Biden's cabinet was qualified and within normal parameters, and he at least was competent in his lucid moments. Trump's are all Project 2025 dictator wannabes and Coup Cuck Clansmen, and he himself has always been awful.
1 week ago
wj - I think that, as a nation, we are in the process of moving past it. I say “as a nation” because, while I think that more and more of us have moved past it, clearly there are still a huge number who have not.
As a nation I think we have been here before, which is to say that as a nation we are currently in the midst of the sort of self-sorting that leads to us actually being two nations mixed up in one sack. We have two very different nationalisms facing off and in open conflict with each other.
The question is whether this leads to a forced reunification (as in the Civil War) or into some form of collapse, or just a prolonged dysfunction and are supplanted on the world stage.
I am not optimistic that we can put the toothpaste back into the tube this time.
1 week ago
WRT the Toni Morrison reference in the title, her "rememory," and my research about trauma has made me aware of how "remember" can be thought of (figuratively, not as a literal etymology) as "re-membering." When we remember trauma we should be thinking about how to restore wholeness to a psyche that has lost a part of itself. It's the psyche's equivalent of an amputation. The old narrative that gave one's life continuity has been severed and a part of oneself that once seemed intrinsic has become an object outside of one's control.
This sort of figurative thinking plays into my focus on restorative justice. People and societies need to be made whole, or be remade or given back a sense of wholeness.
1 week ago
wj - Answering that requires answering the motivation question: Why do they come? The simple answer: economics and safety. Not macroeconomic generalities, but the microeconomics of individuals. Combined with, and overlapping with, the legal environment. There are other motivations, such as moving to be near family members, or even climate. But those are tiny in comparison.
I can understand the desire to simplify the way we talk about immigration in order to reframe the asylum seekers in an empathetic way - to put ourselves in their shoes. That's an essential strategy in this age of tech driven propaganda and outrage.
I do worry, however, that this simplification might obscure the degree to which economics and safety are entangled with climate.
When a Salvadoran farmer can't afford to buy seeds because his crops keep getting ruined, climate is economics. When groups of farmers like him become desperate and have to go to the city where they have no place to live and no aid, they find themselves at the mercy of the gangs in the cities, both economics and safety. To avoid the violence of working for the gangs, they have to find somewhere else to go, which means paying the gangs to take them someplace safer.
But all of that starts with the climate making their rural agricultural lives unlivable. Climate change is a threat and vulnerability multiplier. It's hugely destabilizing. Decarbonization and humanitarian aid work together to reduce threat, and ignoring the ways that they are entangled undercuts our ability to reduce the economic hardship and the political instability that drives mass migration.
I don't know that they can tell the truth. I don't think they have it in them.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/22/white-house-ice-protest-arrest-altered-image
Biden's cabinet was qualified and within normal parameters, and he at least was competent in his lucid moments. Trump's are all Project 2025 dictator wannabes and Coup Cuck Clansmen, and he himself has always been awful.
wj - I think that, as a nation, we are in the process of moving past it. I say “as a nation” because, while I think that more and more of us have moved past it, clearly there are still a huge number who have not.
As a nation I think we have been here before, which is to say that as a nation we are currently in the midst of the sort of self-sorting that leads to us actually being two nations mixed up in one sack. We have two very different nationalisms facing off and in open conflict with each other.
The question is whether this leads to a forced reunification (as in the Civil War) or into some form of collapse, or just a prolonged dysfunction and are supplanted on the world stage.
I am not optimistic that we can put the toothpaste back into the tube this time.
WRT the Toni Morrison reference in the title, her "rememory," and my research about trauma has made me aware of how "remember" can be thought of (figuratively, not as a literal etymology) as "re-membering." When we remember trauma we should be thinking about how to restore wholeness to a psyche that has lost a part of itself. It's the psyche's equivalent of an amputation. The old narrative that gave one's life continuity has been severed and a part of oneself that once seemed intrinsic has become an object outside of one's control.
This sort of figurative thinking plays into my focus on restorative justice. People and societies need to be made whole, or be remade or given back a sense of wholeness.
wj - Answering that requires answering the motivation question: Why do they come? The simple answer: economics and safety. Not macroeconomic generalities, but the microeconomics of individuals. Combined with, and overlapping with, the legal environment. There are other motivations, such as moving to be near family members, or even climate. But those are tiny in comparison.
I can understand the desire to simplify the way we talk about immigration in order to reframe the asylum seekers in an empathetic way - to put ourselves in their shoes. That's an essential strategy in this age of tech driven propaganda and outrage.
I do worry, however, that this simplification might obscure the degree to which economics and safety are entangled with climate.
When a Salvadoran farmer can't afford to buy seeds because his crops keep getting ruined, climate is economics. When groups of farmers like him become desperate and have to go to the city where they have no place to live and no aid, they find themselves at the mercy of the gangs in the cities, both economics and safety. To avoid the violence of working for the gangs, they have to find somewhere else to go, which means paying the gangs to take them someplace safer.
But all of that starts with the climate making their rural agricultural lives unlivable. Climate change is a threat and vulnerability multiplier. It's hugely destabilizing. Decarbonization and humanitarian aid work together to reduce threat, and ignoring the ways that they are entangled undercuts our ability to reduce the economic hardship and the political instability that drives mass migration.