections of the Republican-controlled Legislature — to prohibit lawmakers from intentionally drawing districts that favor incumbents or political parties.
The court gave the Legislature 100 days to meet in special session to complete a new map, and ordered the trial court to issue an order that opens the door for it to review the final product...
That last bit means there is a level of accountability here: having the trial court get final say is telling the Republican legislators they can't just shove out a map with nonexistent tweaks and call it a day. But I have no illusions here: the Republicans in charge of the map-making are going to do everything they can to get away with as much game-rigging as possible.
Here's the thing. Statistically, the Republicans have fewer registered voters than Democrats: 4.1 million Republican to 4.5 million Democrat. Throw in the 2.2 million NPA (No-Party-Affiliate plus third parties) and we ought to be seeing representation closer to 50-50 which party has advantage among the Congressional districts (and maybe, one or two NPA-heavy). Instead, there's a 17-to-10 GOP-over-Dem count, about 62 percent control of districts: far too many of them crafted to be "safe" - that is, not worth the effort to challenge - for the Party-favored incumbents (which also applies to the incumbents of the party being blocked: those incumbents also prefer the safety of a gerrymander in order to keep their cushy six-figure job plus benefits, even as the needs of their party faithful suffer).
If this Supreme Court ruling can shake up the Congressional - and state legislature districts, I'm worried we're not hearing anything about those rigged distasters - districts we may well get a fair and just election working. We ought to see districts genuinely reflecting the overall voter identity of Florida. We may well see - still hoping for it - one or more Open districts where neither major party dominates. Forcing both parties to moderate their positions and run candidates not for purity of ideology - what "safe" districts invoke to the detriment of all - but to honestly serve the demands and interests of those districts.
We may yet get improved voter turnout. When people have real challenges, real reasons to make a choice between potential candidates, when they are openly courted for the correct reasons rather than the dogma a safe incumbent embraces - something we see with Presidential election cycles because things ARE at stake in such a choice - the voters will see they have a reason to vote, and would do so in great numbers. Which is what we're supposed to get in a democratic republic form of government.
The numbers came down to about 93 to 98 percent Blacks voting Democratic, which is as close to absolutely everyone in that bloc. Given how the Republican Party is staging itself for 2016 - with voter suppression efforts and platform issues that would anger Blacks - there's little chance of the GOP breaking the Democratic monopoly on that bloc.
There were about 70 percent give or take for Asians voting Democratic. Of the ethnic groups, there's a shot Republicans could win more Asian voters their way, except for the fact Asians have a pro-immigrant stance that might be repelled by the harsh anti-immigrant stance the GOP is sticking with (again). There are individual nationalities - Indian, Japanese, Chinese - that may as a group lean one party or another, but for now there's no singular issue that can divide this bloc.
Hispanics/Latinos were around 70 to 71 percent voting Democratic. Culturally, this is an ethnic group that's incredibly diverse yet sharing common enough points to be a unified bloc. A lot of that is due to La Raza, a sense of community/family that highlights a religious-conservative bent... and yet a social-liberal one at the same time.
Hispanic voters are a key ingredient on the national level for Republicans. Without enough of them to merge with the GOP voter base of Whites, Republicans can't see any good shot at the White House. Dubya secured 44 percent of the Latino vote in 2004, which helped him win. Romney secured 27 percent of the Latino vote and lost the popular vote - and a solid number of Hispanic-heavy states - by five points.
So here we are facing 2016. Here's a Republican Party whose anti-immigration stance has already alienated a sizable portion of Hispanic voters to begin with. And here comes Donald Trump insulting the sh-t out of Mexicans and talking about building a super-wall along the border (and forcing Mexico to pay for it).
Even with Trump boasting he'll win the Latino vote - which is so ludicrous I'm seeing conservative blogs choke on it - how can any sane, self-respecting Hispanic-American accept this guy? There's a reason a lot of businesses are dumping Trump, and it all has to do with the fact he's insulting a growing and powerful voting (and economic) bloc.
If Trump really does secure the Republican nomination - and despite all hand-waving to the contrary by the experts, Trump is polling too well with an overly angry and fear-induced wingnut base that can dominate the primaries - just how bad is it gonna be for Republicans in dire need of Latino voters?
You can immediately take that 27 percent that voted for Mitt in 2012 and reduce it to ONE percent within a five percent range for statistical error. There were 11.2 million Latinos who voted in 2012: give standard population growth or voter interest to go up a little, let's say to 13 million. Let's be generous and give Trump five percent Hispanic voters (as per the statistical range). Multiply 13,000,000 to .05 and you get 650,000 voters, less than a million. At least Mitt got 3-plus million.
Because despite Trump's assertion, he has so openly and brazenly insulted Latinos - Mexicans in particular, but essentially every nationality from south of the border has to be offended - that there is no way he can win over that voting bloc. Whatever promises Trump thinks he could make by the general election cycle - he seems to think he can offer a no-details "jobs" package - he's already violated the KEY rule - hi, Machiavelli! - of winning the people's favor: he's made himself hated. Once they hate you, they will not and cannot forgive you.
The perfect example is the African-American voting bloc. Once the Republicans openly pursued their Southern Strategy, they began losing Black voters in droves. Going after social aid programs since the 1980s, massive voter suppression efforts geared at denying them access to the ballot since the 1990s, and then obstructing Obama since 2009: There's barely - maybe 5 percent - any Black Republicans left. All because the GOP made themselves hated by Blacks as an entire group.
Going full anti-Immigrant - and doing so in an insulting manner - is going to drive away Latinos (and a good number of Asians who are affected on the same issue) to the same level as Black voters. And there are not enough White voters - even though the overall population has Whites in a majority, we do not vote as solid a bloc as the other ethnics - who will cross over due to Trump's fear-mongering. He's already got the base he's pandering to: there is no way he is winning over pro-Immigration Whites or even White voters with a lick of common sense and common decency.
This is the reason the RNC chair has reportedly called Trump this afternoon to tell him to "tone it down" (likely in not as polite a tone either). The Republicans know they've lost the Black vote and have few illusions about breaking that bloc. There are utterly terrified - they have to be - if the Latino bloc rejects the GOP en masse at the same percentages that Blacks have. It would not only kill them in the Presidential election, it could well crush them in a dangerous Senate electoral cycle - there are 24 GOP-held seats up for grabs and a lot of them in Purple-Blue states - and even disrupt the gerrymandered control of the House and legislatures of certain Hispanic-heavy states.
Even if Trump loses the primaries or drops out, this is a bridge getting burned for the Republican Party: mostly because the Latinos have to be looking at the polling numbers go UP for Trump among the GOP primary likely voters, and they have to realize that this is what the Republican Party looks for in their leadership and messaging.
There are no sure things, obviously. The history and trends, however, all point to the GOP alienating another voter bloc. We need to see if there are updates to voter registration numbers: I'd love to see how many Hispanics are switching to No-Party or Democratic affiliation this past week alone...
...In the past six years, GOP states have targeted Latinos for greater scrutiny, GOP officials have called for “self-deportation” of undocumented immigrants, and GOP presidential candidates have stood with nakedly anti-immigrant politicians. And although there are smart, reasoned arguments against comprehensive immigration reform and other permissive immigration policies, the rhetoric that counts—that resonates with actual Republican voters—comes from figures such as Iowa Rep. Steve King, who once warned that a path to citizenship would “destroy our republic.”
At this point, Latinos don’t just oppose particular candidates, such as Mitt Romney. They disdain the Republican label itself. According to a 2014 survey from the Pew Research Center, just 10 percent of Latinos say that the Republican Party “has concern” for their communities, compared with 50 percent who say as much about the Democratic Party. Few agree with Republicans on policy—especially immigration—and just 27 percent of Latinos identify with the Republican Party, compared with 63 percent who identify with Democrats. Not surprisingly, this has carried over to the 2016 GOP presidential field. As of October, notes Latino Decisions, just 32 percent of Latino voters would consider a vote for Jeb Bush, just 35 percent would consider a vote for Sen. Marco Rubio, and just 24 percent would consider a vote for Sen. Ted Cruz (Note: Jeb, Rubio and Cruz are the candidates who are tied to the Hispanic community by marriage or blood, and thus viewed as the more 'palatable' to appeal to that bloc).
So the Republicans are in trouble already. Trump is clearly not helping matters by stirring up the Far Right voting base - which ought to be the real concern here more than having an egomaniacal bankrupt con artist garner a primary lead - to expose just how fearful and hateful that primary voting base can get. Right now, 63 percent Latinos identify as Democrat. Just think how many will identify as Democrat if Trump wins the nomination on his platform of insult and debasement.
With The Trumpster the dominant candidate - and by God it is scary to see how Trump is dominating the GOP primary polls- of the hour - with his ongoing rage fest towards Mexicans, Chinese, Hillary, women, poor people, sane people, and anyone not named Donald Trump - I feel it is best to start off with a series of Trump-related bumper stickers to share and enjoy. Okay, maybe not "enjoy"...
...and Harold Stassen is DEAD...
There. Now let's see if I can get some more bumper stickers made for the other candidates.
And because I can't resist:
Just remember, kids, the August first round debate is just a month away.
In my experience, in the decades I've followed politics since the 1980s onward, I've seen the "dog-whistling" that the GOP used in their campaigning to get their Southern Strategy of fear-mongering working. There's been a bit of subtlety to it - not a lot, but it's there - and it usually masked the race-baiting under other topics such as crime (Willie Horton), welfare reform (Welfare Queens and Young Bucks Buying Lobster), education (Affirmative Action is unfair), tax reform (shift the burden away from income and capital gains taxes of mostly-white CEOs, and onto sales and property taxes that adversely affect mostly-poor minorities), and the utter destruction of the social safety net (well, not that subtle at all).
There'd been a few hard-core haters that made attempts in the last 12 years - Tancredo comes to mind - to run for the Presidency but all of them were alienating and with few followers. Trump is the first one who's come out swinging hard on an anti-immigrant position who's actually gone upin polls to where he's being viewed as a possible primaries winner.
But why? The reactions outside of the Republican polling base has been harsh and quick and financially painful for Trump: he's been dumped by various business partners, NBC has kicked him off his shill-show The Apprentice, and various Hispanic businesses and advocacy groups are calling 24/7 for apologies across the board (not just Trump but the GOP leadership).
There's been theories why Trump has gone Full-Hater:
Trump is actually a Democratic stooge, a stealth agent provocateur trying to sabotage the entire GOP platform. George Will seems to be an early supporter of this idea. Never mind the fact that most of his primary opponents are not nuking him from orbit on Trump's gross behavior - Jeb so far has been the harshest critic - and never mind the fact that Trump is selling an existing GOP marketing strategy that has attacked Hispanics as a dangerous Other for years. Trump is just amping it up to eleven.
Trump is actually a Republican stalking horse who's taking such a hard-line and radical racist stance in order to make the other GOP candidates - Jeb in particular - more appealing to moderate and centrist voters needed to win a general election. I'm more of a proponent of this conspiracy theory, although this all relies on Trump flaming out early to leave an "Establishment" candidate like Jeb or Scott Walker standing at the end of the primary race.
Trump is genuinely running to win the nomination, and realizes that without an actual electoral history he's going to need to win primary voters as quick and as easy and as cheap (despite all his "wealth" Trump will always choose the cheapest path to profit) as possible. He's going Full-Hater early in order to stake his position before anyone else does: and the polling seems to prove that attack plan is working for him. And he's been a Hater before - witness his obsession over Birtherism - and never paid a price for it, so why expect a penalty now? Simplest - the most direct - explanation tends to be the most correct one.
This is essentially the end result of forty-plus years of the Southern Strategy that Republicans used from 1968 onward to bring social conservatives over from a Democratic Party fracturing after LBJ's civil rights reforms. As Lee Atwater was caught saying in an interview in 1981, you marketed for all the hate that you can wring out of your voting base - hard-line social conservatives who lean towards racism as a unifying cause - to ensure they vote for conservative candidates regardless of the real issues. You did it by hiding that hate under "code": You can't say "N-word" by the Eighties, but you say it as "forced busing," or "states' rights". You place it within the fears of having criminals and drug abusers - who all look like minorities in the telling of the tales - roaming the streets. And that got you a voting bloc of angry, fear-driven White voters not just in the South but the Midwest and Southwest all eagerly voting for an increasingly hard-core conservative Republican agenda.
But now the bill's come due. There's few other places of shock and fear the social conservatives can push the ever-rightward Republicans. No amount of "moving the goalposts" of debate can hide the fact the entire GOP platform has gone fully right-wingnut. We've endured campaign years of wingnuts like Tancredo and Bachmann and Palin and Santorum. We had a line-up of 2012 that behaved like Upper Class Twits that underwhelmed. We already have a 2016 lineup of demagogues like Cruz and Jindal, and bullies like Christie and Walker, and nihilists like Rand Paul, and opportunitists like Jeb and Huckabee, all of them pandering to a Far Right voting base worried less about issues and worried more about an apocalypse sold to them on Fox Not-News every hour on the hour.
Trump is not exposing anything new: he's just taken the Republican messaging - Fear The Other - and amped it up as loud and as obnoxious as he can (which is all he does, and isn't very good at it). That's what the hell is happening here. This shouldn't be all that surprising. If Trump hadn't gone this extreme, one of the others - Cruz is the likeliest candidate - surely would have by the end of the upcoming August debate.
This isn't the worrying part. What's worrying is that Trump is getting supporters out of this BS.
So, to the seven readers who keep track of this blog, you may have noted I was off on vacation with limited access to updating the site. For what I've kept up with during my trip to the DC/Baltimore area (hello, Gettysburg National Park! Remember me? Yeah, the fat guy in the UF sports cap), this is what I'm noting on my return here:
Greece voted in a referendum to turn down the EU's offer to fix their debt crisis, mostly because the EU's offer was an austerity program that would have made the 2001 Argentinian deal look like the Marshall Plan (if you know your history, you will understand how bad a deal the EU offer was). This link to Interfluidity's article goes into a long and complex explanation of what led to the vote and why Greece was fighting the bad deal, but it's worth the read:
It is difficult to overstate how deeply Europe’s leaders betrayed the ideals of European integration in their handing of the Greek crisis... Regulatory mistakes and agency issues within banks encouraged poor credit decisions. Spanish banks lent into overpriced real estate, and German banks lent to a state they knew to be weak. Current account imbalances within the Eurozone — persistent and unlikely to reverse without policy attention — implied as a matter of arithmetic that there would be loan flows on a scale that might encourage a certain indifference to credit quality. These were European problems, not national problems. But they were European problems that festered while the continent’s leaders gloated and took credit for a phantom prosperity. When the levee broke, instead of acknowledging errors and working to address them as a community, Europe’s elites — its politicians and civil servants, its bankers and financiers — deflected the blame in the worst possible way. They turned a systemic problem of financial architecture into a dispute between European nations. They brought back the very ghosts their predecessors spent half a century trying to dispel. Shame...
Ta-Nehisi Coates is releasing a new book Between the World and Me. He's already got a rave review from Toni Morrison. Toni NOBEL LAUREATE Morrison. Try to imagine the amount of squee-ing Coates must have went through. Lemme just say if I ever got a review from Neil Gaiman saying "eh, his Hero Cleanup Protocol estory doesn't have that many grammar errors in it, so..." I'd be stuck in a fanboy coma for weeks.
I've mentioned before I wanted to come in person to Gettysburg National Park so I could bask in the history. So this year I did.
Went to the park with my older brother - who lives in the area - and we spent most of the day there. We did the film and Cyclorama (a wraparound massive painting depicting the final engagement of the three-day battle), walked about the Visitor Center - which had some special activities going on due to the anniversary of the battle - before driving out by car to the key points of the battlefield. It is spread out at such distances that going by car is the quickest way to see it all (although biking it or riding Segways are options: hiking is for masochists).
What follows is a pictorial travelogue depicting the horrors of letting your older brother try to parallel park everywhere. Oh, and the national park.
Arriving at the Visitor Center
Hanging Out With my Brother From Another Statue, the inventor of the chokeslam,
the Sage of Springfield, the Ayatollah of RockanRolla, Abraham Lincoln!
With my real-life brother Eric, checking out the historic firearms used in the war, outside the film
and Cyclorama studios.
Scenes from the Cyclorama
Signage from the Cyclorama
In the back porch of the Visitor Center, they are drilling the new recruits.
All along the Auto Tour - the road path circling across all the key parts of the battlefield -
there are memorials to every brigade, every division, every Corps, every state.
General Reynolds memorial
The Macpherson farm, along the first part of the tour, where the fighting began.
The memorial for the Eternal Light Peace... which was surrounded by cannons and
signs of battle. Irony? Sad? Human, I suppose...
Some of the artillery positions along Seminary Ridge, where the Confederate Army
lined themselves during the Second and Third days of the battle.
The stone wall of Seminary Ridge.
North Carolina's memorial
Part of the North Carolina memorial overlooking the open field between the two armies.
I am pointing at the horizon. Over there is the Union position. Across this field Lee will order
two massive divisions to charge on the Third Day in an all-out attack. Just look at how open that field is,
how far that is to march...
General Robert E Lee's memorial.
The Florida memorial
Florida Memorial
General Longstreet's memorial, which is kinda in a hidden spot and not as
popularly visited...
General - and President - Eisenhower's farm
The Georgia Memorial
For mom: the Alabama Memorial
And here is me at Little Round Top, at the far left flank of the Union line, where Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the 20th Maine held their position under furious attack.
The stone wall used by the 20th Maine to hold the line.
Along Little Round Top, overlooking Devil's Den, where some of the bloodiest fighting took place.
Re-enactors, I think, walking along the memorials atop Little Round Top.
The actual re-enacting is going to take place on Saturday (on the 4th),
which I figure will have a big turnout (weather permitting).
And one of the last stops of the tour: the Union line of the Third Day. The Angle. Pickett's Charge.
General Lewis Armistead's memorial. Of Pickett's Charge, his brigade reached this far before being overwhelmed.
Known as the High Watermark of the Confederacy, this is the closest the Confederates would ever get
to a major victory that could have won foreign support and convinced the Union to end the fighting.
The Copse of Trees
The other side of the open field that Pickett's Charge went across. It seems almost
maddening to send 12,500 troops across such open fields, up towards a heavily defended line,
towards an army waiting for you. Did Lee think numbers alone would work? Did Lee
believe the legends already building about his success, about the determination of his soldiers?
Either way, Pickett's Charge broke the Confederate Army.
Also, there's a video clip of being atop an observation tower overlooking the Peach Orchard (some cursing involved, so NSFW).
Sickles was really an idiot. Buford would have done better.
So I've made my pilgrimage to the battlefield. As it goes, my vacation is going well, hope to visit Fort McHenry and to stick around for the 4th of July celebration in DC.
So, I mentioned in previous reports about our Florida government's refusal to accept Medicaid expansion funding, and about Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott and his state House allies being obstructionists this past state budget impasse. Up to and including Scott filing a lawsuit against the federal government to force the feds to pay about $2 billion towards a low-income fund (LIP) that the Health Dept. wanted to phase out as the Medicaid program covered basically the same ground.
During the course of the lawsuit, federal officials said Florida would receive about $1 billion for the LIP program during the fiscal year that starts July 1, without the money depending on Medicaid expansion. Lawmakers have included that money in a budget that is expected to pass Friday (after June 17th)... The notice added the state is "not prepared to withdraw the underlying lawsuit until the defendants render an actual decision about future LIP funding without the unconstitutionally coercive consideration of the state's constitutionally protected decision not to expand Medicaid."
'Cause here's the thing: if the Florida Republicans just manned up - or ironically enough, got greedy - they would be getting a lot more than a billion dollars out of the federal government. Via the Jacksonville Business Journal:
The White House report estimates that by not expanding Medicaid, Florida will miss out on $5.9 billion in federal funding in 2016. Rolling out Medicaid on a larger scale would provide insurance coverage to 750,000 residents who are not covered. That would have the effect of reducing the number of people who have trouble paying other bills due to the burden of medical costs.
So here's the Rick "Brainless" Scott logic of it: Here's the federal government just offering up nearly SIX BILLION DOLLARS to cover health care costs for the state, something that would be a massive stimulus to our state's health care industry along with improving coverage and overall health of nearly everyone here. This is Six Billion already allotted, covered by taxes, the only stipulation being that the following year the state takes up ten percent of that funding while the feds send ninety percent of it (that's still over FIVE BILLION from the feds). Instead of owning up to that ten percent, Scott and his buddies REFUSE the Six Billion and file a lawsuit to snag TWO BILLION, or about Four Billion less than if they'd agree to the expansion plan. And the end result of all this is to force the US government to cough up just ONE BILLION to continue a program that by all rights is temporary and can get phased out in favor of a larger, better-funded one.
Basically, Scott attempted to extort LESS money out of the federal government than what he could have gained for the state of Florida if he accepted the Medicaid deal.
Was it too much of pride at stake, sir? Was it too much of your political ambition to run again and again as an anti-Obama politician? Are you objecting to that one string attached that requires Florida to ante up ten percent of the bill the following year, are you terrified of the possibility that you'd have to raise taxes to pay for something that would STILL generate BILLIONS of federal funds for us? Was it just sheer stupidity to TAKE LESS MONEY FOR THE STATE YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO SERVE?
I can't believe it all comes down to the fact that the Medicaid program is getting screwed all because of who offers it, all because it's got Obama's name on the label. For God's sake, people are going to suffer, our economy is going to suffer, all because our elected "leaders" refuse to swallow their pride and agree to a deal that could quickly infuse the state with FOUR to FIVE BILLION dollars towards our poor families, towards our hospitals and nursing homes, towards our health care employees.
All for pride? All for politics?! At what point should common freaking sense take consideration?
All because Rick "Negotiation Skills My Ass" Scott isn't a businessman or a Governor, because someone who was serious about being either would have taken the Medicaid money by now. No, it's all because Rick "Demagoguery" Scott is all about scoring points with a fear-driven ill-informed wingnut base that barely represents less than a quarter of the state's entire population, all because goddamn voter turnout is abysmal out here.
Damn Scott. Damn the rest of this state that voted for him. Damn the rest of this state that refused to even show up to vote him out.
We just basically had a crazy week just now, from the Charleston shooting until today. And while there was tragedy, there was also inspiration, and reflection and awareness, and justice, and drive, and emotional cleansing, and hope, and above all love. Especially love, today, tonight, this weekend. It was a week to remember.
Hundreds gather out front, holding aloft their smartphones
so they can document the celebration.
Last week Wednesday night started us off with the tragic breaking news of the shooting at the Emanuel AME Charleston church. It sparked a round of angry calls across the nation, over the intent of the shooter, the signs of racism that surrounded the city and the state of South Carolina (and the Deep South) itself, and the horror of gun violence visited again on another sanctuary where should not imagine such a happening.
The Far Right, led by their political figures especially the Republican candidates for the 2016 Presidency, tried to avoid talking about the shooting altogether. Worse, some tried to claim that "nobody could tell what the shooter's intent was," even though survivors reported the shooter explained himself as he pulled the trigger. Having spent 40 years pushing a Southern Strategy of White Male resentment, Republicans suddenly realized the bill was coming due.
By Monday after the police interrogation went public - proving exactly what happened and why - and after more photos surfaced of the shooter reveling in displays of the Stars and Bars, calls to have the Confederate Battle Flag - the key symbol of the Lost Cause, the symbol of race hatred for 150 years - taken down from public buildings multiplied to the point where the South Carolina governor Nikki Haley had to go public herself, calling for legislation to take the damn thing down off of her state's public forums (in a mockery of law, the state made it mandatory that the Confederate flag remains flying at all costs: when the American flag was lowered in honor of the dead, it just made the contrast more stark and shameful). In other states like Alabama, they just quietly lowered the damn flag and looked away.
Much of the week ended up with a back-and-forth battle on the media channels and the Internet over the "heritage" of the flag, over the right of free speech vs. the actuality of hate speech that flag represented. It was becoming clear that everything that battle flag represented - Jim Crow, racial oppression, a section of our population obsessed with a violent and bloody past - was and still is in risk of imploding on itself (which is, you know, a good thing).
And then Thursday we get good news, with the Supreme Court ruling - and a strong one at that - affirming the core point of Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) was to provide affordable healthcare to most Americans. A lot of celebration about how this was a huge victory for Obama, a huge win for Americans needing that healthcare coverage.
(there was an image here but it had been removed so... working on a replacement image)
And then Friday, two things. The Supreme Court issued the key ruling on gay marriage - on marriage itself - as a self-evident right to all under the 14th Amendment. Twitter and social media exploded. Haters raged. Lovers danced. The United States officially became Pro-People.
In the midst of all this, our nation returned its attention to Charleston once more, as President Obama showed up to perform the eulogy for the fallen pastor Reverend Clementa Pinckney. In that moment, in that place, Obama offered the most stirring, most profoundspeech he's ever given. (link here to full speech)
He openly condemned the flying of the Confederate Battle Flag. He openly condemned the shameful rate of gun violence in our nation, harking back to the tragedies of Sandy Hook and so many other mass shootings. He openly condemned the fear-mongering and the hate poisoning the national forum.
And Obama spoke of love. Obama spoke of faith, and forgiveness, and family. Obama spoke of grace. Human, Christian Grace.
...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.
This whole week, I’ve been reflecting on this idea of grace.
The grace of the families who lost loved ones. The grace that Reverend Pinckney would preach about in his sermons. The grace described in one of my favorite hymnals, the one we all know: 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...
According to the Christian tradition, grace is not earned. Grace is not merited. It’s not something we deserve. Rather, grace is the free and benevolent favor of God as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings. Grace.
As a nation, out of this terrible tragedy, God has visited grace upon us, for he has allowed us to see where we’ve been blind. He has given us the chance, where we’ve been lost, to find our best selves. We may not have earned it, this grace, with our rancor and complacency, and short-sightedness and fear of each other... but we got it all the same. He gave it to us anyway. He’s once more given us grace. But it is up to us now to make the most of it, to receive it with gratitude, and to prove ourselves worthy of this gift.
And then Obama tried - bless him, but he was a bit off-key - to sing Amazing Grace, the Christian hymn above all other hymnals.
The speech, the presence, the words and the faith: all inspiring. Closing out a day of grace and good-will. We're still fighting - the haters are still railing against the tide of history and that long arc towards justice - but now there's a sense of real hope, that we're growing wiser, that we're seeing the problems for real this time, that there's something to fight FOR and a future worth keeping our promises.
This was a crazy week. But even with the pain of loss it was a good crazy.
Obergefell v Hodges: basically the court case about whether or not gays have the same right to marry as heterosexuals. There was a previous Supreme Court ruling in 2013, but that essentially said civil unions were possible but did not go further into marriage legal rights. That was akin to a prelude: this case went straight to the heart of the matter. On this, let's refer to SCOTUSblog's summary in Plain English by Amy Howe:
The Supreme Court, Kennedy’s opinion explains, has long recognized the right to marry as a fundamental right. And although until today it has always done so in the context of opposite-sex couples, he continues, all of the same principles on which the Court has relied in cases involving opposite-sex couples apply equally to same-sex marriage and the recognition of out-of-state same-sex marriages. For example, being able to decide whether to get married is an important part of an individual’s autonomy regardless whether you are the same sex as your intended spouse. Along much the same lines, marriage is a unique way for two individuals – in both same- and opposite-sex partnerships – to demonstrate their commitment to one another.
Justice Kennedy writing for the majority uses the 14th Amendment, arguably the most key civil rights amendment outside of the Bill of Rights, to argue that marriage as a fundamental right needed to apply to all:
These considerations lead to the conclusion that the right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person, and under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment couples of the same-sex may not be deprived of that right and that liberty. The Court now holds that same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry. No longer may this liberty be denied to them. Baker v. Nelson must be and now is overruled, and the State laws challenged by Petitioners in these cases are now held invalid to the extent they exclude same-sex couples from civil marriage on the same terms and conditions as opposite sex couples.
No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed. It is so ordered.
This is a moment where a right that should be viewed as universal finally is: much like the right to be free as a person regardless of ethnicity, much like the right to vote for women as well as men, much like the right to be protected before the law, there is a right to marriage that covers so many aspects of our world - of property, of community, of relationships between ourselves, of the simple identity of humanity - that ought to be protected and confirmed by our Constitution. This ruling makes it so.
This is not the end of the fight. The Haters who rail against gays will continue to do so. But now they have one less weapon in their arsenal. The Constitution - the law of the land - is no longer on their side. All they have is their stringent religious dogma, stuck forever in Rage mode quoting Leviticus or Romans as though they were the only passages that matter.
Never mind they cherry-pick such quotes, ignoring all other bans of Leviticus and the Bible. Never mind their cries about gay marriage harming families conveniently overlooking the Biblical warnings against Adultery, which more Americans commit than there are gays in our nation (our Far Right leadership and fear-mongers in the media refuse to punish adulterers like Gingrich or Trump or half their male membership, shame on them). Never mind the passages in the Bible that speak to Grace, Acceptance, Good Will. The Haters gonna hate. That battle will not end today.
But today is a day to feel good. To feel good about being an American. To feel good about being Pro-People. To feel good about being on the right side of history on the right arc bending towards justice. Like this guy Rich Juwziak at Gawker says, this ruling feels so good:
...All of that fills my heart beyond what I understood to be its capacity. It’s why my mother called me crying happy tears this morning. It’s a beautiful thing to have experienced in my lifetime. I’m so thankful for today.
I can’t help but be happiest, though, about the defeat of the anti-marriage equality crusaders. The defeat of people who signed up to lose, who wasted their time and ours on a platform of animus and contempt. The defeat of people who put principle over the practical, who fought to preserve their limited understanding of an already imperfect institution over the actual human lives that would benefit from it. The defeat of people who did what bigots do: discriminate, vilify, fear-monger, argue irrationally and without respect to human dignity, and then bristle when they’re called out for what they are (bigots).
The jig is up. The world has turned and left you fuming, seething, weeping...
Really should not dance or strut before the Haters. That's not what Christian Grace should be about.
Better to dance and strut with the Lovers. With the People who love for the sake of grace and humanity and happiness. The Four Loves that the Greeks defined for us, love like Agape (for the love of others, for the love of God), Storge (love of family, between parents and children and siblings), Philia (for the love of friends, for companions), and yes Eros (for the love of passion between two people).
