CSotD: Repeating the past
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John Deering (Creators) offers a chilling combination of “Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it” with the stand-up comics’ critique of being “too smart for the room.”
It’s a really good cartoon, except that, in a country where half the people were born after 1982, how many of us even know about, much less remember, events of 1964?
After all, even the movie, “Mississippi Burning,” which was only somewhat kinda maybe loosely “based on” the murders, came out way back in 1988.
Who remembers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner?
Likely more people than remember James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo, murdered in separate incidents in the wake of the Bloody Sunday March, which is known because demonstrators including John Lewis were beaten by police.
Reeb was beaten to death after eating at an integrated diner one night during the marches that followed, Liuzzo was chased down and shot to death two weeks later.
It’s not just that those people were murdered. It’s that rigged investigations and all-white juries insured that their killers would walk free, and Chris Britt (Creators) offers a commentary reminiscent of the days when “outside agitators” were not just hated but hunted down.
The GOP likes to remind everyone that there was a time when the Democrats controlled the South and were responsible for much of the voter suppression, but that’s as far as they take their history lesson.
They neglect to mention that the reason the Democrats lost the South to them was LBJ’s championing of the Civil Rights Act and the party’s shift to supporting minority rights.
So that today, as Lisa Benson (WPWG) reminds us, it’s the Democrats who want to prevent the return of Jim Crow voter suppression, promoted under the banner familiar to historians of “states’ rights.”
It is true that a Rasmussen poll shows 75% of “likely voters” support having people show ID before casting a ballot, and Benson isn’t the only conservative citing the stat.
However, we’re also seeing state legislatures play with the concept, making it not simply a matter of proving you are who you say you are but, as they did with the old “literacy tests,” cutting back the acceptable forms of identification in order to make you prove you are who they want you to be.
Oh — And HR1 does not ban voter ID laws.
To rework a common expression, don’t piss on the graves of Goodman, Chaney, Shwerner, Reeb and Liuzzo and tell me it’s raining.
Juxtaposition of the Day
The situation on the southern border is a little harder to unpack, particularly in light of a recent visit to the facilities in which both Democratic and Republican observers condemned conditions.
As Ariail notes, Biden was handed a fraught situation to deal with, and neither Trump’s farcical dream of a wall nor his intentionally cruel policy of family separation had really stemmed migration.
Breen’s implication that the Democrats are encouraging the current surge in border crossings seems poorly sourced.
It’s not like people stopped trying during the Trump administration, nor have we seen open invitations from Biden, who has said he’s doing his best to say “Not yet.”
But “not yet” is more hospitable than “drug dealers, criminals and rapists,” and it may well be that seeing a deliberately cruel administration go out of power has encouraged more people to try.
Or perhaps it’s changes in their situations back home or who knows?
But here they are, and, as Handelsman points out, quick solutions are not solving the problem.
We need more information, starting with how many of the “children” being held are little kids and how many are teens?
You never see news reports saying “Two children held up a gas station” if the suspects are 16, but it feels from news reports that everyone in holding is four years old.
Some children who cross with people other than identifiable parents are being held until those adults can be checked out. But others are sixteen and came alone.
Who are we talking about?
Here’s something else: They’re being held, we are told, for an average of 117 hours before being turned over to HHS, which is more than the 72-hour legal limit. That comes out to just under five days, and, while it’s an average rather than a median, it suggests a lot are getting out in a day or two, and a lot are stuck for 10 days. So how many of each?
I’ll accept that our intentions are good, but tell me the facts and show me a realistic plan.
And make that plan more credible than the fanciful, partisan lies put out by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wi), who, as Matt Wuerker (Politico) points out, has stated that there was no violence among the trespassers on the Senate side of the Capitol.
Which, he explains, is why he did not feel threatened by white supremacists who burst into the building in an attempt to overturn the election results, but would be terrified if black people had come in asking not to be singled out for violence by police.
Meanwhile, Nick Anderson (Tribune) plays upon the fact that the “unarmed” trespassers in fact had toxic sprays among their other non-firearms weaponry.
This is refutation of the fascist/GOP talking point in which they dismissed the death of Officer Brian Sickwick as being from natural causes because the assault was initially conflated with other police who were beaten with fire extinguishers.
Sickwick’s apparent killers have since been arrested and charged with spraying police with a toxic substance.
That shameful rhetorical debating technique makes it clear that “Blue Lives Don’t Matter,” since they are just chess pieces in a power game.
No? Then how come, when the House voted to honor the police for their service that day, a dozen GOP representatives voted against the measure?
Never mind. I don’t want to hear it.
To extend my previous comment: Don’t hit me in the face with bear spray and tell me it’s cologne.
Yes, the calendar is lying when it reads “the present time,” but the map is also lying when it says it’s just Mississippi.
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