Sunday School 6/6/21: Extra Credit

Let's dive in to the Extra Credit with Chuck Todd and his interviews with Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and Roy Blunt (R-MO) on Meet the Press. Warner was first, and was asked about cybersecurity. To a large degree, he echoed the thoughts of Sen. Angus King (I-ME), who was featured in yesterday's Sunday School. And so did Blunt - there wasn't a lot new there. 

The conversation around Blunt's opposition to a January 6th commission was interesting. He said he was never in the "I'll support it if it's bipartisan" crowd; rather, he felt that "we know what we need to do here" and that a commission would slow that effort down. There's a two-committee bipartisan report coming out next week, and, "we, I think, are going to be happy - I think you're going to be really pleased with the report you see." 

Blunt is "concerned we're losing faith in the election system" and "it's important to have a bipartisan belief that the election system does what it's supposed to do," and he was "pleased to see" that Sen. Joe Manchin (??-WV) also thinks "we need to move forward on election reforms."

Blunt said he "really can't analyze" whether Former Guy believes the nonsense he spews, but says that he had the right to take it to court. The courts didn't buy the argument, 

and so, we moved forward, and we continue to move forward. I do think President Trump is an incredibly popular figure in our party, certainly a political figure in my state. I'd like to see him get focused on the 2022 elections. There are plenty of things for Republicans to be talking about besides the election process itself...

Boy, if this is how the Rs define moving forward, we're in a boatload of trouble if they regain the majorities in the midterms.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on Face the Nation with John Dickerson; cybersecurity came up there as well. She sees the international community pulling together to address the issue, including asking countries like Russia to provide intelligence and law enforcement support. It's a test, she says, to see how involved the governments might be with the criminals perpetrating the attacks.

On the insurrection and a commission, she says we "somehow need to look into" what happened, that "it was a terrible stain on our democracy," and that our "really terrific system...was tested on that day."

... And so, we have a tradition of these citizens, these elders, if you will, of the country to help us through times like this. The problem right now is there isn't enough trust in Washington to get this done in a way that everybody will- will trust the process. We do need to know what happened on January 6.

Dickerson pushed back, pointing out that the Rs blocked the commission. Rice said the problem is, there's not enough trust in Congress,

because we have constant discussions about how am I going to simply push you aside and do what I want to do. So let's just recognize that we are not in 2004 when the 9/11 Commission was constituted and worked and try to find a way to get to a set of answers about what happened on- on January 6th. I would prefer that this were not the case, but maybe we have to think about ways to do this outside of our electoral bodies.

And on how we teach American history, including the Tulsa Massacre, and the things that led to the civil rights movement, and yes, also American exceptionalism, Rice started her answer with this:

American history was in part shaped at its very beginning by this birth defect of slavery. Do I wish that the anti-slave forces had won out? Absolutely. But they didn't. And then we had after the Emancipation, we had a Reconstruction which gave way to Jim Crow.

She said she was eight before her family could go to a restaurant or to the movies, and she was 12 before she ever had a white classmate. 

So, yes, I know America's troubled past and that troubled past continues to have an impact going forward on how we see each other. When I hear the talk about structural racism, it really gives me pause and it gives me pause because it doesn't tell me what to do.

She's talking about things like medical outcomes for people of color vs. whites, which she said "clearly are still disproportionate." And how our education system "is really serving poor kids and minority kids very badly." And how minorities and the poor don't have the choice to move to a better district, with a better house, or go to private schools like people of means can.

I want kids to know about Tulsa. I also want them to know what that Black community did to overcome that horrible massacre. I want them to know about '63 in Birmingham, but I want them to know that the mayor of Birmingham today is a Black man who grew up in a poor community. So I want them to see the forward progress of America as well on these issues. And I want us as a country to do it together because I don't want this to be black against white, my weaponization of my identity against yours.  

Dickerson asked for clarification on structural racism, asking if it's "not that it doesn't exist, but that the term itself doesn't get you as far as you would like?" She said she's stopped using the term "because I don't know what it means anymore," and that it's become a barrier.

Do I think that there are impacts of race that are clear in American life? Absolutely. But, you know, the other problem with it is it sounds so big and impenetrable, as if we have to jettison the system somehow. And with all of its problems, having been all over the world and having seen how people deal with difference, I will tell you that America deals with difference better than any country I've ever visited. 

And that's at least the third time in a past couple of weeks that I've seen someone say that we're better than the rest of the world when it comes to this kind of stuff. And yet, I can't imagine Condi Rice saying that 'being better than some really awful people' is good enough for America - can you? 

See you around campus. And, by the way, I hope you're vaccinated.

Sunday School 6/6/21

And, we're back at it, plodding our way through the Sunday Shows. 

Let's start with John Dickerson and his chat with Sen. Joe Manchin (D, kinda - WV) on Face the Nation. Dickerson wasted no time, starting out by saying Dems, including President Biden, think Manchin is "standing in the way" of their agenda. Manchin disagreed, noting that everyone knows he's "always tried to work in a bipartisan way" and he said "Let's unite this country. We don't need to be divided any further."

To that end, he doesn't want Dems to go it alone, even if others in his party think Manchin is "basically putting all the negotiating leverage in the hands of" the ten Rs Biden needs to get past the filibuster. Rather, he says, they must "work within the framework," adding

There's been seven brave Republicans that have spoken out. They have voted, whether it be impeachment or the wrongdoings of the president, whether it be for a commission. We have to continue to keep striving to make sure that we can get to that ten. And that's why we're called the deliberate body. We keep working towards that goal. 

In the business world, we had 'analysis paralysis' getting in the way, and in the Manchin world, we have 'prohibitive deliberative' thinking getting in the way. Take voting rights.

Manchin said the For the People Act is way too big and has too much stuff in it that the Rs will never go along with. On the other hand, he said it's appropriate to work on the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which he thinks "truly does protect the voting rights." It's good, but needs to be more bipartisan, and with Rs like Alaska's Sen. Lisa Murkowski on board, deliberating will make it better and something the Rs can vote for, too. 

Dickerson wondered, as do all the rest of us, why on earth the Rs would go along with anything that endangers the successes they've had at the state level implementing restrictive voting bills. 

Well, because, you see, it's like this.

John, they achieved what they've achieved before they won - thinking they had to make changes. Why in the world would they want to make changes that basically subvert- because I can tell you what goes around, comes around. It could be more damaging to them too. The bottom line is the fundamental purpose of- of our democracy is the freedom of our elections. If we can't come to an agreement on that, God help us, John. And someone's got to fight for this. And we've got to say, listen, the divided country that we're in today, the insurrection that we saw on January the 6th, if we don't try to heal that, if we don't make every effort and go beyond the call of duty, then what are we and who are we? We've been known to go around the world and promote democracy and observe other elections. What kind of credibility do you think we have in doing that today? So, I'm going to fight for this and I think the Republicans will fight for this and understand we must come together on a voting rights bill in a bipartisan way. You can't divide our country further by thinking you've given leeway to one or the other. 

Is it me, or is Manchin the Senate's Nero, fiddling around the margins of bipartisanship, while watching the "fundamental purpose of our democracy" go up in flames?

Down the hall in the CNN State of the Union classroom, Jake Tapper talked with Maine Senator Angus King, who's an Independent but maybe more a Dem than Manchin. King is on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and he's also co-chair of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission.

King thinks "we have been a cheap date" over the past decade or two, because we haven't really responded strongly to cyber attacks. Our adversaries need to know that "they will pay a price, there will be a cost" for attacking the US or our infrastructure, but "thus far, they haven't really felt that." And, he cautioned, "We keep getting wakeup calls, and we keep not waking up." The problem? Most of the risk - "85% or 90% of the target space," is in the private sector.

...  If one person at one desktop in the operations center of a pipeline system bites on a phishing e-mail or opens an attachment they shouldn't, then we're sunk. So, it's -- this is a -- it's a cliché to say all of government, but this is all of everybody has got to be in on this.

There may be a need for legislation to move things along. He says "we need essentially an entirely new relationship" between the feds and the private sector, even as he admits that talking about "the 'relationship between private sector and federal government' is an is kind of an oxymoron." Somehow, we must build trust.

Speaking of trust, King understands Biden's desire to have a "decent" relationship with Putin and Russia. That said, he's pretty sure they'll talk about cyber when they get together in ten days. And, we need them to crack down on bad guys within their borders, just as we would if "we had an international bank robbery outfit in Richmond, Virginia, that was robbing banks in Europe..." we'd be all over that, and he's right.

This interview, too, steered toward voting rights. King's been working on the For the People Act; it's in the Rules Committee, where he's a member. Tapper mentioned Sen. Manchin's lack of support, as well concerns of other Dems, both in the Senate and at the state level, that the bill goes too far. King agrees; he's made Schumer and Sen. Amy Klobuchar aware that there "are clearly some things" he thinks need to be negotiated.

 -- but the guts of it, Jake, is voting rights. It has a lot of other pieces. It has -- for example, it has public financing of elections. It has a lot of other pieces in it. But the important part for me is protecting voting rights. And I think that's becoming more urgent by the day, based upon what's going on around in the states.

King realizes, even if other people aren't talking about it as much, that changes that would allow a state legislature to "essentially overturn the results of an election" are extremely important. 

Remember, Raffensperger stood up in Georgia and said, no, we have certified these elections, the governor certified them. We're worried that -- or I'm worried that they're going to turn that over and say, OK, a Republican legislature can say, we think there was fraud in Fulton County, and, therefore, we're going to certify a different set of electors. That's really dangerous. 

Finally, Tapper asked him whether he believes the Republicans "negotiate in good faith or are just obstructionists. What are they doing today? Are they negotiating in good faith? Do you support eliminating the filibuster?" I love his answer:  "Well, it's kind of schizophrenic."

He pointed to some things that are being done in a bipartisan manner, such as a bill designed to "help us compete with China." He said those negotiations have been completely bipartisan, and while it stalled before the Memorial Day break, he's hopeful they can get it finalized.

But I was thinking about that bill... If the bill had had Joe Biden's name on it, we wouldn't even be talking about it, I don't think. I mean, it's -- that's sort of where we have gotten this.

The bill he's working on started with a conversation between Schumer and Sen. Todd Young (R-IN), and is working "through regular order" with committees and amendments and whatnot.

But then, on other areas, it's been -- as you say, it's been pretty well stalled. I think the infrastructure bill is a good test, because, listen, there's not a lot of policy there. This is just numbers. It's helping the country. And we ought to be able to find a resolution on that. If we can't, that spells trouble. 

And is King ready to scrap the filibuster? 

Not in general. I'm very reluctant about it. But if it comes down to voting rights and the rights of Americans to go to the -- go to the polls and select their leaders vs. the filibuster, I will choose democracy.

That's where we're going to leave it. I'll have Condi Rice and maybe a couple more senators in tomorrow's Extra Credit. 

See you around campus. 

My Middle-Aged White Lady Perspective: Victim Blaming

I'm going to step into another fray, I'm sure, but that's OK.  Tonight, instead of politics, let's talk about political correctness. Specifically the kind that relates to bad things that most often happen to young women, and what we are or are not allowed to say about those bad things to young women.

Date rape and sexual assault, with or without intentional ingestion of alcohol or drugs. Sexting. Revenge porn.  Nude photos shared without permission. There are probably more but these are the most frequent situations that I see where what was once known as sage advice has now become victim blaming.

• Example: suggesting to young women that the biggest thing they can do to protect themselves is to not get drunk at a party, or certainly that they not get so drunk as to not know what's going on.
• Example: suggesting to young women - even tweens -- that they should not take sexually explicit pictures of themselves. And they should not send any such pictures, should they fail to listen to the first part. To anyone. Even friends. Even the cute kid in study hall. Never to the cute kid in study hall. 
• Example: suggesting that, if you're old enough to make your own decisions (or if you have no advisers helping you make good decisions, or if you have bad advisers helping you), you shouldn't put nude or semi-nude or explicit pictures into photo-storing websites, even ones run by reputable companies.
• Example: suggesting that you don't walk home alone at night, or take shortcuts down dark alleys, or do any of the other things we know are stupid when we see them on scary movies. 

I'm not sure how we got to the point where this kind of advice, the kind that caring parents readily gave their daughters, from an early age, is now considered to be victim-blaming.  From my middle-aged white lady perspective, it would be neglectful at the very least if parents - mom and dad, two moms, two dads, doesn't matter - didn't have these heartfelt conversations with their daughters, regularly.

I heard my generation's version of this, in elementary school and high school, the message increasing in specificity as I got older. I heard it at college, where we were all given rape whistles as part of our welcome kits. I heard it at work, about not walking to the parking lot alone. I heard it from friends when we were out, about not ditching the group and leaving with someone. I heard it from my older brothers, about not being stupid. And when I didn't listen and was stupid, my friends got on my case, as I got on theirs when they were stupid. Because we knew that we were our own best defense, and we weren't afraid to remind each other of that.  

In the modern world, when date rape, sexual assault, sexting gone wrong, revenge porn, or hacking of personal photos happen, and perpetrators are identified, they go through the system and are punished if found guilty. The victims, they are punished no matter what. 

In an ideal world, though, these things wouldn't happen at all, because personal privacy and boundaries would be respected, and no one would think it was reasonable to forcibly take things that did not belong to them, or things that were not offered freely and clearly without chemical interference, and so on. And there wouldn't be a need to remind young women to protect themselves, to be their own best defense. 

But we don't live in an ideal world. We live in a world where these kinds of acts are all too common, and where real victim-blaming occurs in the name of finding justice. Where paparazzi are ever more boldy going where no man has gone before to snap the 'gotcha' shot of a lifetime. Where careers are built on leaked sex tapes. 

Where men, feeling guilty about looking at stolen pictures of breasts, buttocks and vaginas, assuage their guilt by trying to donate money to a prostate cancer charity (always being true to their school, if you will), and where we learned today, stars and wannabe stars under the age of 18 have had nude photos stolen, potentially subjecting countless voyeurs to child pornography charges.  (The charity rejected the money, by the way; and there are lots of scared boys and men out there trying to delete the pictures they downloaded before they get in real trouble).

Protect yourself. The best thing you can do is control your own destiny as much as possible, because no one else is going to do that for you. 

That's not blaming. That's good advice. 

Future Shock

S Drummond photo

Updated, March 15, 2014

I wrote this post, about the future of personal computers, five years ago this month.  I thought of it earlier this week when I was shoveling snow for almost two hours straight. Even for me, that was a little too much. 

So, in addition to what's below, I'd ask my modern computer to put some kind of force field up around my house as soon as we had six or eight inches of snow on the ground, to keep us from getting any more.  And to open up the force field and let a light dusting fall, when the snow on the ground gets too dirty to enjoy.

And, of course, to have the snow melt at just the right time, before I can't stand it any longer.