Category: Politics

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essays Law Law enforcement Politics

Worth a read: 99 problems

Ever wondered about your rights? Can, for example, you say no when the police ask to search your car?

Caleb Mason is here to help. (PDF)

This is a line-by-line analysis of the second verse of 99 Problems by Jay-Z, from the perspective of a criminal procedure professor. It’s intended as a resource for law students and teachers, and for anyone who’s interested in what pop culture gets right about criminal justice, and what it gets wrong.

http://pdf.textfiles.com/academics/lj56-2_mason_article.pdf

The song is often known for it’s crude language. I had avoided it, but according to Jay-Z and this article, it’s a reference to a K-9 search dog, not a woman or women. Also, you can’t refuse to exit the car, a locked trunk doesn’t require a warrant, and my home state is 2-party-recording consent.

Well worth a read. I’m no lawyer, but this was entertaining and informative.

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Politics Uncategorized

Was the past better or worse than the present? – Lawyers, Guns & Money

The reactionary world view is based fundamentally on the idea that the past was much better than the present, because people were happier. And why were they happier? Because they knew their place in an unquestioned and unquestionable social hierarchy that gave their lives meaning and structure, and that specific kind of happiness is much more valuable than the shallower kind of happiness provided by general anesthesia and plentiful food and central air conditioning and the Internet and what have you.

That’s what every reactionary believes in his bones. That’s what fuels contemporary American fascism and contemporary American evangelical Christianity and right wing Catholicism (but I repeat myself).
— Read on www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/06/was-the-past-better-or-worse-than-the-present

Categories
Covid-19 Politics

Three grim notes

But ultimately, some unknown percentage of those 80 million still unvaccinated will dig in and continue refusing vaccinations, even if they have to risk unemployment and other penalties. Some surveys indicate that the defiance is deep-seated, so we should expect a sizable number of marginalized, unvaccinated, unemployed, and profoundly angry Americans. These are the groups who might gravitate to leading or taking part in political violence, as we got a taste of with anti-lockdown protests last year.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-latest-covid-surge-is-just-the-start-of-a-new-nightmare?source=us-news&via=rss

But why would they do that? Let’s turn the microphone to LGM:

The whole key to understanding the anti-vax pro-horse dewormer mentality is that it’s not just this one thing for these people. Admitting that they’ve been wrong about this isn’t like admitting you were wrong about thinking that Willie Mays hit 700 home runs or that Detroit is the capital of Michigan. To admit you were wrong about this thing in particular would be to pull on a thread that could unravel your entire social and political identity. For those in the right wing bubble/base, admitting error on this point basically requires a literal conversion experience. It would be like a former Christian fundamentalist coming to the view that the Bible isn’t actually the inerrant word of God. In other words, that’s not just some random fact, but THE fact, that holds every other part of the person’s world view together.

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/09/the-herman-cain-freedom-award

One last, less grim but much more difficult question: How much risk are we willing, as a people, to accept? Who bears that risk?

Will Americans accept the deaths of tens of thousands of people, as they do with the flu, if it means life returning to normal? Can the public tolerate an even higher death toll — akin to the drug overdose crisis, which killed an estimated 94,000 people in 2020 — if that’s what it takes to truly end social distancing and other precautions?

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22651046/covid-19-delta-vaccines-social-distancing-masking-lockdowns

I highly recommend all three essays. I’ve had them swirling around in my head for a few days now.

Categories
essays Politics

A nice bit of psychological insight into vaccine and mask resistance

Via the reliably-excellent ‘No more mister nice blog’:

If conservatives can’t be protected without being bound, they’d rather not be protected at all.

Steve M

That is, of course, his corollary to Wilhoit’s definition of conservatism:

There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

Frank Wilhoit

Read the whole thing. It’s excellent.

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essays Politics Uncategorized

Immigration Enforcement and the Afterlife of the Slave Ship | Boston Review

Immigration Enforcement and the Afterlife of the Slave Ship from Boston Review. Coast Guard techniques for blocking Haitian asylum seekers have their roots in the slave trade. Understanding these connections can help us disentangle immigration policy from white nationalism.
— Read on bostonreview.net/race/ryan-fontanilla-immigration-enforcement-and-afterlife-slave-ship

Damn. I had literally no idea.

Categories
Politics

Eschaton: What Will We Call The New Tea Party

It was a neat trick that for 4 years ‘Trump supporters’ were somehow distinct from ‘Republicans,’ and now we will inevitably have some other exciting new political movement that isn’t precisely associated with either of them, but they love America and freedom and are skeptical of Democrats but could be persuaded (but never are).
They will be the protagonists of our politics story, as they always are. Angry, racist, relatively affluent white people who are covered obsessively by our political press who somehow never manage to convey who they actually are, who is funding them, and what they actually want
— Read on www.eschatonblog.com/2021/01/what-will-we-call-new-tea-party.html

A good kickoff for the presidential transition.

Categories
essays Politics

Rebecca Solnit: On Not Meeting Nazis Halfway | Literary Hub

When Trump won the 2016 election—while losing the popular vote—the New York Times seemed obsessed with running features about what Trump voters were feeling and
— Read on lithub.com/rebecca-solnit-on-not-meeting-nazis-halfway/

A superb essay that I can’t recommend enough.

Categories
Politics

The Border Wall Is a National Monument to Trump’s Nativism

When you look at the eight prototypes as art, what do you see?
— Read on www.vulture.com/2018/01/the-border-wall-is-a-national-monument-to-trumps-nativism.html

Best idea I’ve seen in ages.

Categories
Politics

Did you vote?

Damn, what a year.

Categories
Covid-19 Politics

The Disconnect Between the Stock Market and the Real Economy Is Destroying Our Lives – In These Times

This political choice is also a moral choice. It is a choice of whether or not to value fairness. Either the incentives of everyone in society are aligned, or they are not. In America, they are not. In fact, they are the opposite: the incentives of the rich, who live through stocks and the accumulation of corporate power, are in fact opposed to the incentives of the vast majority of people, whose existence is reduced to nothing more than labor income to be minimized as much as possible. An economy devised to prop up stock prices is an economy devised not to encourage widespread public wealth, but rather the concentration of private wealth. That is a choice. That is the incentive structure we have built in this country. The mystifying government response that allows a crisis of unemployment and sudden poverty to happen and then refuses to solve it even while doling out trillions of dollars to business is in fact just American capitalism working as we have designed it to.

The Disconnect Between the Stock Market and the Real Economy Is Destroying Our Lives – In These Times

Brilliant post, start to finish. Highly recommended. Found via the reliably-excellent Eschaton.