Prairie Weather

Kidding ourselves about racism

The beat goes on.  Yesterday, we noted the prevailing racism in America (in spite of protests to the contrary).   Those of us who feel the shame and disgust of racism evidently annoy the others among us who still believe "those people" are different, don't quite belong here, and/or are taking more than contributing.  Donald Sterling is quite run-of-the-mill and, you might say, wrongly punished for being "realistic."

It ain't over until it's over.  It ain't over until we agree it's here, it's nasty, and it's not going away until we make the changes that have never been made.

...As a longtime basketball fan who tried out for my segregated high-school team at a time when it was acceptable, in polite society, to talk about people like me in the way Donald Sterling did, my problem is that the punishment is related only to his recent verbal nastiness and not to his past, long-term behavior....

... While there is more than one national conversation about race going on almost every day, nothing is really happening, as far as I can determine, that really has a chance of getting at what this country does about race on a consistent basis. In recent months, the dialogue has been carried out on a variety of fronts. But it rarely goes to the heart of one of our basic problems. We have moved from the standard of equality and justice to a more amorphous new phrase in the lexicon: diversity and inclusion. And that allows a fair amount of wiggle room for those who are not committed to the ideal of a truly post-racial society. (And make no mistake: we are not there yet.) ...CharlayneHunter-Gault,NewYorker

You still think the concerns and confusions about racism are overblown?  Check out the comment section following Hunter-Gault's column.

Hunter-Gault ends by making this point and asking the most important question: 

... Having people think before they speak is only a partial victory if racism just perpetuates itself in silence. Instead, the incident points to the need for fundamental change in how we think and act. So the big question remains: How to make that happen?

I'm thinking we've forgotten the concept of putting others before ourselves.  For a nation and a culture that's proudly narcissistic, self-denial must look like a kind of madness. "I can shout fire in a crowded theatre if I want.  And if people get trampled while they're running out, well, that's their problem" has been the prevailing concept of freedom and personal integrity for the past thirty-forty years. 

Racism isn't going away until we accept that if we don't let go of our demand for absolute personal freedom -- including the freedom to cling to beliefs and habits that damage others -- we deny everyone else full freedom and a healthy community.

Cruel and usual. In modern America. Oh, man.

What was supposed to be the first of two executions here on Tuesday night was halted when the prisoner, Clayton D. Lockett, began to writhe and gasp after he had already been declared unconscious and called out “oh, man,” according to witnesses.

The administering doctor intervened and discovered that “the line had blown,” said the director of corrections, Robert Patton, meaning that drugs were no longer flowing into Mr. Lockett’s vein.

At 7:06 p.m., Mr. Patton said, Mr. Lockett died in the execution chamber, of a heart attack. ...NYT

The Oklahoma Supreme Court had stopped the executions.  The conservative governor defied the court and went ahead, supported by angry, conservative legislators.  In the end, the Supreme Court backed down.

Could we at least stop calling state-sanctioned criminals "conservatives"?  What is there in their judgments and behaviors that any society should "conserve"?

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Can we count on Oklahoma's botched execution being the beginning of the end of our barbaric use of the death penalty?  Andrew Cohen addresses that possibility and reminds us that Oklahoma's barbarism is somewhat more blatant than during applications of the death penalty in other states (at least as far as we know):

They were using an untested mix of lethal drugs, never previously used in that dosage combination, obtained through secret means, which precluded the possibility of oversight from attorneys or medical officials on the quality of the drugs. They were warned by medical experts, and asked by defense attorneys, to open up the process to review—by the courts, by doctors, by some members of the public. Yet they refused. ...Cohen,TheAtlantic

The suffering was protracted.  State officials tried to curtain it off.  Cohen provides a minute by minute description. Excerpt:

6:35 PM – Mouth movement.

6:36 PM – Inmate’s head moves from side to side, then lifts his head off the bed.

6:37 PM – Inmate lifts his head and feet slightly off the bed.  Inmate tries to say something, mumbles while moving body.

6:38 pm – More movement by the inmate. At this point the inmate is breathing heavily and appears to be struggling.

6:39 PM – Inmate tries to talk. Says “man” and appears to be trying to get up. Doctor checks on inmate. Female prison official says, “We are going to lower the blinds temporarily." Prison phone rings. Director of Prisons Robert Patton answers the phone and leaves the room—taking three state officials with him.

Minutes later—the director of prisons comes back into the room and tells the eyewitnesses that there has been a vein failure. He says, “The chemical did not make it into the vein of the prisoner. Under my authority, we are issuing a stay of execution.”

And, less than a half hour after that, Lockett was pronounced dead of what officials said was a heart attack. ...Cohen,TheAtlantic

The courts are to a large extent responsible for the continuation of executions whose procedures should have been subjected to much greater scrutiny, Cohen writes.  "If what happened last night in Oklahoma doesn't cause our nation's judges to stop the cycle of secrecy over lethal injections, it will be a scandal."

Or worse. 

He ends with this reminder:

We are going to lower the blinds temporarily. That's the sentence from the timeline of the execution that may come to serve as an epitaph for this affair. Virtually this entire process was done in the dark, in secret, so that state officials would not have to answer basic questions about the drugs they sought to use against Lockett. And then, when those officials realized they had made a terrible mistake, down came the blinds again. Until those blinds are raised, until this process becomes transparent in Oklahoma and everywhere else, it is unworthy of a nation that teaches its children about civilization and a rule of law. ...Cohen,TheAtlantic

Come to that, there are generations of Americans now who know that "civilization and a rule of law" is mostly a shared fantasy.  At best, it's an aspiration, not a reality.

K A-J pretty much nails it

"It's time to look at ourselves — and our collective moral outrage — in the mirror, says former NBA player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar," in Time.

Couldn't agree more.  Abdul-Jabbar lambastes the American habit of finger-wagging.  Our fingers are, of course, controlled by the media.

Where I jump off the wagonload of self-congratulation is the point at which we elect lawmakers who are the enablers of racism.  We exercise our fingers when we're talking about racism but we get awfully lazy when faced with taking measures to eliminate it.  Unstinting equality of educational and professional opportunities?  Fuhgeddabahtit!

I love A-J for rooting out even more of the day-to-day hypocrisy and confusion we suffer from here in the US.  And very selective indignation...

Shouldn’t we be equally angered by the fact that his [Donald Sterling's] private, intimate conversation was taped and then leaked to the media? Didn’t we just call to task the NSA for intruding into American citizen’s privacy in such an un-American way? Although the impact is similar to Mitt Romney’s comments that were secretly taped, the difference is that Romney was giving a public speech. The making and release of this tape is so sleazy that just listening to it makes me feel like an accomplice to the crime. We didn’t steal the cake but we’re all gorging ourselves on it.

Make no mistake: Donald Sterling is the villain of this story. But he’s just a handmaiden to the bigger evil. In our quest for social justice, we shouldn’t lose sight that racism is the true enemy. He’s just another jerk with more money than brains. ...K A-J, Time

Mitch McConnell faces trouble within his own party

A bunch of Republicans are saying they no longer want Mitch McConnell as their Senate leader.

A slew of Republican candidates running for the upper chamber won’t say whether they would back Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) if he bids for another term as GOP leader.

While Tea Party candidates often run against GOP leaders in Washington during primary contests, establishment candidates this year are leery of expressing allegiance to McConnell too.

Republican strategists say it’s a sign of the growing divide between party leaders and conservative voters, who have a history of roiling GOP primaries.

Rep. Bill Cassidy (La.), who is running against two Republican rivals to unseat Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), declined to endorse McConnell recently, even though he has accepted $10,000 from Bluegrass Committee, McConnell’s leadership PAC.

Asked last month whom he would support for GOP leader in the next Congress, Cassidy said, “I don’t know who’s running” before mentioning Senate GOP Whip John Cornyn (Texas) as someone who has helped his campaign.

Karen Handel, a Senate candidate who hails from the party establishment as a former Georgia secretary of State but now draws support from Tea Party conservatives as well, indicated she would not support McConnell for leader if she were elected.

Pressed by The Hill this month whether she would back McConnell, Handel said Republicans “need new leadership” and that the minority leader’s voters “can make a determination for him.”

McConnell faces both a primary and a general election challenge this year. ...TheHill

You could almost feel sorry for him. 

Still, it is gratifying to see what the tea party is doing to its host.

Trust me: I'll find a more acceptable way of lying to you

At the behest of the director of national intelligence, US senators have removed a provision from a major intelligence bill that would require the president to publicly disclose information about drone strikes and their victims.

The bill authorizing intelligence operations in fiscal 2014 passed out of the Senate intelligence committee in November, and it originally required the president to issue an annual public report clarifying the total number of “combatants” and “noncombatant civilians” killed or injured by drone strikes in the previous year. It did not require the White House to disclose the total number of strikes worldwide.

But the Guardian has confirmed that Senate leaders have removed the language as they prepare to bring the bill to the floor for a vote, after the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, assured them in a recent letter that the Obama administration was looking for its own ways to disclose more about its highly controversial drone strikes. ...TheGuardian

The law and Mr. Snowden

On the one hand there is the wounded, embarrassed, and guilty government whose members, in the past, have been defended by Plato Cacheris.  On the other there are crummy people like Monica Lewinsky who have had the benefit of his legal abilities.  Cacheris is a famous Georgetown Law graduate,  a Washington fixture (and fixer), and he's been hired to bring Edward Snowden home without Snowden's having to face the extreme punishments an embarrassed administration would (apparently) like to throw at him. 

The Obama administration isn't handling this matter well.

Mr. Snowden, who now lives in Moscow, where he received temporary asylum, was charged last year with multiple violations of the Espionage Act. He faces up to 30 years in prison, and prosecutors could easily add more counts. ...NYT

It seems to me that Snowden has, among other things, created a situation in which everything is turned upside-down.  Conservatives who have been shouting aboutwhat they see as heavy-handed government are now defending the government against the brave, lonely individual who gave us some hard truths about our intelligence agencies.  Those of us who tend to defend government (except for a) Congress, and b) the partnership of government with corporations) believe NSA and indeed the entire intelligence arm of successive administrations are the real perps, not Edward Snowden.

Mr. Snowden’s revelations about the breadth and intrusiveness of the N.S.A.’s surveillance prompted the first major reconsideration of the government’s surveillance powers since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. President Obama has said he wants to stop the N.S.A.’s collection of every American’s phone records, a program that was the subject of the first news article based on Mr. Snowden’s documents. But Mr. Obama and other administration officials have said Mr. Snowden should return to the United States to face prosecution.

Mr. Snowden has said that he wants to live somewhere other than Russia, but that American diplomatic pressure is preventing him from traveling or obtaining asylum elsewhere. Still, as long as he can live indefinitely under asylum in Russia, he appears unlikely to strike a deal that would require a lengthy prison sentence.

“Snowden is interested in returning home,” said Ben Wizner, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who also represents Mr. Snowden. “He is and always has been on America’s side. He would cooperate in extraordinary ways in the right circumstances. But he does not believe that the ‘felon’ label is the right word for someone whose act of conscience has revitalized democratic oversight of the intelligence community and is leading to historic reforms.” ...NYT

A significant number of Americans, it seems, agree with those of us who believe  the handling of this matter has been pretty damaging to the Obama administration.  The vindictiveness with which  whistleblowers have been treated says something nasty about a series of administrations.  There is now a tradition of trumpeting the fair treatment of whistleblowers while, in fact, treating them very badly.

We expected President Obama to do better.  He seems almost as weak as President Bush did in his handling of government crimes, misdemeanors, whistleblowers and cover-ups.