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Showing posts from June 26, 2022

Dred Scott returns, motherfuckers

  It is almost eerie how the abortion decision follows the old paradigm of the slave versus "free" states. There is a story in the NYT with this paragraph: "A top anti-abortion lobbying group, the National Right to Life Committee, recently proposed model legislation for states that would make it a crime to pass along information “by telephone, the internet or any other medium of communication” that is used to terminate a pregnancy." That follows, to the letter, the Southern slaveholder doctrine about abolitionist literature. There was an article in Lithub a few years ago about the way Southern states censored the abolitionists: "South Carolina was one of four southern states that outlawed the abolitionist writings in their jurisdictions. Slaveholders tended to justify such reactions by appealing to patriotic service at the expense of law. Some accused the postal system of supporting abolitionist endeavors." I suppose it is one of those dialectical hiccups

Back to Normal Fails

  Back in 2018, the NYTand all right thinking campaign consultants were giggling and acting shockedabout the undignified doings of this character named Trump, who was president.Instead of doing what presidents are supposed to do – remaining solemnly in the Oval Office, trying to look like a stuffed goose who was all about war for freedom, he was acting like a huckster, going out to rally his troops up and down the country. The campaign industry people were right in the short run: the legislative races on the national level went against Trump. But in the long run, what an excellent strategy! This was not only using tweaking the demonstration form, merging it with the campaign rally, but it was hooking up the party to a national populist movement. Now, of course, we have a D majority in the Senate and House and a D president. And they sit there helplessly as the R SCOTUS takes away everything the Dems produced in the last fifty years. They sit there helpless and the campaign industry