Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

John Blake reflects on the competing visions of America represented by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Malignant Loser:

January 6 and January 15: These dueling dates are just nine days apart, yet they offer two radically different visions of what the US stands for.

 

For part of America, January 6 is a "1776 moment," a great patriotic uprising. Another part of the country celebrates King's January 15 birthday and his dream of a Beloved Community -- a "world in which people of all identities are equal and included."

 

The two dates present the country with a choice:

 

Are we going to be a nation of We, the People, or We, the White people?

 

The question may seem abstract, but if you look closer at what both men did with their defining moments in Washington, the differences are clear.

 

Consider the contrasts between King's "I Have a Dream Speech" on August 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial and Trump's January 6 "Stop the Steal" rally at the Ellipse.

 

King drew a peaceful, interracial crowd to Washington and talked about a dream that united "all of God's children -- Black men and White men, Jews and Gentiles, Catholics and Protestants..."

Trump drew an overwhelmingly White crowd that included members of White supremacist groups, a man wearing a "Camp Auschwitz" T-shirt and people who erected a lynching noose on the Capitol grounds.  [snip]

King had a dream.  Trump had a mob.

Robin Givhan reminds us that Dr. King was an activist who wouldn't be so widely revered if he were in the current time and place:

King was only 39 years old when he died, and while he was more liberal than radical, it’s hard to imagine that he would be so revered if he were a 30-something activist today — a Black man marching in the streets and advocating for fair wages, voting rights, racial justice and a more equitable form of capitalism. He and his fellow protesters would likely be blamed for stirring the pot and creating upheaval in places where everything was just fine before they showed up spouting their un-American ideas — which is precisely what happened in his day.  [snip]

As the memory of King has aged, it’s taken on a smooth-edged, golden hue. Quotations from his speeches have been memorialized in stone but they’ve also been repeated so often and with such disregard for context that they’ve taken on the depth and specificity of a daily horoscope. The words mean whatever you want them to mean.  [snip]

But everyone sees themselves on the side of King. Everyone basks in the glow of his legacy. Few people see themselves as the moral equivalent of Connor, the segregationist head of Alabama public safety who loosed the dogs and opened fire hoses on civil rights activists. They see themselves under the heading of populists protecting the jobs, homesteads and rights of working-class America. They are not Davis, the leader of the Confederacy. They are proud Southerners protecting their history and heritage. They are not Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama standing in the doorway of the University of Alabama as Black students tried to enter. They are concerned parents worried about critical race theory and fretting that their children will be made to feel bad for being White.

Republicans love to quote selected lines from Dr. King to demonstrate that they're not the racist vote suppressors and democracy foes that we plainly see.  The tell is that today they're uniformly fighting against the basic thing Dr. King stood for:  a multi-racial democracy.

Murjani Rawls at The Root has some advice for Republicans wishing to burnish their MLK cred today:

On M.L.K. Day Monday, there will be a lot of Republican lawmakers and congressional representatives posting the same variation of quotes. It’s either from the one I mentioned or from his “Strength To Love” sermon in 1963.  

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

It will be from the same cast of people actively working against voting rights legislation across the country, acting as though Jan. 6th is no big deal and further diluting what we learn with this “Critical Race Theory” movement. So, I will ask them for this holiday and others:

Just skip it. Take the day off.

Tell your intern to go ahead and delete that scheduled post. Maybe there’s a big WhatsApp chat you are all in, and you pick the quote to post. Put those notifications on silent. 

He goes on to offer some quotes from Dr. King that Republicans should consider using instead.  Leonard Pitts, Jr., also has more King quotes that would surely discomfit the white nationalist fascist Republican mob today.

Speaking of that Republican mob, Steven Monacelli checked them out at the recent Malignant Loser Nuremberg rally in Arizona.  Spoiler alert:  they're all loons:

One full day before Trump spoke to an estimated 15,000 die-hard Republicans in Arizona, a group of JFK Jr. obsessed QAnon fanatics arrived at the venue grounds here. They drove all the way from Dallas, Texas, where they’ve been holed up in a Hyatt hotel for over two months amid a series of failed prophecies that JFK Jr. would return from the dead. The first among them was Stephen Tenner, right hand man to the group’s leader Michael Protzman. “I’m the first person and only person,” Tenner said in a video posted on social media. “I’m the number one mofo.”

Tenner was later joined by Protzman and about two dozen members of this cultish group, whose months-long antics in Dallas have worried locals and drawn national attention. Protzman is a QAnon influencer who peddles a form of religious numerology known as “gematria,” which he infuses into his interpretations of QAnon theories. Protzman uses gematria to promote the idea that he is in direct contact with both the Kennedy family — which he believes are direct descendants of Jesus Christ — and members of the Trump inner circle. His group also trafficks in a wide range of outlandish conspiracy beliefs such as that long dead famous people such as Michael Jackson and JFK Jr. faked their deaths and are working with Donald Trump in secret to take down a global satanic pedophile cabal.

Protzman was not only at the rally, he was seated with the VIPs along with fellow conspiracy loon, the Mein Pillow guy, Mike Lindell.  There's lots more at the link, if you have the stomach.

For a broader set of reads, we recommend Infidel 753's link round-up, which covers a lot of ground, most beyond politics.  It's always an interesting and most comprehensive collection.

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/op eds.

Robin Givhan has a beautiful essay in the Washington Post, saying what so many of us feel now.  Here's a small sample:

"As the country waited for ballots to be counted, it was Biden — not the occupant of the Oval Office — who was reassuring people that this democracy was intact, that the system was working and that the center would hold. He was the voice of calm optimism in the midst of tumultuous times.

"When he became president-elect late Saturday morning, he did something far more herculean than accepting responsibility for a worsening pandemic and a struggling economy. He removed a terrible, suffocating weight from the back of this nation. For the more than 74 million Americans who voted for him — and surely even for some of those who did not — Biden’s election allowed this country to laugh, to dance and to breathe. He cracked open a space where the light could shine through. Indeed, his victory caused people to weep in joyful relief as they became aware of the heaviness that had afflicted their hearts, after they’d suddenly been relieved of it." 

Tim Alberta, in a long piece about "the election that broke the Republican Party," includes one facet of the election where a cowering party that was lashed to their cult leader's incompetence paid for it painfully:

Did we really think the president worked so diligently these past eight months to create an environment conducive to allegations of mass voter fraud, only to stop short of alleging mass voter fraud? Of course not. Even if the president had been swept in every swing state, and by big margins, he was always going to cry foul. That he lost such close contests — and lost them in a style so unfamiliar to so many voters — only made his reaction all the more inevitable. [snip]

To recap: The president scared his own voters away from voting by mail, resulting in lopsided Democratic margins when those ballots were counted; and Republican lawmakers in several key states refused to allow those ballots to be counted early, resulting in delays that created an early mirage of the president winning because the votes tallied first were those most favorable to him. Trump has good reason to resent those mail votes: They made the ballot box more accessible; they created the illusion that victory was possible; then they shattered that illusion in agonizing fashion, every incremental dump of returns amounting to a slow twist of the knife.

Fact:

 

Joe Biden will be the 1st candidate to win 51% of the vote against an incumbent president since... FDR.

— Jesse Lehrich (@JesseLehrich) November 8, 2020

 

Meanwhile, on the pandemic front,

The United States became the first nation worldwide since the pandemic began to surpass 10 million coronavirus infections, according to a Reuters tally on Sunday, as the third wave of the COVID-19 virus surges across the nation.

The grim milestone came on the same day as global coronavirus cases exceeded 50 million.

The United states has reported about a million cases in the past 10 days, the highest rate of infections since the nation reported its first novel coronavirus case in Washington state 293 days ago.

The country reported a record 131,420 COVID-19 cases on Saturday and has reported over 100,000 infections five times in the past seven days, according to a Reuters tally.

The U.S. latest reported seven-day average of 105,600 daily cases, ramped up by at least 29%, is more than the combined average for India and France, two of the worst affected countries in Asia and Europe.

Some good news, however, that's sure to amp up COVID Donnie's paranoia about the pandemic being used as a political tool against him:

Pfizer and partner BioNTech said Monday that their vaccine against Covid-19 was strongly effective, exceeding expectations with results that are likely to be met with cautious excitement — and relief — in the face of the global pandemic.

The vaccine is the first to be tested in the United States to generate late-stage data. The companies said an early analysis of the results showed that individuals who received two injections of the vaccine three weeks apart experienced more than 90% fewer cases of symptomatic Covid-19 than those who received a placebo. For months, researchers have cautioned that a vaccine that might only be 60% or 70% effective. 

The Phase 3 study is ongoing and additional data could affect results.

You may recall that Der Spiegel cover from 2017, with COVID Donnie holding the head of Lady Liberty that he'd just severed?  Here's their update:

German Der Spiegel’s take on outcome of #USElection2020 on right below.
Trump cover from 2017. pic.twitter.com/qTkCXVx7CK

— Theresa Fallon (@TheresaAFallon) November 7, 2020

 

If you haven't already been there -- first, shame on you! Now you can redeem yourself by going right to Infidel 753's link round- up for the best collection of links to interesting, informative, stimulating posts from around the Internet.