This is a day when cumulative stories are all pointing to how we are going backwards on equity, gender, and Democracy. Rather than the usual morality arguments on why all of them have bad sides, I need only present them side by side.
This is International Holocaust Rememberance Day.
Thanks to the school district in Tennessee who banned the book Maus recalling the horrors of the Holocaust. By the Banned in Boston Principal, those books I and II will now become the most widely read books by young and old alike.
The Holocaust was partly brought about by centuries of anti-Semitism in Europe, including blame for the Plague, of course. It was also brought about by the malinformation of racist Eugenics.
The Supreme Court chose this day to accept the suits against private Harvard and public North Carolina universities alleging that their affirmative action programs were discriminatory against Asian-American students. No mention on their legacy acceptances needed to fund the elite private universities.
Meanwhile, the University of California has been accepting an additional 20% of their freshman classes from China to help fund their campuses with high out-of-state tuitions. The expansion could all be California students had the State stepped up their steadily declining and almost disappearing funding.
The American Physical Society Leadership meeting session which I attended virtually this morning was about misinformation. For physicists, that is largely about climate change.
Another big story is about Justice Breyer’s retirement. Replacing him by a much needed black woman on the court will undoubtedly draw Republican opposition. This will not change the vote against affirmative action on the court however.
Blacks and women brings up another Supremes story, that Justice Clarence Thomas’ white wife has been an activist to overturn Biden’s election. Are Recusals or an Impeachment not in order? I back free speech for everybody, but the Court itself is supposed to have recusals when the conflicts of interest could cast doubt on its independence.
In one nice story, the Florida Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladago had to admit that vaccines work to prevent hospitalization and deaths. Remarkably, they are 95%-99% effective in preventing deaths. The Washington Post says that unvaccinated seniors are 50 times more likely to be hospitalized than vaccinated and boostered seniors. Florida Governor DeSantis is still asking for monoclonal antibodies which have been shown to be ineffective against the Omicron variant.
The potential Blitzkreig by Russia to Ukraine is also a family story of anti-Semitism. My father came from what was the Pale of Settlement on the Ukrainian border, now Moldova, where Jews were confined on Russia’s border. My father faced no ability for Jews to go beyond grade school, and being drafted into the Czar’s army. Lucky for me, he left. Is Russia entitled by history to retake lands in which it was such a cruel ruler? No way.
I’m guessing that Russia’s illegal foreign interference for Trump in the last two elections is why 62% of Republicans favor Putin over Biden. This is also backed by the Foxy malinformant Tucker Carlson. We recall that Trump illegally withheld hundreds of millions of military aid to Ukraine to blackmail Ukraine President Zelensky to say bad things about Hunter Biden. Trump was impeached for this. Those who think Trump would be tougher on Putin have forgotten what actually happened. Republican withdrawal of support when the United States should show unity against a foreign aggressor is very unpatriotic, and only encourages the enemy.
We salute 76 year old Neil Young for trying to get Spotify to remove the malinformation podcasts of Joe Rogan, and withdrawing his own music from Spotify. This is really a battle of the generations. Rogan is Spotify’s biggest podcast with 11 million followers, and who they contracted with for $111 million. According to CNN, Rogan’s Covid malinformation is: (1) Vaccination isn’t necessary for the young and healthy (it is); (2). Ivermectin is an effective treatment for Covid (it isn’t); and (3). People who have Covid face health risks from getting vaccinated (they don’t).
While racism is present in the Republican’s in the Senate blocking of the voting reform acts, and by Republican state’s voting restriction laws, some Republican state’s Gerrymandering plans are being declared unconstitutional in the courts. Let’s hope that those states give more representation to people of color, and that all of the rest of the states with racial Gerrymandering get their plans modified by the courts. The Supreme Court recently in 2013 threw out the required federal review of such states under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 claiming that it was no longer necessary, and demanded that Congress would have to act to bring such review back. The voter suppression acts and Gerrymandering of Republican states show how wrong they were.
This is really the Winter of our Discontents.
