Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
NEW: White House says Treasury Dept. is "taking steps to resume efforts" to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill.
Press Sec. Psaki says the Biden admin. is "exploring ways to speed up that effort." pic.twitter.com/z7Jw5CqXP0
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) January 25, 2021
Can’t tell you how sweet it is to be highlighting good news instead of clown-car outrages!
Monday Evening Open Thread: Another Excellent Small, Symbolic StepPost + Comments (152)
"A cry for racial justice… will be deferred no longer"
In his inaugural address, President Joe Biden says a "rise of political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism" must be defeated https://t.co/hQBfBFbUvQ pic.twitter.com/eD0HCHbGib
— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) January 20, 2021
Ed Kilgore, at NYMag — “Biden Touting Equality Is Anything But Routine” :
… It’s easy to treat Biden’s assertion of the central importance of equality to the American experience as banal. Don’t we all at some level, conservatives and progressives alike, believe that “we are all created equal”?
Not during the administration that just left office, or for some years before, as white racial resentment, homophobia, hatred of nonwhite immigrants and refugees, and anti-feminism gradually gained a toehold and then a stronghold in one of our two major parties. While Trump made more extreme expressions of racism acceptable for the first time in decades, he was hardly the first apostle of anti-egalitarian backlash in recent years. The tea-party movement that formed in reaction to the Obama-Biden administration was violently hostile to any sort of redistribution of resources to promote equality, and many tea-party folk blamed the housing and financial crises of 2008 and the Great Recession that quickly followed on those people who lacked the moral fiber to take care of themselves. Some began to call themselves “constitutional conservatives” on the theory that limited government and property rights, not democracy and definitely not equality, were the eternal underpinnings of the Republic, as provided for by divinely inspired Founders.
While no one would call Donald Trump a “constitutional conservative,” he conquered the GOP by weaponing white grievances and marrying them to culture-war passions. The MAGA movement accepted as axiomatic that white Christians are the primary victims of discrimination these days; that recognition of racial injustice is “political correctness”; and that intolerance toward racists and other apostles of privilege represents a “cancel culture” incompatible with liberty…
The unity Biden seeks will depend on Republicans repudiating this lurch into the kind of authoritarian thinking necessary to restore the “American greatness” of the white Christian patriarchal society of the 1950s. Yes, my colleague Jonathan Chait is right that if Republicans eschew Trump’s hatefully divisive rhetoric and find some practical areas of bipartisan agreement, the tone in Washington can be improved to the point where armed gangs of MAGA rebels won’t be tempted to overthrow the government in an “uncivil war that pits red against blue,” as Biden put it in his Inaugural Address. But more fundamental progress is going to require unity not just in programs and projects but in fundamental values and a sense of what the country needs to do to live up to its promise. So long as the GOP views itself as a bulwark for denying equality on behalf of those who fear the loss of privilege, the “uncivil war” will never be more than a crisis away from resurgence…
Proof of concept, from some of the GOP’s leading lights:
True Color Open Thread: Hit Dogs Will HollerPost + Comments (146)
I’m ready to build back better. #Inauguration2021 #InaugurationDay pic.twitter.com/WYv5npbpnM
— Deb Haaland (@DebHaalandNM) January 20, 2021
‘The Embrace’: Boston Looks Ahead To MLK Memorial As Monuments Come Down Across UShttps://t.co/mZ9rzzPnZV pic.twitter.com/4RcVP9017Q
— WBZ | CBS Boston News (@wbz) January 18, 2021
I am aware that discussing Dr. King’s legacy is so very much Not My Place, but nominally I’d agree celebration is preferable to the alternative…
… “While the rest of the country is tearing down memorials to symbols that don’t represent us, Boston is building a memorial — a 22-foot, three-story high memorial — that represents who we want to be and who we want to be post-pandemic,” said King Boston Executive Director Imari Paris Jeffries. “That feels pretty darn exciting.”
‘The Embrace’ will stand at the site of the 1965 rally and march led by MLK on the Boston Common. Construction wouldn’t begin on site until March or April of 2022 because the bronze fabrication of the memorial takes about 18 months.
The memorial also celebrates King’s connection to Boston. Years before his iconic 1963 speech at the Lincoln Memorial, Boston was home to a young Martin Luther King Jr. He lived on Mass. Ave and studied at Boston University. It was there where he would earn a PhD in systematic theology and become Dr. King. Boston is also where he met Coretta Scott. For artist Hank Willis Thomas, the couple’s bond inspired the memorial that will rise in honor of their legacies…
“I think we as a city and a country have experienced an extreme amount of trauma together, it is this bonding experience we didn’t want and we never asked for and would never wish upon another generation. And the things that we’ve gotten to see and witness together has created this new urgency that I think resonates with every single person at least that’s in the Commonwealth,” said Paris Jeffries. “King’s notion of this garment of destiny and the Beloved Community resonate now more than it ever has.”…
But sometimes, the hypocrisy also needs to be called out:
Belated MLK Day Open Thread: The Tribute Vice Pays to VirtuePost + Comments (33)
this is what has not sunk in for the alt-realitists who like to imagine themselves overthrowing the government with a bunch of haphazardly assembled mentally defective radicalized internet goons. they are now very much The Enemy of a thing they cannot conceive. good luck. https://t.co/ickXq6qwRQ
— kilgore trout, brad r’s brother (@KT_So_It_Goes) January 11, 2021
I honestly hope Kilgore Trout is right:
AKSHULLY THAT IS AWESOME THAT IS WHAT WE WANTED NOW WE ARE *FIGHTING*
that is assuredly *not* what you wanted
if the feds had been interested in following along with the deluded ramblings of people who think JFK jr is secretly controlling the white hat deep state to combat a globalist illuminati cabal of child trafficking brain fluid chemists the events of 1/6 would not have occurred
but now due to the stroke of tactical genius that led to a lethal terrorist attack on the entire representative government watched by more people than the super bowl, they are very very very much interested, and with biden taking over will only become more interested
they’ve already lost their social media group therapy sessions. they can migrate and regroup but at the cost of more and more fragmentation and worse and worse opsec making it easier and easier for the feds to find them as they hop around
the whole thing is largely about a sense of belonging and community and the feeling that they are part of an enormous movement with a place in the ecosystem. that’s all shattered beyond repair. the fragments will sustain but at ever increasing peril and cost.
in a few weeks or months they will think of 1/5 as the glory days, the pinnacle of their achievements, the halcyon era when a president name dropped them & the normals thought they were glorified ufo weirdos, and wish to god they’d never crossed the rubicon on 1/6
they will remain violent maladjusted goons & mentally unwell delusionists, they will continue to act out violently, the problem will not simply go away. but the time of banding together as a unified force is already rapidly exiting the twilight.
Late Night Open Thread: The Deep State *Will* Have Its RevengePost + Comments (95)
His name is USCP Officer Eugene Goodman. Remember his name. He almost certainly saved lives on Wednesday.
My thanks, Officer Goodman. THANK YOU. https://t.co/DwvUqCkW8M
— Kristin Wilson (@kristin__wilson) January 10, 2021
Goddess forgive me, I suspect one difference between Officer Goodman and Officer Sicknick is that Goodman knew these thugs couldn’t be reasoned with. Per USA Today:
A Capitol Police officer is being hailed as a hero for drawing an angry mob away from the entrance to the Senate floor Wednesday as rioters smashed their way into the U.S. Capitol.
In viral video from the scene, the officer is seen glancing to his left and notices the unobstructed hallway to the Senate as he was chased up a flight of stairs. The officer, identified by CNN as Eugene Goodman, at first tried to block an open door before realizing he was alone and being pursued.
Goodman, armed with a baton, pushes the leader of the pack, a man wearing a black QAnon shirt later identified as Doug Jensen from Des Moines. Jensen was focused on Goodman and appeared not to notice the open hallway leading to the Senate chambers.
Jensen chased Goodman, who led him and the mob away from the Senate floor. The group, all white men, followed the Black officer into a group of police in a back corridor outside the Senate…
“As trump’s fascist mob ransacked the US Capitol, this brave USCP officer kept murderous rioters away from the Senate chamber and saved the lives of those inside. God bless him for his courage,” Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-N.J., said in a Twitter post Sunday.
The fallout came quickly for Goodman’s lead pursuer. Jensen, 41, was arrested by the FBI at 1 a.m. Saturday at his Iowa home and booked into the Polk County Jail. Jensen’s employer, Forrest & Associate Masonry in Des Moines, announced Friday that he had been fired….
The Trump Insurrection: Look for the <del>Helpers</del> HeroesPost + Comments (186)
Yesterday some dumbass tied a Confederate flag to the doors of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park in New York City. I’ve tried to find a picture of the flag tied to the doors to confirm my suspicion that the moron who did this is a Confederate navy aficionado.
Regardless, the person who did this is also historically illiterate. The only worse thing than a racist, anti-Semitic neo-Confederate is a historically illiterate one. Unfortunately, there were Jewish Americans who supported the Confederacy.
The most prominent Jewish Confederate was Judah P. Benjamin, who is pictured above. Benjamin, known as both the brains of the Confederacy and the Dark Prince of the Confederacy – the latter was, at the time it was used to refer to him, an anti-Semitic allusion by the Christian Confederates to Benjamin’s being Jewish – served as the Attorney General, Secretary of War, and Secretary of State of the Confederate States of America. That was after he served as a US Senator from Louisiana. Prior to that he was a Louisiana state legislator, a founder of the Illinois Railroad, and the owner of a plantation and 150 slaves until he sold both the plantation and the slaves in 1850. Benjamin also established and ran the Confederacy’s intelligence service, so in addition to everything else he was the Confederacy’s spymaster. After the Confederacy fell he escaped to England and became a Queen’s Coroner.
Another prominent Jewish Confederate was Raphael J. Moses. pictured above. He served in the Army of Northern Virginia as LTG James Longstreet’s Commissary Officer and held the rank of major. It fell to Major Moses to carry out the last order of the Confederacy: to take $40,000 in gold and silver bullion from the Confederate treasury to feed and provision defeated Confederate soldiers returning home from the war. Over a dozen of Moses’s family members also served in the Confederate military and his great grandfathers on both sides had served in the War of Independence. Moses, like Benjamin, was a plantation owner, though in Georgia. It was there that he was the first person to commercially grow peaches in Georgia.
There were, of course, other Jewish Confederates, as well as a small number of plantation and slave owning Jews in both the US south and in the Caribbean, though they were fortunately few in relation to their Christian counterparts. The definitive work on this topic is Eli Farber’s Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight.
America’s original sin of slavery was, unfortunately, interfaith, ecumenical, and non-denominational. And while the Confederate naval jack has largely become a general symbol of racism, hate, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia because these racists are too stupid to know what flag they’re flying, it is important to remember that while most Jewish Americans aren’t proud of our religious forebears unfortunate associations with the Confederacy and slavery, it doesn’t mean that we’re historically illiterate about it either.
We leave the last word to LTG William Tecumseh Sherman!
Open thread
