Evidence

It’s bizarre how often Americans are forced to prove themselves.

You must have a full-time job to prove that you are worthy of health care.

You must take on crippling debt to prove that you deserve a college education.

If you’re a woman, you must prove that you understand your own body.

If you’re an immigrant, you must prove that you love this country better than people who are born here.

If you’re homeless, you must prove that you are drug-free to get housing (even if the exact opposite approach works better).

It goes on and on. But you’ll be glad to know that there are exceptions to all this proving. 

For example, if you’re a lunatic millionaire racist who led the country into unprecedented disaster, you deserve another chance.

Also, if you’re a toddler in Missouri, you can openly carry a gun in the street. We trust you.

Yes, Americans seem like a skeptical bunch, always demanding proof. But they are actually quite discerning about what requires evidence.

For example, most Americans emphatically believe there is a man in the sky who controls the universe, despite the fact that he has never revealed himself.

They are mixed, however, on the whole concept of climate change, despite vast amounts of solid data obtained over decades 

They may or may not believe that vaccines cause autism, or that covid exists, or that JFK is actually alive and working to overthrow a vast conspiracy run by lizard people. Really, millions of Americans believe that last one.

And still the contradictions mount.

Consider that many people think Biden stole the election (despite the absence of evidence), but these same individuals refuse to believe that giving people money or free food helps alleviate poverty (despite an abundance of evidence).

Of course, it doesn’t help that we are deeply suspicious of how poor people spend their cash, even while bursting with admiration for wealthy jerks who blow obscene amounts of money on egotistic endeavors and grotesque trivialities. There is quick judgment for what a poor person puts in her grocery cart, but foot-kissing praise for billionaires who spend the equivalent of Denmark’s GDP on themselves.

Other beliefs similarly defy reason.

For example, a high percentage of Americans believe that racism is dead, except if it’s directed at white people. But they also believe in blatant racist stereotypes so strongly that it affects public policy.

Yes, American life is a strange combination of superstition, illogical thinking, and skewed beliefs that are mixed with vociferous demands for objective proof that is usually ignored.

For many of us, there will never be enough evidence to change our minds. 

And that’s a fact.

Swing Your Partner

For many of us, the first time we experienced sustained physical contact with a member of the opposite gender was in elementary school, during gym class. But it was not a thrill. It was awkward as hell. Because we were square dancing.

Yes, for decades, gym classes across America regularly took breaks from making kids run laps or humiliate themselves on the rope climb. Instead, garrulous gym teachers would shout out commands and force children to do-se-do and bow to their partners.

Everybody — and I mean everybody without a single exception — hated it.

We were told that square dancing taught coordination and cooperation while providing physical exercise. But like a lot of things we were taught in school, this was total bullshit.

It turns out that square dancing was crammed into public schools for exactly one reason. This southern-pride tradition was thrust into the curriculum as “a weapon of white supremacy against an anti-Semitic jazz dance conspiracy.”

To which I say, “Dude, what the actual fuck?”

Well, it turns out that a century ago, fabled businessman and noted bigot Henry Ford heard jazz, and he promptly declared it “a force for moral decay.” Ford, like virtually all rich white guys throughout history, hated young people having fun, especially if there was a possibility of the races intermingling. And the jazz halls provided exactly that opportunity. 

Ford believed that jazz’s “sly suggestion, the abandoned sensuousness of sliding notes, are of Jewish origin.” But in addition to being weird and anti-Semitic, this statement is also factually wrong.

Black people invented jazz. In fact, they also invented square dancing (which Ford did not know), but white people took it over in an act of appropriation “that’s repeated every generation since with blues, rock, rap and countless other black innovations.”

Of course, Ford hated black people too, and he believed that square dancing was “more white and more gentile [and] would make people more moral again.” So the auto magnate “sparked a national movement by pouring a small fortune into revitalizing square dancing in the 1920’s, decades after it was abandoned by American pop culture.”

Ford’s main motivation for doing this, in the words of historians, was because “he was creepy and racist and hated Jewish people.”

Over the decades, square dancing took hold in the nation’s schools, and in the 1980s, it was declared the national dance of America. Ford had succeed in creating “a vision of a racially homogenous future using a fable about an America that never existed.”

Thus we have the disturbing origin story of a loathsome activity that traumatized generations of school kids. 

But it’s more than that.

It is proof that nothing is neutral when it comes to our public schools. There is a reason behind everything.

Considering that white supremacy influenced gym class, it’s absurd to believe there is an objective way to teach anything in school.

Conservatives know this. That’s why they insist that schools are indoctrinating kids simply by telling them facts. It’s why parents threaten physical violence if racism is ever mentioned in class. It’s why politicians eliminate AP courses because they supposedly enforce a left-wing agenda. It’s why teachers can’t say gay.

Conservatives have “framed a crusade against inclusive learning plans as intending to protect white students — and even adult employees — from feeling discomfort or guilt." 

In truth, conservatives “are deeply invested in upping the hysterics and gutting enlightened education in their effort to create ignorant right-wing fanatics.”

The elevation of certain activities, and the denigration of others, has a long history in public education. It permeates every lesson plan and soaks through every syllabus.

All the decisions about educating children have political and cultural ramifications. To deny this is to deny reality.

And if you don’t believe me, just ask all those kids who had to allemande left and hop to the corner. We’re still angry about it.

Memphis

We are currently enduring the 5,826^th video of police officers overreacting just the tiniest bit by killing someone during a traffic stop.

That someone is usually a black man. The officers exhibiting psychopathic levels of violence are often white, but not always.

The locations and details differ, but the result is the same. 

Conservatives imply the victim had it coming, which is odd coming from people supposedly terrified of a tyrannical government. Why are they so willing to accept the government murdering its citizens without trial, or even formal charges?

Right-wingers also insist everything will be fine if ethnic minorities just comply with the police, even if the cops give contradictory or physically impossible orders, and the unarmed person complies, only to be tased, pepper sprayed, and punched repeatedly.

And yes, conservatives are usually more upset about protests against police brutality than the existence of police brutality itself. They also freak out if a protester throws a brick through a window, but they’re noncommittal if cops kick someone to death in the street.

In any case, US cops kill an average of three people per day, and last year was “the deadliest year on record for police violence.” Experts point out that police violence is “continuing to get worse, and … it’s deeply systemic.”

American police “typically shoot, arrest and imprison more people than similarly developed nations,” making us an ugly outlier yet again when compared to other industrialized countries.

The cops kill over 100 Americans each year in which no actual crime is ever alleged. A similar number get killed during routine traffic stops, which is what happened in Memphis. Overall, about 70% of the people killed by police each year were not involved in committing a serious crime. In fact, about one-third of people killed by police were “fleeing before they were killed, generally running or driving off — cases in which experts say lethal force is unwarranted and also endangers the public.”

Now, if that is not some trigger-happy shit, I don’t know what is.

So why are the police so willing to gun down or beat up unarmed people? 

Well, like most societal ills, the roots of this issue go back decades. Cops have always held an unquestioned position of power that allowed them to rough up Irish immigrants in the 1920s or billy club Latinos in zoot suits during the 1950s. In the 1970s, Dirty Harry said it was cool to shoot hippies, and in the 1990s, millions of Americans thought Rodney King deserved his walloping.

Then we get to the September 11 attacks, which militarized the entire nation. Police departments became mini armies, and a “warriorculture emerged that often views community members as the enemy.”

This was also around the time that a handful of shoddy studies implied that “officers who show weakness are more likely to be killed.” Such pseudoscience convinced many cops to treat every patrol as a tour of duty, and “law-enforcement culture has never recovered” from this mindset.

Of course, conservatives still argue that heavily armed cops with their own tanks are necessary to prevent crime. But in truth, “police departments with more military equipment are more likely to kill civilians,” and studies show that “more militarized police departments are less likely to prevent crime or make local residents feel safer.”

In the case of Memphis, a specialized squad was “formed to address the city’s rising crime rate by targeting ‘hot spots’ of illegal activity.” But all this menacingly named unit — “supposedly created to make the city safer” — ended up doing was “instilling a newfound fear into a tight-knit grieving community.”

Yeah, that unit has now been disbanded.

Now, any discussion about police violence must include the issue of white supremacy. 

Oh sorry, I forgot that the Memphis cops were all black. Strange, isn’t it, that these black cops were all fired and charged, with no protest from right-wingers, even before the video came out? In contrast, the murder of George Floyd had to get constant airplay for days, with corresponding massive demonstrations, before one white cop was charged, all over the strenuous objections of conservatives.

But I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.

Regardless, the Memphis cops did not have to be white to uphold a racist structure. These officers were “drunk with power” and rewarded for maintaining the status quo. They worked within a system that “is predicated by white supremacy, and they bought into that system."

Black Americans are three times more likely to be killed by US police than white Americans. However, if statistics don’t sway you, just focus on the fact that we will never see a video of cops pulling over an unarmed white guy and beating him to death.

The very reason that the police exist has gone from obvious to vague. After all, cops have no constitutional obligation to protect you. 

So exactly what are they doing out there? 

It’s a good question.

Everything Is Just Swell

Yes, things have been grim in America for the past few years. To be honest, they haven’t been that great for a couple of decades now.

In fact, a serious case can be made that the nation’s high-water mark was the 1990s, when we had grunge rock, the X-files, a booming economy, and a conservative movement that was going crazy (but not yet fully psychotic). 

Also, I was still young, which is, when you think about it, really the most important thing.

But in the spirit of optimism — and before we get too far into 2023 and allow it to crush us like the other 2020s so far — I will point out several positive developments.

First, child poverty has “dramatically decreased in the U.S. over the past 25 years.” The chief reason may be the Child Tax Credit, which helped cut child poverty by roughly 30 percent. 

Of course, that tax credit has now been eliminated, so there is a chance the rate will go up again. And compared to “other developed nations, child poverty rates in America remain higher than the rest.”

But hey, let’s not kill the vibe.

Moving on, we see that the rates of cervical cancer have “dropped an astonishing 65% among women in their early 20s.” This is primarily because of vaccinations against the human papillomavirus (HPV), which causes this type of cancer. So many women have taken advantage of the HPV vaccine that herd immunity has kicked in, and “rates have dropped among unvaccinated women as well.”

It’s true that many religious zealots refuse to let their teenage daughters get vaccinated because they would literally rather have their kids get cancer than engage in premarital sex, but… ha, I see what you did there. Almost got me to go negative, didn’t you?

Nope, we’re going to continue on the good-news train.

Here’s something: inflation is slowing down, and the federal budget deficit has fallen significantly, going from $2.6 trillion to $1.4 trillion.

These are very positive economic developments, and everyone can cheer them. Well, except for Republicans, who are determined to drive America into default and wreck the economy out of some bizarre desire to punish Biden or parade their ignorance or just burn everything down. Who can tell anymore?

No, we are staying positive. 

So ignore all that GOP nonsense and move on to this intriguing fact: The racial gap in death rates of covid has disappeared.

We all know that the pandemic hit ethnic minorities far harder than white people, but “in a country with deep racial inequities, where covid was initially another tragic example, the virus is no longer disproportionately harming Black and Hispanic Americans.” This improvement is due to “passionate advocacy and hard work by many community health officials.”

That’s uplifting, right?

Don’t be a buzzkill by pointing out that “this accomplishment continues to receive relatively little attention,” probably because “the remaining pool of unvaccinated Americans is disproportionately Republican, and Republicans are disproportionately white.”

You see, white Republicans don’t want to admit that vaccines work, and that the pandemic was real. And the mainstream media does whatever white Republicans say, which is another example of the lobsided balance of power in this country and how we all bend over backward to appease ignorance.

It doesn’t even matter that Latinos “suffered more COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people than most other racial and ethnic groups for most of the pandemic” and that “the Latino community’s rising prosperity may be in jeopardy” because of the devastation that the virus wrought. 

But no, let’s talk about how white Republicans can’t have their feelings hurt and…

Stop. Stay calm. Ok, moving on.

Another upbeat development is that there has been mild progress on climate change, as “renewable power soars, vulnerable ecosystems gain rights, and climate protocols start to pay dividends.”

That’s almost enough to make you forget that “the oil giant Exxon privately ‘predicted global warming correctly and skillfully’ only to then spend decades publicly rubbishing such science in order to protect its core business.”

It turns out that “the only thing Exxon did better than predicting the future was lying about it.” If you need a refresher on how evil corporations can be, and how climate denialism indicates sheer idiocy, this is “your umpteenth reminder that we've known about the coming (now here) disaster for decades.”

Well, my quest for positive news is getting shaky now. Perhaps I can combine my last two items — the pandemic and climate change — into one hopeful story.

Yes, here it is: As global temperatures rise, it becomes “more likely that viruses and bacteria locked up in glaciers and permafrost could reawaken and infect local wildlife.” This means that the next killer pandemic may not come “from bats or birds but from matter in melting ice.”

So if the heat doesn’t kill us, the viruses will.

Damn. There goes all my optimism.

Ok, what was I saying about the 1990s? Yeah, I guess those were the motherfucking days.

At least we’ll always have Soundgarden.

Carnival

It’s ok to laugh, at least a little. After all, the whole damn thing is a joke. It’s a farce of epic proportions and a black comedy laced with schadenfreude.

I’m referring, of course, to the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives, a haphazard free-for-all that featured the most contentious speakership election in a century. We lost track of how often the word “McCarthy” accompanied the phrases “stinging defeat” and “public humiliation,” which is always a good sign for a political leader.

But at last, the GOP elected a new speaker, a guy so popular within his party that it took only 15 votes to elect him. By the way, don’t you wish you had 15 attempts to accomplish a goal? Yes, most of us would never be denied a promotion over a dozen times, because that level of incompetence would likely get us fired long before that.

If you are a mediocre white male conservative, however, you get as many chances as you want to win, until everyone just accepts that you’re the boss—at least in name.

You see, the incoming speaker of the house made so many concessions to a small contingent of lunatics that he is basically being held hostage. It's almost like appeasing fascists makes them bolder. 

By the way, nothing says “strong leader” like groveling to idiots. These insurrectionists so thoroughly owned the negotiations that they ran out of things to ask for.

I hear the final package includes daily foot messages for every member of the Freedom Caucus. Plus, McCarthy will personally fetch their dry cleaning and let Matt Gaetz slap his face twice a week.

In truth, we don’t really know what’s in the rules package, because the GOP rushed to chisel the deal into stone before everybody could find out that Lauren Boebert is now legally allowed to fire a bazooka at anyone she deems un-American.

At one point during the voting, Republican congressmen almost came to blows, leading us once again to ponder why right-wing men are so in love with violence. Seriously, they constantly want to punch someone, shoot someone, or bomb someone—even their own allies.

With the metal detectors at the capitol mysteriously removed, it is likely just a matter of time before some GOP rep takes a shot at a fellow lawmaker. I wouldn’t be surprised if this heavily armed, easily agitated crowd turns the capitol into the OK Corral.

In any case, the GOP won the House because they convinced enough gullible voters that Republicans would tackle inflation and bring down gas prices. And sure enough, the first thing the GOP has addressed is inflation and improving the quality of life for all Americans.

Ha. No.

To the surprise of nobody with an IQ over 50, the Republicans’ top priority is making it easier for wealthy people to cheat on their taxes. The GOP is “fiercely loyal to the rich and the powerful, and they enthusiastically mislead ordinary Americans to serve those interests.” 

The GOP’s second priority is revenge—plain and simple. The Republican House will investigate Biden, his family, and probably the Biden family’s neighbor’s best friend’s dentist before they are done. They will also harass the law enforcement agencies that they claim to revere so much. And they will launch expensive, time-consuming investigations that are solely “about grievances” and serve as a cover for “folks who are already under investigation trying to protect themselves."

Oh, and they also want to decimate Social Security, but you knew that already.

Clearly, McCarthy’s “hollow victory will have economic and political consequences.”

Their approach will be based upon faux patriotism and owning the libs. It will be about gaining power for its own sake, and “to the extent that Republicans want to give the appearance of caring about governing,” they will slash and burn their way through Congress with no idea of what they are doing and no principles for doing it. This is because “the endgame now is chaos itself.”

So what are we supposed to do with this gaggle of clowns? Take them seriously?

No, the only appropriate responses are mockery or dread. 

It’s our own little circus of the damned.