E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—Why is only one side in the gun culture war required to show respect?
You have perhaps heard the joke about the liberal who is so open-minded that he can’t even take his own side in an argument.
What’s less funny is that on gun control, liberals (and their many allies who are moderate, conservative and nonideological) have been told for years that if they do take their own side in the argument, they will only hurt their cause.
Supporters of even modest restrictions on firearms are regularly instructed that their ardent advocacy turns off Americans in rural areas and small towns. Those in favor of reforming our firearms laws are scolded as horrific elitists who disrespect a valued way of life.
And as the mass killings continue, we are urged to be patient and to spend our time listening earnestly to the views of those who see even a smidgen of action to limit access to guns as the first step toward confiscation. Our task is not to fight for laws to protect innocents, but to demonstrate that we really, honestly, truly, cross-our-hearts, positively love gun owners and wouldn’t for an instant think anything ill of them.
What is odd is that those with extreme pro-gun views — those pushing for new laws to allow people to carry just about anytime, anywhere — are never called upon to model similar empathy toward children killed, the mourning parents left behind, people in urban neighborhoods suffering from violence, or the majority of Americans who don’t own guns.
Katha Pollitt at The Nation writes—Has the NRA Finally Met Its Match?
I was all set to write a column about the paralysis of progressives around guns: how even the ghastliest school shootings rouse few of us to more than hand-wringing and despair. After each massacre, I was planning to say, we go through the motions, writing letters to the editor, making donations to gun-control groups and politicians who promise to fight to stem the tide, but, except for the most dedicated activists, our involvement is pretty small-bore and low-key. The Million Mom March was the last major national mobilization, and that was back in 2000. A majority of Americans support gun control, but the passion—and the money, and Congress—is with the National Rifle Association.
The students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, aren’t having any of that. Survivors of a horrific rampage by Nikolas Cruz, a former fellow student who murdered 17 and wounded more than a dozen, they’re speaking out—screaming out—in a way we haven’t seen before, confronting the politicians who have failed them. [...]
Maybe the kids will save us in the end—and not a moment too soon. Because too many of us well-meaning liberal/progressive adults have been cowed by the gun lobby. We’ve resigned ourselves to quasi-defeat and accepted the NRA’s framing, the mythological sanctity of “gun rights.” So we speak of “responsible” gun owners. Proud rural folk taught to shoot by Granddad. “Commonsense” gun laws. Respect for the Second Amendment. We say, “We don’t want to take away anyone’s guns.”
Julia Carrie Wong at The Guardian writes—Florida students have turned social media into a weapon for good:
[...] in the week since Nikolas Cruz walked into Heather’s school with an AR-15 and shot 17 people dead, the teenagers whose lives were upended by the shooting have used social media to upend this country’s ritualistic response to mass shootings. They have taken to Twitter and Snapchat and Instagram to do what teenagers do so well: make adults and our tolerance for an intolerable status quo look dumb and old.
This is social media at its best. From the Arab Spring to the Ferguson uprising to the shooting in Parkland, social media has been a cudgel for participants in real life events to wield against the ossified frameworks that give shape to our political discourse.
The discourse around mass shootings in the US prior to last week was well and truly ossified. As the Boston Globe illustrated with a front page column, articles about mass shootings can basically be written in advance. We all knew that the “thoughts and prayers” were coming; we all knew that the NRA would lay low, that politicians would invoke mental illness, and we all felt that nothing would ultimately change.
It took teenagers with smartphones and the guileless profanity of youth confronted with injustice to jostle us out of that studied complacency.
Michael Ian Black at The New York Times writes—The Boys Are Not All Right:
I used to have this one-liner: “If you want to emasculate a guy friend, when you’re at a restaurant, ask him everything that he’s going to order, and then when the waitress comes … order for him.” It’s funny because it shouldn’t be that easy to rob a man of his masculinity — but it is.
Last week, 17 people, most of them teenagers, were shot dead at a Florida school. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School now joins the ranks of Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Columbine and too many other sites of American carnage. What do these shootings have in common? Guns, yes. But also, boys. Girls aren’t pulling the triggers. It’s boys. It’s almost always boys.
America’s boys are broken. And it’s killing us.
The brokenness of the country’s boys stands in contrast to its girls, who still face an abundance of obstacles but go into the world increasingly well equipped to take them on.
Richard Wolffe at The Guardian writes—Marco Rubio almost got away with his routine. Then he met Cameron Kasky:
Marco Rubio is a very talented politician. He walked into an arena full of 7,000 Floridians who were determined to heckle him for siding with the National Rifle Association (NRA) for his entire career.
But within minutes of talking, he earned some respect. He didn’t stop the heckling, but he did his very best impression of a sincere man who honestly wanted to keep children safe, if only there weren’t so many complications to this whole lawmaking thing. [...]
He offered up some token concessions that would do not very much at all to stop the massacres: raising the age you could buy an assault weapon, but not banning them. Better background checks, but not universal ones. Stopping the sale of bump stocks, which played no part in the bloodshed at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school.
With ample charm and empathy, he almost got away with it. Until he met a 17-year-old student who was just as talented as him: Cameron Kasky, who survived the shooting by huddling with his brother in a classroom.
Sarah Jones at The New Republic writes—Whitewashing Trump Country. How the media erases people of color from rural communities:
Rural America is white and in love with Donald Trump, according to reports. Since 2016 it has been depicted as the nation’s one true bastion of Trump support. A 2016New Yorker piece announced that West Virginia, “the heart of Trump country,” had “practically no immigrants.” The state’s immigrant population actually increased at rates higher than the national average from 2010 to 2014, but media coverage of West Virginia and other Trump-friendly states typically did not include such details. In the hands of parachuting reporters, rural America became a frighteningly white place, devoid of people of color. [...]
There have been a few notable exceptions to the typical safari tour of Trump’s America. W. Kamau Bell filmed an episode of United Shades of America with black coal miners in eastern Kentucky. The AP has run two stories set in North Carolina’s most racially diverse rural county, Robeson County. But old stereotypes die hard, as black Kentuckians told The Washington Post in 2017. “When someone hears ‘Appalachia,’ the first thing that pops into their head isn’t an African American face, ever,” said Shaylan Clark of Lynch, Kentucky. In the press, the prototypical Appalachian still looks like a white man in Carhartt and coal miner’s helmet.
No one is disputing the reality of racism in red states. But the Trump-loving blue collar worker doesn’t represent rural America, which is composed of a collection of communities. While swathes of rural America are indeed mostly white, rural communities have always been home to black and Native Americans, and they also draw growing immigrant populations. Coverage that connects rural America so frequently to Trump and to the racial resentment that placed him in office is coverage that can whitewash. Not only does it obscure the experiences and activism of people of color and their allies, it reinforces rather than rebuts white supremacist narratives about rural people and places. Contrary to what the media might have you believe, the fight to save rural America is one aspect of the fight for racial justice.
Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Daily News writes—Pols blocking citizens on Facebook, Twitter is our Orwellian present:
The rise of social media — especially Facebook and Twitter — once seemed to offer a new opportunity for elected officials and other leaders to connect directly, and more frequently, with their constituents, but like many promises of the Internet age it hasn’t exactly worked out that way. Increasingly, politically active citizens complain that officials who have been limiting old-fashioned in-person contact, like town hall meetings, are now embracing newfangled methods where voters find themselves electronically blocked — sometimes accidentally, sometimes intentionally.
In what until this week was Pennsylvania’s 6th Congressional District in Philadelphia’s far western suburbs, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Pennsylvania has been probing multiple complaints that GOP Rep. Ryan Costello has been blocking constituents from the congressman’s official Facebook page for fairly mundane political complaints, like calling out Costello’s campaign contributions from Comcast. Costello’s spokeswoman told my colleague Holly Otterbein that “his Facebook page has included a clearly stated policy of engagement.”
Nationally, episodes of powerful pols blocking everyday citizens have been even more outrageous. Some constituents in Arkansas reported receiving actual “cease-and-desist” letters from Sen. Tom Cotton, whose spokesman acknowledged the letters but insisted they were rare and only sent in the case of a perceived threat. Even President Trump — whose preferred mode of communication is clearly Twitter — is under fire for blocking ordinary citizens who’ve dared to disagree with him. Seven Twitter users have sued the president, claiming he’s violated their First Amendment rights by blocking their access to public communications from the commander-in-chief.
Thor Benson at In These Times writes—From Whole Foods to Amazon, Invasive Technology Controlling Workers Is More Dystopian Than You Think:
You’ve been fired. According to your employer’s data, your facial expressions showed you were insubordinate and not trustworthy. You also move your hands at a rate that is considered substandard. Other companies you may want to work for could receive this data, making it difficult for you to find other work in this field.
That may sound like a scenario straight out of a George Orwell novel, but it’s the future many American workers could soon be facing.
In early February, media outlets reported that Amazon had received a patent for ultrasonic wristbands that could track the movement of warehouse workers’ hands during their shifts. If workers’ hands began moving in the wrong direction, the wristband would buzz, issuing an electronic corrective. If employed, this technology could easily be used to further surveil employees who already work under intense supervision.
Whole Foods, which is now owned by Amazon, recently instituted a complex and punitive inventory system where employees are graded based on everything from how quickly and effectively they stock shelves to how they report theft. The system is so harsh it reportedly causes employees enough stress to bring them to tears on a regular basis.
UPS drivers, who often operate individually on the road, are now becoming increasingly surveilled. Sensors in every UPS truck track when drivers’ seatbelts are put on, when doors open and close and when the engines start in order to monitor employee productivity at all times.
The technology company Steelcase has experimented with monitoring employees’ faces to judge their expressions.
Adam Minter at Bloomberg writes—The Small-Rocket Revolution. As entering orbit gets cheaper, the possibilities are almost limitless:
When SpaceX's 230-foot Falcon Heavy blasted off on Feb. 6, it became a global sensation. But a much quieter launch three days earlier may turn out to be more important. That's when a 31-foot rocket known as the SS-520-5 took off from Japan's Uchinoura Space Center. It's the smallest rocket ever to place an object into Earth orbit -- and it could be a harbinger of big changes to come.
For decades, getting anything into space has been risky, expensive and time-consuming. Even SpaceX commonly faces delays and accidents, and its reusable rockets can take months to press back into service. In the past few years, though, dozens of other companies have been trying to develop diminutive rockets that could reduce the cost and risk of satellite launches. If they succeed, they just might transform the space business.
David Adler at The New Republic writes—Right-Wing Populism Can’t Fix Globalization. How yesterday’s champions of economic nationalism became today’s servants of the global elite:
Trump’s term in office may have begun with a noisy ejection from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but his big promise of protectionism has been mostly smoke and mirrors. A campaign trail attack on China for its “rape” of American workers has softened to praise for President Xi Jinping—a “very special man,” in Trump’s words—and $250 billion in bilateral business agreements. An attack on Wall Street for “getting away with murder” has turned into a generous program of regulatory rollback in support of a “devastated” finance industry. And the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 slashed the corporate tax rate from 35 to just 21 percent—a generous invitation to international capital, not a challenge to it.
But what about in the domestic economy? Has the Trump administration drained the swamp to give voice to the American worker?
Quite the opposite. The walls of the White House are padded thick with special interests—far more than two decades ago, when Bill Clinton first pushed the Third Way agenda. The administration has eliminated rules against lobbyists entering the White House, and it has eliminated the publication of the visitors’ logs that held these lobbyists accountable to the public. “Do you have a regulation that we should put on a list to eliminate?” the White House regularly asks lobbyists. “Is there something that is impeding you from growing?”
Gigi Sohn and Amina Fazullah at Wired write—Ajit Pai’s Plan Will Take Broadband Away From Poor People:
Created during the Reagan administration and expanded during George W. Bush's presidency, Lifeline historically applied only to landline, and then mobile, phone service. The 2016 FCC modernization established structures for more efficient administration and mechanisms to spur competition among providers. It mandated the creation of a National Lifeline Eligibility Verifier system to ensure that only those eligible to receive Lifeline do so. And it carefully began to shift the Lifeline subsidy to include broadband internet access.
These efforts elicited vociferous dissent from then-commissioner, now FCC chair Ajit Pai, who has portrayed the Lifeline program and the people who benefit from it as hopelessly corrupt. Now he is proposing to make changes that will, for all intents and purposes, destroy the program. He aims to severely reduce both the supply of and demand for Lifeline-supported services. [...]
Under the guise of reducing what the FCC recently described as “waste, fraud, and abuse that undermines the integrity of the program and limits its effectiveness,” Pai has introduced a series of bureaucratic hurdles that will ultimately serve to discourage low-income Americans from signing up for Lifeline. What will most reduce demand, however, are his proposals to place a hard cap on the Lifeline budget and reconsider the $2.25 billion budget passed in 2016.
Chauncey DeVega at Salon writes—Russian trolls, fake news and provocateurs: That’s been Trump’s method all along. Mueller’s indictments confirm my “wrestling heel” theory: Trump’s a master showman who rigged the whole spectacle:
Because they were looking in the wrong places for answers, most of the chattering class were surprised by Trump's victory. I was not one of those voices. On national radio and TV, as well as here at Salon and elsewhere, I tried to sound the alarm about the high likelihood that Trump would win the 2016 presidential election. I was accused of being "hysterical," "too extreme" and overly "fatalistic," as well as "underestimating" the character of the Republican Party's voters and the American people. I was told I did not understand how "the system" worked. [...]
A year into his chaotic administration, I now offer a prediction about what will happen as Mueller continues to tighten his legal noose around Trump's White House.
It will soon become clear that Donald Trump, his inner circle and other allies actively conspired with Russian agents -- either directly or indirectly -- to steal the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton and the American people. This conspiracy involved a quid pro quo arrangement for information and policies favorable to Russian interests. Trump and his inner circle have also likely been personally enriched by Russian interests for being sympathetic to the latter's desires. Evidence will also indicate that Russian meddling in the American voting system was more extensive and effective than originally reported. The evidence will also show that Trump and his inner circle obstructed justice to derail the investigation into the Russian scandal.
But Donald Trump will not be impeached for his crimes. Nor will he resign. If he chooses to run in 2020, Trump will win again.
Jill Abramson at New York magazine’s “The Cut” writes—Do You Believe Her Now? With new evidence that Clarence Thomas lied to get onto the Supreme Court, it’s time to talk seriously about impeachment:
[...] Thomas, as a crucial vote on the Supreme Court, holds incredible power over women’s rights, workplace, reproductive, and otherwise. His worldview, with its consistent objectification of women, is the one that’s shaping the contours of what’s possible for women in America today, more than that of just about any man alive, save for his fellow justices.
And given the evidence that’s come out in the years since, it’s also time to raise the possibility of impeachment. Not because he watched porn on his own time, of course. Not because he talked about it with a female colleague — although our understanding of the real workplace harm that kind of sexual harassment does to women has evolved dramatically in the years since, thanks in no small part to those very hearings. Nor is it even because he routinely violated the norms of good workplace behavior, in a way that seemed especially at odds with the elevated office he was seeking. It’s because of the lies he told, repeatedly and under oath, saying he had never talked to Hill about porn or to other women who worked with him about risqué subject matter.
Lying is, for lawyers, a cardinal sin. State disciplinary committees regularly institute proceedings against lawyers for knowingly lying in court, with punishments that can include disbarment. Since 1989, three federal judges have been impeached and forced from office for charges that include lying. The idea of someone so flagrantly telling untruths to ascend to the highest legal position in the U.S. remains shocking, in addition to its being illegal. (Thomas, through a spokesperson, declined to comment on a detailed list of queries.)
Thomas’s lies not only undermined Hill but also isolated her.