Category: Politics

The walking nightmare of the past four years is over, but the country and its inhabitants will be sorting out the mess for years — maybe decades — to come.

I’ve never been prouder to be an American, but never more worried too. There’s so much damage to repair and so much time to make up for.

Still, I’m very hopeful for the future and I can’t wait to be a part of what’s next. Rebuilding this country will take all of us.

I don’t believe President Trump actually has any core motivations beyond his own financial enrichment, but he’s been extremely good at convincing millions of Americans that he shares their worldview. He knows how to push people’s buttons — and get paid for it.

That button, of course, is racial supremacy.

Adam Serwer breaks it down quite well in “The Capitol Riot Was an Attack on Multiracial Democracy,” posted today at The Atlantic:

Demanding that a candidate who lost the Electoral College and received 7 million fewer votes than his opponent be allowed to remain president may seem a strange turn for a party that has spent the Trump years presenting itself as the vanguard of the people. But it represents an old worldview in American politics, one that dates back to the founding.

There is an element of historical truth to this worldview. America did not have universal suffrage at its founding. The Constitution accepted the existence of slavery, and imagined democracy as the responsibility of property-owning white men. But the Founders also created a society where the blessings of liberty they imagined for themselves could be extended to others, the promissory note of which Martin Luther King Jr. spoke.

Although the story of American democracy is often told as an unsteady but certain march toward a more perfect union, there have always been people who recount that story as a tragedy, one in which the Founders’ vision of limited government and individual freedom is effaced by the inclusion of those who were never meant to share it. If democracy must be set aside to defend that liberty, then so be it.

Most Americans think of the USA as one of the oldest democracies (I certainly did), but Serwer cogently argues that it’s more accurate to think of multiracial democracy only beginning in 1965 with the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

Not yet at the finish line, but a pretty great day nonetheless.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpchan/9149292370/

From “U.S. Finds Porn Not Secrets on Suspected China Spy’s PC” in Bloomberg Businessweek, May 1, 2013:

Bo Jiang, who was indicted March 20 for allegedly making false statements to the U.S., was charged yesterday in a separate criminal information in federal court in Newport News, Virginia. Jiang unlawfully downloaded copyrighted movies and sexually explicit films onto his NASA laptop, according to the court filing. A plea hearing is set for tomorrow.

Along with the misdemeanor, the government said it had resolved the false statements case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg said in a filing today.

I read this article two weeks ago and have struggled all this time to articulate my thoughts about it. The collision of politics, race, paranoia, stupidity, and plain old horniness practically begs for some kind of analysis that’s both insightful and funny.

Unfortunately, that essay is going to have to come from somebody else. After two weeks, all I can say is

1) Assuming this is the whole story, this is epically embarrassing for everyone involved.
2) Even if this isn’t the whole story, what we do know would make for a pretty cool movie — documentary or narrative.

Once again, real life has left me speechless. I hope my betters can come up with something coherent and interesting to say about the situation because I’d love to read it.

In most parts of the world, today is May Day (a.k.a. International Workers’ Day), a celebration of the labor movement.

We don’t celebrate this day in America because our own Labor Day, which takes place months later, is now mostly known as the last weekend of the summer. It’s a day strictly reserved for last visits to the beach and big sales at the mall. In other words, we celebrate labor by trying not to do it or think about it.

The implications of this are part of a larger conversation I have nothing to contribute to right now.

But on the related but smaller topic of work, here’s two pieces to check out if you, like me, spend a good amount of time in an office between 9 and 5:

From “The Case for Working With Your Hands” by Matthew B. Crawford in The New York Times Magazine, May 21, 2009:

Like the mechanic, the manager faces the possibility of disaster at any time. But in his case these disasters feel arbitrary; they are typically a result of corporate restructurings, not of physics. A manager has to make many decisions for which he is accountable. Unlike an entrepreneur with his own business, however, his decisions can be reversed at any time by someone higher up the food chain (and there is always someone higher up the food chain). It’s important for your career that these reversals not look like defeats, and more generally you have to spend a lot of time managing what others think of you…
So managers learn the art of provisional thinking and feeling, expressed in corporate doublespeak, and cultivate a lack of commitment to their own actions. Nothing is set in concrete the way it is when you are, for example, pouring concrete.

From “I’m Brian Lam, and This Is How I Work” from today’s Lifehacker:

I recommend everyone either fix your job or quit it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpchan/3004090900/

This is my last election as a Brooklyn resident, but I’m pretty sure that’s not why everyone is calling it a historic moment.

All joking aside, it felt great to pull the lever for Barack. Godspeed, my man.

(P.S. 92, Parkside Av, Brooklyn)