Mikey Weinstein, of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, wrote an excellent open letter to the US Air Force Academy, pointing out that they’re reaping the consequences of allowing christian nationalists to pack the Air Force leadership.
The other night I was doing some google-whacking, looking for coverage regarding which of Trump’s advisors may have played an active role in talking him into the very bad idea that he could extend his time in office illegally.
Parler is a security disaster in progress.
Depending on how you count it, the numbers may not be exact. The records of what happened are not as good as they ought to be, for reasons that will become clear.
Of course, I have thoughts about today. In no particular order, with no particular organization, they are as follows.
The surveillance state has spent billions and billions of dollars building massive monitoring and data back-haul capabilities, with “fusion centers” that automate analytics and run pre-planned searches for stuff.
Impeach Trump twice.
WARNING: Violence
Surveillance videos of the bombing in Nashville are cropping up from all over. I’m able to keep a certain detachment from what’s happening by focusing my interest on the explosion and its effects, and hypothesizing how it was arranged.
Would you like to see a glimpse into the kind of embarrassing shit Americans are going to come up with as the climate crisis continues to bite? My prediction is: if you think our response to COVID-19 was lethally stupid, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
I have added another book to my recommended reading list [stderr] Nancy Isenberg’s White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. In the last few months, I have gone backward and forward through it, trying to make sense of how the facts it exposes fit with my historical understanding.
If you pay any attention to US history, you know that slavery and racism are one of the supporting institutions that have defined and shaped the United States. You cannot understand the United States without understanding slavery and racism. But, that understanding has always felt incomplete, to me; I knew there was more. Obviously, there are details, but what is the big picture?