Afghanistan Takes Over NPR's Morning Edition, With Brief Nod To Haiti Earthquake

Afghanistan has been a disaster waiting to happen for the last 19 years or so.  The English has to give up and leave Afghanistan and then later, so did the Russians.  

The US didn't learn from these examples, or from Vietnam.  We think of ourselves as exceptional and above history.  

Now NPR is struggling to figure out what is happening today. The line up of stories today was pretty much all Afghanistan, plus two segments on the Haitian earthquake.  It's what you'd expect of coverage in the middle of a crisis - lots of random comments, some blame game activity, and lots of opinion, most of it focused, without context, on right now..  The basic impression is disaster, failure, catastrophe.  

Of the NPR segments I heard two people who seemed, at least in part, clear headed:

• Former U.S. Ambassador To Afghanistan Comments On Developing Situation In The Country Ronald Neumann served as the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007   He said, in various ways, "I really don't know enough to say."  That's probably what many others should have said more.  He also said that Biden's decision to pull out was a correct decision, but the execution of that decision has been absolutely disastrous.  I think that's probably the clearest and most accurate assessment I heard.  

KEITH: The Biden administration has essentially indicated they don't see this as all their fault. You know, this was two decades in the making. The Afghan military was trained by the U.S. and equipped. And in a way, it's like President Biden does not want to own this. Do you think that that is possible?

NEUMANN: Short answer is no. The long answer is you need to distinguish between the decision to withdraw, which I didn't like but is arguably correct, and the manner of implementation, of execution of that decision, which has been an absolute disaster from beginning to end. They could have taken more time. They had no plan how to support the Afghan military that they were leaving. We built an air force that depended on contractors for maintenance and pulled the contractors. Supply system - ditto. And we profoundly shocked the Afghan army and morale by pulling out and pulling our air cover when we trained them.

[I'd note that Neumann served as the Ambassador to Afghanistan under Bush/Cheney.] 

But the US has been training the Afghan army for 20 years.  How we're getting out is, the problem, but is there a different exit available.  Neumann complains that we pulled out the contractors who maintained the equipment.  Should we have left them in there?  Many of them were highly skilled whites from around the world.  Others were low skilled laborers hired on the cheap from poor countries.  Why hadn't we trained Afghans for those positions?  Surely in 20 years we could have.  There are many highly educated Afghans.  They aren't incapable of learning those skills.  

The specific disaster he and others are speaking of is the failure to get out all the interpreters and others who helped the US.  And all the women who are in jeopardy of a Taliban patriarchal dictatorship.  But the Trump State Department and Homeland Security had been holding up those visas for years.   Biden announced, in the end of June, that he was relocating tens of thousands of Afghans out of the country.  But bureaucratic obstacles have held many of these up.  

But realistically, how many Afghan women would the US take and how long would that take?  My sense is that this was a disaster that was going to happen eventually and up to now, no president was willing to let it happen on their watch.  

If, indeed, the women of Afghanistan have the most to lose from the Taliban, maybe the US should have trained an all women Afghan army that would have fought as hard as the Taliban.  

But maybe even that wouldn't have been enough.  

The other interview that I thought made the most sense was an Army vet. Mike Jason.

• A Vet Formerly Deployed In Afghanistan Shares His Perspective On The Chaos In The Country   -  "JASON: We're all trying to process that, right? Like, 20 years - $89 billion, 300,000-some odd Afghan security forces. How is it collapsing as we watch? And so all I can write is my own little corner of the global war on terror. You know, Afghanistan - righteous anger and indignation over the 9/11 attack. And we went in with a light footprint and took the country over, like, lightning quick. And then what? What was the next step? And all of a sudden, we turn around, and two years later, we're in Iraq, and resources start flowing over there.                    And the question is, what was the strategy and policy for what the military should be doing with regard to security forces in both theaters? We didn't fight a 20-year war. We fought 20 individual wars incoherently, kind of without a policy strategic direction. So at the same time, the Afghans who are the recipients of this training, advice and equipment also know the clock is ticking and making their own calculus for their own safety and the safety of their families, while never really tackling, you know - all this cash is flowing in, the corruption, the drugs, the morale, the logistics. Why weren't we able to ever address these really problematic institutional issues?                  We voted - we, the American people - we voted for four sequential administrations that campaigned on getting out of this operation. The intent was clear. But I look back on the presidential debates over the last several elections. I mean, Afghanistan may have gotten seconds or minutes of debate. It was always in the background. But why didn't we debate it more? Why didn't we discuss it more forcefully? Why didn't somebody make the case to the American people clearly and forcefully why we should stay or go and why the sacrifice is or is not worth it?"

His take makes a lot of sense to me, as a former Peace Corps volunteer, who knows how much being able to speak to the people in their own language matters. It means you don't have to depend on interpreters, and it means you have a much better understanding of the culture and the differences between yours and theirs.  Your struggle with their language means you understand your own ignorance and appreciate when they speak your language much better than you speak theirs.

I also did research in China, using my own Hong Kong students to help me out with interpretation.  They would tell me when the official translation was not what the Chinese speaker had actually said.  They told me about unspoken cues such as when the Chinese speaker's response was a non-sequitur:   it meant, "Drop this line of questioning because I don't want to answer these questions."  My students even took advantage of my foreignness and apologized for my ignorance and sometimes were able to get answers they themselves, because of culture, would never had asked.  In other situations I had just one Hong Kong student acting as my interpreter and I could negotiate with him to ask the question a different way that sometimes gave us break throughs.  I learned a lot about the politics of translations. Interpreters are human beings with egos.  My students had to be sure they were respectful to the official interpreters and avoid making him look bad.  And my Peace Corps experiences in Thailand helped me understand that I knew nothing and which made it easier to be humble and respectful. 

I'm sure, from the fervor some US vets are showing in their efforts to get their Afghan interpreters out of the country, that many of them, if not most, had very close bonds with the interpreters.  But I also suspect there were interpreters whose motivation for being their friend was a visa to the US, while others were passing on information to the Taliban.  We all want to be liked and even knowing the culture and language, we get taken in by people who see us as a ticket to their freedom - whether that be financial, political, or professional.  

We Didn't Learn From Vietnam

The basic justification for getting into Vietnam was the Domino Theory, based on how the Soviet Union took over the countries of Eastern Europe after World War II.  The politicians and the military leaders in the 1950s and 1960s had been part of WWII and didn't want to repeat the mistake of trusting the Soviet Union.  Thus we had to hold Vietnam lest China and the Soviet Union use Vietnam as the stepping stone to take over the rest of Southeast Asia.  One domino falling after the other.  

It was the wrong model.  In Vietnam we were fighting a battle of independence from colonial masters.  The French threw in the towel, but the US stepped in to take France's place.  The US backed the Catholic (learned from their colonial conqueror) faction in the South and spent years trying to train the ARVN- the South Vietnamese army - so it could defeat the North.  In that war, we had a conventional military mentality fighting against an army that used guerrilla tactics.  The US troops never really knew who was one of our Vietnamese and who was one of theirs.  We were fighting on Vietnamese land against an enemy that wanted to rule its own country.  We were supporting the remnants of the colonial rulers.  And we had the same problems with corruption because of the massive amounts of supplies and money coming into the country.  

You'd think that the military and political leaders - again, many of whom had fought in Vietnam - would have learned from that war.  But again, we went into a country that had thrown out two world powers - first the British and then the Soviet Union.  Again, most of our soldiers knew nothing about Afghan culture or language.  Again, there was an assumption that "the greatest country in the world" knew better.  There was an assumption that modern weapons would defeat a guerrilla army.  

A couple aspects of Afghanistan today are quite different from Vietnam in 1975.

• Afghanistan has been fought with an all volunteer army and extensive use of contracted labor.  Since only those who wanted to serve (or saw the military as a way to get a job and education), the rest of the country could ignore the war.  With all 18 year old men eligible to be drafted, the anti-war movement had a much more vocal and aware support to end the war.
• In Iraq and Afghanistan, the military had more control over what battle field footage the US public saw in the evening news.  Embedding journalists with units had much different results than the way journalists and photographers were assigned in Vietnam.  (See Embedded Journalism and the Forward of The Military and the Media 1962 - 1968)
• As Kabul falls, modern technology - phone cameras and social media - mean that we're seeing civilian created content and people are talking by phone live today and putting video on social media.  For Vietnam we only saw or heard what the news media offered us.  

Finally, Jason mentioned $89 billion.  There's another way to look at this war. 

💯As @attackerman has written, the GWOT was a historic transfer of public wealth to private hands. https://t.co/YqgFW2PF1K

— Jacob Silverman (@SilvermanJacob) August 14, 2021

Turns Out Evictions Are More Complicated and Venal Than I Realized

 

This On the Media segment on Eviction is worth listening to.  The issue of housing segregation and evictions is not about how hard people work, but techniques designed to keep people unhoused.  

"It isn't as much about poverty as it is about extracting wealth from the poorest people."

Around 12:30 in the audio, Matt Desmond — Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, and founder of the Eviction Lab at Princeton University - begins.  Be sure to listen to him.  

Some things I learned in this episode. 

• Rents in poor neighborhoods are not that much lower than rents in much nicer neighborhoods, but for poor people, especially people of color, they can't rent a place in those areas. 
• Landlords renting in poor neighborhoods have a higher profit margin than those in better neighborhoods
• All of this traces back to the great migration of Blacks from the South to the North.  
• Presence of children increases the odds of eviction.  

I recommend you listen while your doing some mindless task, like cleaning the bathroom, kneading bread, shredding old paperwork, etc.  

What I heard on the radio was apparently taken from several of the segments you can find them all at the link at the beginning of the post.  

"For her, the head scarf did not just stand for God's love, it also proclaimed her faith and preserved her honor."

Nobel Prize winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk's Snow takes place in a northeastern Turkish town (Kars) during a long snowstorm.  Ka (yes, Kars and Ka was confusing to me at first) is a journalist/poet from Istanbul who's recently returned to Turkey from years in Germany.  He's ostensibly gone to Kars to report on high school girls who have been committing suicide rather than stop
wearing head coverings. It appears, though, that rekindling an old love with a woman who now lives in Kars was the underlying real reason.  [I'd note here that the author tells us that suicide is a sin in Islam.]

I call this to your attention because the book, and the passage below, seems like an examination of intense human belief and behavior that offers insight into people with strong ideological attachments to fighting masks and vaccines.  In the excerpt here, a group of high school girls have been discussing the suicide of a classmate.  

It reminds me that people's behavior can't be attributed to one simple cause.  While people have a tendency to do that, things are more complex (like why Ka went to Kars.)  There are lots of factors that play a contributing role. 

"Why don't you tell the story, Hande?' said Kadife.  'There's nothing to be ashamed of.'

'No, that's not true.  There's a great deal to be ashamed of, and that's why I want to talk about it,' Hande said.  Her large eyes flashed with a strange joy.  She smiled as if recalling a happy memory and said, 'It's forty days exactly since our friend Teslime's suicide.  Of all the girls in our group, Teslime was the one most dedicated to the struggle for her religion and the word of God.  For her, the head scarf did not just stand for God's love, it also proclaimed her faith and preserved her honor.  None of us could have ever imagined she would kill herself.  Despite pressure both at school and at home to take off the scarf - her father and her teachers were relentless - Teslime held her ground.  She was about to be expelled from school in her third year of study, just on the verge of graduating.  Then one day her father had some visitors from police headquarters;  they told him that if he didn't send his daughter to school scafrless, they would close down his grocery stored run him out of Kars.

'The father threatened to throw Teslime out of the house, and when this tactic failed he entered into negotiations to marry her off to a forty-five-year-old policeman who had lost his wife.  Things had gone so far that the policeman was coming to the store with flowers.  So revolted was Teslime by this gray-eyed widower, she told us, she was thinking of taking off her head scarf if it would save her from this marriage, but she just couldn't bring herself to do it.  

'Some of us agreed that she should uncover her head to avoid marrying the gray-eyed widower and some of us said, 'Why don't you threaten your father with suicide?'  I was the one who urged this most strongly.  I really didn't want Teslime to give up her head scarf.  I don't know how many times I said, 'Teslime, it's far better to kill yourself than to uncover your head.'  But I was just saying it for the sake of conversation.  We believed what the papers said - that the suicide girls had killed themselves because they had no faith, because they were slaves to materialism, because they had been unlucky in love;  all I was trying to do was give Teslime's father a fright.  Teslime was a devout girl so I assumed she would never seriously consider suicide.  But when we heard that she had hanged herself, I was the first to believe it.  And what's more, I knew that, had I been in her shoes, I would have done the same thing.  

'After Teslime's suicide, Hande decided to take off her head scarf and go back to school;  she didn't want to cause her parents any more distress,' Kadfe explained.  "They'd made so many sacrifices, gone without so much, to giver her the right sort of upbringing;  the things most parents do for an only son, they did for her.  Her parents have always assumed that Hande would be able to support them one day, because Hande is very clever.'

She was speaking in a soft voice, almost whispering, but still loud enough for Hande to hear her, and like everyone else in the room, Hande was listening, even with her tear-filled eyes still fixed to the television screen.

'At first the rest of us tried to talk her out of removing her scarf, but when we realized that her going uncovered was better than her committing suicide, we supported her decision.  When a girl has accepted the head scarf as the word of God and the symbol of faith, it's very difficult for her t take it off.  Hande spent days locked up insider her house trying to concentrate' (pp. 119-120)

While Islam has a much longer and widespread tradition than Trumpism, we can see the same strong ideological link between the symbols (wearing head scarves and not wearing masks).   More important, it would seem,  there is a basic human tendency to take strong symbolic action in defiance of the authorities, in alliance with other rebels - sometimes with good reasons, often on a false path.

Here, for both the girls in Kars and the anti-maskers today, the face/head coverings touch a deep aspect of their identity that triggers an extreme bond among fellow believers.  Both are confronted with conflicts with other loyalties they have - the girls to their parents and school, anti-maskers to their own health and that of their family members and close friends.  And there are other factors intertwined - Teslime's possible marriage to a much older man, and anti-maskers', as one example, the impact on their small businesses .  And then there are the influences of friends as they discuss how to handle all these conflicts. 

 It would be helpful to those supporting masks to hear the private discussions among anti-maskers. how similar are they to this passage from Pamuk?

That's the basic post.  You can stop here if you like.  But a few other things have popped up while I wrote.

As I was seeking a link to Pamuk's background, I found this passage.  The highlighted part of this excerpt from Pamuk's Nobel Prize biography seems to also involve relevant themes:

"Pamuk’s international breakthrough came with his third novel, Beyaz Kale (1985; The White Castle, 1992). It is structured as an historical novel set in 17th-century Istanbul, but its content is primarily a story about how our ego builds on stories and fictions of different sorts. Personality is shown to be a variable construction. The story’s main character, a Venetian sold as a slave to the young scholar Hodja, finds in Hodja his own reflection. As the two men recount their life stories to each other, there occurs an exchange of identities. It is perhaps, on a symbolic level, the European novel captured then allied with an alien culture."

 I'd note, finally, that great fiction tells the inherent stories of humankind.  It reveals the basic human condition and reactions to that condition across cultures and times.  It gets past the cultural facades to find those human emotions and struggles that we recognize everywhere and anytime that humans live.  

This way of understanding isn't anti-science, but rather it demonstrates truths that science is (not yet?) capable of confirming.  But it takes time for these great works to be sifted from lesser ones.  There are many competitors in any present time that may attract followers to short term cultural truths that eventually will be uncovered as the stories that uphold the current power structure.  

"Don’t call them “at-risk.” They’re “at-promise" And 3 Other Articles Of Interest

Let's start off with some good news.  If you're only going to link to one of these articles, I recommend this one.   There are better ways to do things.  For one things, being smaller and close to your people helps.   I also want to disclose that the head of Fledge is a close relative.

Novel Holding Company Africa Eats Has Raised $1.8M For Its Impact Startups (Forbes)

About a year ago, Fledge, which operates about 10 impact accelerators around the world, launched Africa Eats, a holding company with 27 agriculture and food-focused Africa-based graduates of the networks’ programs. The goal: supporting entrepreneurs on-the-ground with an intimate understanding of how best to address hunger and poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa. Since then, the company has raised close to $2 million—and, despite the pandemic, the portfolio companies are doing fine.

Another good news story, where calling attention to labels can make a difference.  Not 'at risk.'  'At promise.'  Most kids want to be good people, they just need support for those dreams.

Caring for the environment helps South King County kids recovering from trauma or hardship find a sense of purpose  (From the Seattle Times)

"This summer, Park, Amine and Tracy are among two dozen mostly South King County youth learning to be stewards of the environment. 

They clean urban lakes during kayak patrols, plant trees, learn field mapping skills and test water quality in streams and rivers on state parks and public lands. They’re on water or trails several days each month. They’re paid $15 an hour for the work — enough to keep most of them from having to take other part- or full-time jobs that would otherwise consume their days — and they’re getting leadership training so they can help lead conservation and pollution prevention efforts in the future. . .

Many of the youth involved in Unleash the Brilliance have faced early adverse experiences “on steroids,” says Dorsey. Amine was peer pressured into regularly using drugs in middle school; his grades and relationship with his parents tanked. Park’s family faced bankruptcy. Other youth bore witness to their parents’ addictions, moved around a lot or lived in extreme poverty. Some have a history of being incarcerated, skipping class or facing delays graduating from high school. 

Dorsey sees them for their potential. Don’t call them “at-risk.” They’re “at-promise,” he says."

How much do your peers impact your behavior?  This Atlantic article addresess peer pressure and vaccination.  

The Anti-vaccine Con Job Is Becoming Untenable:  Why targets of deliberate deception often hesitate to admit they’ve been deceived

"Something very strange has been happening in Missouri: A hospital in the state, Ozarks Healthcare, had to create a “private setting” for patients afraid of being seen getting vaccinated against COVID-19. In a video produced by the hospital, the physician Priscilla Frase says, “Several people come in to get vaccinated who have tried to sort of disguise their appearance and even went so far as to say, ‘Please, please, please don’t let anybody know that I got this vaccine.’” Although they want to protect themselves from the coronavirus and its variants, these patients are desperate to ensure that their vaccine-skeptical friends and family never find out what they have done. . .

Shifting from an individual to a relational perspective helps us understand why people are seeking vaccination in disguise. They want to save face within the very specific set of social ties that sociologists call “reference groups”—the neighborhoods, churches, workplaces, and friendship networks that help people obtain the income, information, companionship, mutual aid, and other resources they need to live. The price of access to those resources is conformity to group norms. That’s why nobody strives for the good opinion of everyone; most people primarily seek the approval of people in their own reference groups."

Do you know whether your insurance company is insuring coal companies?

U.S. INSURERS FAIL ON CLIMATE ACTION:   Global insurers make coal increasingly “uninsurable”; whole industry fails to act on oil & gas  

LONDON (December 2, 2020)—U.S. insurance companies lag behind their global peers and play a key role in enabling the fossil fuel industry, the Insure Our Future campaign revealed today in its fourth annual scorecard on insurers’ climate policies. 

Insuring Our Future: The 2020 Scorecard on Insurance, Fossil Fuels and Climate Change finds that most European and Australian insurers no longer provide coverage for new coal projects, which has made it harder and costlier to secure the insurance that coal projects need to operate. Coal companies face rate increases of up to 40%. Controversial projects—like the Adani Group’s Carmichael coal mine in Australia—are finding it hard to obtain insurance at all. This demonstrates the insurance industry’s unique power to accelerate the shift away from fossil fuels.  

 More useful for most folks is the scorecard here.  

Unfortunately, smaller companies like All State and State Farm aren't listed here.  They are both independent companies.  But Geico is owned by Berkshire Hathaway which is one of the worst offenders.

 

Not Learning From History. Not Knowing Statistics

 The Anchorage Daily News headline today:

"Sicker and younger:  Unvaccinated people drive new trend"

I couldn't help but mentally edit  Pastor Martin Niemöller's famous quote about the Nazi's victims.

First they [it] came for the socialists [nursing home residents], and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.[a nursing home resident]

Then they [it] came for the trade unionists, [other seniors and immuno-compromised] and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.  [a senior or immune-compromised]

Then they [it] came for the Jews,[unvaccinated] and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. young

Then they [it] came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

A major problem driving all this is STATISTICAL IGNORANCE.  People simply don't understand statistics, so terms like 'flattening the curve' or 'cases per 100,000' don't really mean anything.  The graphs are just pictures of curves and straight lines.  

And newspaper headlines and Tweets don't help.  Either the writers and editors don't understand statistics or they are intentionally trying to mislead.  (Sure, it's rarely either/or, they might just be rushing and not thinking)

Do I need to explain these Tweets?  Yeah, I guess, some folks won't get this.  

The original tweet (Ken Dilanian) highlights that 125,000 fully vaccinated Americans tested positive for COVID.  There's no mention of: 

1. what the time period was
2. how many of them were asymptomatic
3. how many had minor symptoms
4. how many were hospitalize
5. how many needed a ventilator
6. how many died

And Derek Willis also points out that if you realize that this was .08 percent of all the 164 million people who have been vaccinated, the amazing effectiveness of the vaccines are highlighted instead of making it sound like the vaccinations are ineffective.  

One last thing that I've mentioned before, but isn't talked about enough.  The longer the virus is able to find refuge in human hosts, the more potentially deadlier and more contagious variants can evolve.  (And you have to understand and believe in evolution to understand that point.)  So, the more people who are vaccinated (locally, but also world wide, cause people travel and virus hitchhike on those travelers) the fewer refuges there are for virus to mutate.  

It seems to me we're all in a leaky boat together in the ocean.  The water is up to our ankles.  A small but vocal group of the passengers want to drill holes in the bottom of the boat to let the water drain out.  Those are the anti-maskers and the anti-vaxxers.  

Will Anti-Maskers Kill Halloween?

 Here's a letter to the editor in the Anchorage Daily News today.

For sight impaired, see letter written out below

I have to admit he packs a lot into such a short letter.  

Personal liberty:  He's trying to curtail other people's personal choice to wear masks.  Wonder how he feels about tattoos.  

• What about people who have made or purchased attractive masks and now enjoy them as a fashion statement?  
• What about people who have relished the ability to hide a disfigurement on their face or just something they don't like about how they look during this time when many others wear masks?
• What about people with low immunity who need a mask for more than just COVID?
• What about scuba divers and snorkelers?
• I was going to say 'what about' here too, but we already know that these people never liked face coverings that some Muslim women wear.  
• What about White Nationalist protesters who want to hide their identity from surveillance?

Halloween:  His 'No Masks ever" is pretty broad.  Is this also part of some religious group  that thinks Halloween violates sacred beliefs?  Will they still be yelling 'no masks ever' three months from now?

Ideological Symbolism - People who are so emotionally upset by masks, it seems to me, see masks as rebukes to their belief systems.  Every mask, to them, must seem like someone saying, "You're wrong."  I'd note that many of these same people also get irate about people of color complaining about racist language.  They tell them to not be so 'sensitive.'  

Willful Ignorance - Who is guilty of mask stupidity?  It seems to me it's the anti-maskers.  [Does anyone else think it's bizarre that we even have that word?] In answer to the question in the letter - vaccinations protect about 90-95% of the vaccinated from getting COVID.  But we don't know who that 5-10 out of 100 are.  It appears - the scientists are studying this as it happens and evolves so most conclusions are tentative - that for most vaccinated people who do get infected, there will be mild or no symptoms.  However, they can infect others. So the masks both protect the person wearing it and other people.  But people like the letter writer do not seem to care about other people, at least those who disagree with their world view, so it's hard for them to understand such feelings as empathy or caring.  

Ultimately anyone has the right to wear a mask for any reason, except those committing crimes with a mask to hide their identity.  I'm actually hoping that masks will become a fashion.  At least with masks, unlike with tattoos, you can change them or just leave them off.  

[Technology that reads the internet for those with sight problems can read text and make it into audio, but cannot read text in images, so it helps to write out such text.]

The Letter:

"No Masks

Stop this mask stupidity.  If you're vaccinated and it works, why wear a mask?  This ridiculous nonsense must stop.  No masks ever.

-Nicholas Danger, Anchorage"

Freedom To Kill With Speech - Top 12 Anti-Vaxxers

[Overview:  basically there's

1.  And introduction about how perilous the times are

2.  A list of the Dirty Dozen

3.  Comments here and there about the need to adapt our legal thinking about Free Speech and the internet to be able to stop clear, dangerous, disinformation

4.  Some links to sites that offer suggestions for how to do this - though I can't say that I found anything that has anything close to a magic bullet.  At least you can get the sense that people are working on this.]

The Center for Countering Digital Hate posted a study March 24, 2021 called The Disinformation Dozen.   The first point in the executive summary is:

"1. The Disinformation Dozen are twelve anti-vaxxers who play leading roles in spreading digital misinformation about Covid vaccines. They were selected because they have large numbers of followers, produce high volumes of anti-vaccine content or have seen rapid growth of their social media accounts in the last two months."

I'm a firm believer in the First Amendment protections for free speech.  But there comes a point when people say things that do significant damage.  We have libel and slander laws.  We have hate speech laws. All put limits on speech.  

Perilous Times

Right now we are in a battle.  On one side is democracy and the rule of law and knowledge and action based on science. On the other side we have  the rule of power - based on personal opinion, misinformation, religion, playing on people's emotional weak points. 

 The Senate did not impeach Trump after the insurrection. Half the Senators still won't publicly acknowledge that Trump lost the election.  The GOP refuses to take action against treason.  Their  personal power and wealth is more important than the survival of democracy.  Plus the Monied Right have given us a Supreme Court now that may well support moving to an autocratic theocracy.  

US citizens tend to believe their democracy is immortal.  It's not.  It's being severely tested now. What happens in the next few years will change the world for better or worse.  There's no guarantee those on the side of freedom and equality will be the victors in this new civil war.

We must adapt our laws to deal with threats that the internet enables.  I don't have the answers, but I do have the questions.  

 From what I can tell, money is a factor in all of these cases.  Tat a minimum they have lots of followers on social media, so ad revenue is an issue.  And for a number (if not all) of these folks, there are side hustles - video tapes, alternative medicines, etc. - that bring in a lot of money.  Probably speaking engagements add up too.  

I'm guessing that for some, the money is the main draw.  I don't know how many of these people believe what they are saying.  We know that outrageousness generates clicks.  But I'm sure a few of these despicable people have convinced themselves they are speaking the truth.

The spreading of disinformation is a key weapon in the arsenal of autocracy.  

The List

These are the 12 (really 13) people they Center for Digital Hate identified.   The report also has examples of the kinds of post they distribute.  

[All these profiles are from  Center for Countering Digital Hate  a study The Disinformation Dozen. [The pics of the perps didn't transfer over to here and it's more work than I want to do to redo them all, so for the pics I recommend visiting the original source linked two lines up. It also includes examples of their dirty work.]] 

1 Joseph Mercola

Facebook: Active

Twitter: Active

Instagram:Active

Joseph Mercola is a successful anti-vaccine entrepreneur, peddling dietary supplementsand false cures as alternatives to vaccines. Mercola’s combined personal social mediaaccounts have around 3.6 million followers.

2 Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Facebook: Active

Twitter: Active

Instagram: Part Removed

Kennedy is a long-standing anti-vaxxer, and his Children’s Health Defense (CHD) hosts a range of anti-vaccine articles.

Kennedy’s account was banned from Instagram on 8 February, yet his Facebook Page remains active, as does the CHD’s Instagram page.

Kennedy and Children’s Health Defense released a film in mid-March targeting members of the Black and Latino communities with tailored anti-vaccine messages. Facebook and Twitter continue to allow him a platform to promote these false claims.

3 Ty & Charlene Bollinger

Facebook: Active

Twitter: Active

Instagram: Active

Ty and Charlene Bollinger are anti-vax entrepreneurs who run a network of accounts that market books and DVDs about vaccines, cancer and COVID-19. In 2020 they launched the United Medical Freedom Super PAC ahead of last year’s United States elections.

The Bollingers have promoted the conspiracy theory that Bill Gates plans to inject everyone with microchips as part of a vaccination program.

From AP:

“You’re going to love owning the platinum package,” Charlene Bollinger tells viewers, as a picture of a DVD set, booklets and other products flashes on screen. Her husband, Ty, promises a “director’s cut edition,” and over 100 hours of additional footage.

Click the orange button, his wife says, “to join in the fight for health freedom” — or more specifically, to pay $199 to $499 for the Bollingers’ video series, “The Truth About Vaccines 2020.”

The Bollingers are part of an ecosystem of for-profit companies, nonprofit groups, YouTube channels and other social media accounts that stoke fear and distrust of COVID-19 vaccines, resorting to what medical experts say is often misleading and false information.

Wikipedia says he's a former body builder with no medical training.  

4 Sherri Tenpenny

Facebook:Part Active

Twitter: Active

Instagram: Active

Sherri Tenpenny is an osteopath physician who spreads anti-vaccine sentiment and false claims about the safety and efficacy of masks via her social media channels. While her Facebook account has been removed, her Twitter and Instagram are still intact.

 From Wikipedia:

"Since 2017, Tenpenny and her business partner, Matthew Hunt, have taught a six-week, $623 course titled "Mastering Vaccine Info Boot Camp" designed to "sow seeds of doubt" regarding public health information. During the course, Tenpenny explains her views on the immune system and vaccines, and Hunt instructs participants on how best to use persuasion tactics in conversation to communicate the information.[9]

Tenpenny promotes anti-vaccination videos sold by Ty and Charlene Bollinger and receives a commission whenever her referrals result in a sale,[10] a practice known as affiliate marketing.[11]"

5 Rizza Islam

Facebook: Removed

Twitter: Active

Instagram: Active

Rizza Islam’s anti-vaccine posts aim to spread vaccine hesitancy amongst African Americans. While Facebook removed Rizza Islam’s Facebook Page in February, he continues to post anti-vaccine messages from his Instagram and Twitter accounts. 

From Wikipedia entry on the World Literacy Program of which Rizza Islam was Executive Director.

World Literacy Crusade (WLC) is a non-profit organisation formed in 1992 by the Rev. Alfreddie Johnson to fight illiteracy, and supported by the Church of Scientology.[1][2] The group uses "study technologies" and "drug rehabilitation technologies" developed by L. Ron Hubbard, the Church's founder.[3][4] It has been characterized as a "Scientology front group",[5][6] and has been promoted by celebrity Scientologists such as Isaac Hayes and Anne Archer.[1]

Legal issues

The LA Times reported in 2008 that about 100 protestors gathered outside of the World Literacy Crusade offices after being sold fake low cost housing vouchers for as much as $1500. Officials at WLC admitted to selling the free vouchers, but stated they did not know they were fake.[7] The Compton, Californian offices of the WLC housed a drug detox program using “dry heat sweat therapy”.[8] In 2015 the executive director of WLC, Hanan Islam, Ronnie Steven Islam (AKA Rizza Islam) and her adult children were arrested for Medi-Cal fraud and insurance fraud for billing for this detox program.[9][10]

The Anti-Defamation League cites his anti-Semitic and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. 

6 Rashid Buttar

Facebook: Active

Twitter: Active

Instagram: Active

Rashid Buttar is an osteopath physician and conspiracy theorist known for videos posted to his YouTube channel.

From Wikipedia:  

Rashid Buttar

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rashid Buttar

Nationality American

Education Des Moines University

Occupation Physician

Known for Conspiracy theories, 

Anti-vaccine views

Rashid Ali Buttar (born January 20, 1966) is an American osteopathic physician from Charlotte, North Carolina, also known as a conspiracy theory and vaccine hesitancy proponent.[1] He is known for his controversial use of chelation therapy for numerous conditions, including autism and cancer.[2] He has twice been reprimanded by the North Carolina Board of Medical Examiners for unprofessional conduct[3][4] and cited by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for illegal marketing of unapproved and adulterated drugs.[5][6][7]

7 Erin Elizabeth

Facebook: Active

Twitter: Active

Instagram: Active

Erin Elizabeth, partner to Joseph Mercola, runs Health Nut News, a prominent ‘alternative health’ website with affiliated newsletter and social media accounts.

8 Sayer Ji

Facebook: Active

Twitter: Removed

Instagram: Part Removed

Sayer Ji runs a popular alternative health website, GreenMedInfo.com, and affiliated social media accounts that promote pseudoscience and anti-vaccine misinformation. Despite his GreenMedInfo accounts being removed by Twitter and Instagram, it is still available on Facebook.

An article on GreenMedInfo.com falsely claimed that "The FDA knows that rushed-to- market COVID-19 vaccines may cause a wide range of life-threatening side effects, including death."

From Wikipedia:

"Ji obtained a BA in philosophy from Rutgers University in 1995.[2] He has previously owned an organic food market in Bonita Springs.[3][4]

He is the former editor of the defunct International Journal of Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine [5] and a member of the advisory board and a former vice-president of the National Health Federation, a lobby group opposing government regulation of alternative health practitioners and supplements retailers.[5][6][7][8]

Ji became popular promoting common alternative medicine beliefs, such as enthusiasm for ancient healing practices and the claim that the appearance of some foods is meant to indicate which organ of the human body they are meant to cure.[5] While he always invited his readers to be suspicious of governments, health authorities and pharmaceutical companies, during the COVID-19 pandemic Ji joined other proponents of alternative medicine in embracing conspiracy theories about allegedly oppressive global organizations.[1][9]

Ji denies being an anti-vaccination activist, but consistently shares false or misleading messages about vaccine safety and efficacy.[10][5][11][12] He is married to Kelly Brogan, another well-known promoter of medical misinformation.[11] He lives in Florida.[8][13]"

9 Kelly Brogan

Facebook: Removed

Twitter: Active

Instagram: Active

Kelly Brogan is the partner of fellow alternative health entrepreneur Sayer Ji. She claimsto practice “holistic psychiatry” and sells a range of books and courses from her website.

10 Christiane Northrup

Facebook: Active

Twitter: Active

Instagram: Active

Christiane Northrup is an obstetrics and gynecology physician who has embraced alternative medicine and anti-vaccine conspiracies. She has used her social media accounts to spread disinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine.

11 Ben Tapper

Facebook: Active

Twitter: Active

Instagram: Active

Ben Tapper is a chiropractor with a growing following on social media. He has routinely posted COVID disinformation and spoken out against masking.

Example Violations

12 Kevin Jenkins

Facebook: Active

Twitter: Active

Instagram: Active

Kevin Jenkins is an anti-vaccine activist with a growing social media presence who has appeared at public events with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Jenkins has called vaccines a“conspiracy” to “wipe out” black people and is a co-founder of the Freedom Airway & Freedom Travel Alliance, a company founded in late 2020 to help its members travel around the world without observing any masking, quarantining, vaccination, or other pandemic control measures.

The report is pushing for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to shut down their accounts - and some of these folks have many different accounts.  

They succeed because of people like the man below.

[Note:  I've googled the text of this cartoon hoping to identify the cartoonist.  There are many places that have put this up.  But the creator's name I couldn't find.  I thank the creator and I'll add your name if you notify me who you are.  Or take it down if you prefer.]

The idea that constitutional rights can't be abridged comes up against the fact that the exercise of one person's constitutional rights can curtail the constitutional rights of others. Then we have to evaluate which right is more critical.  Letting FB cut people off is not an issue because it's the government, not private companies, that must not abridge people's rights.  Companies may set conditions which apply to all users equally - based on behavior, not inherent traits such as race and gender.  

What can you do?

I don't want to just offer bad news without giving people some ideas of what can be done about it.  People should share such information with policy makers - you can easily email your members of Congress even if you don't have the power to implement these things yourself.  Or you can join or donate to organizations that fight these problems.  Here are a few ideas just to remind you that every problem has ways to mitigate it and people who have taken on this project.  

How to fight lies, tricks,and chaos online -   There are a number of sites that offer individuals steps to prevent receiving misinformation.  This is one of the best I saw.  It also includes when to report to law enforcement.  And it recognizes that this is all complicated and no checklist is fool proof.  This is definitely worth a look.

A guide to anti-misinformation actions around the world - This offers a list, country by country, of measures to stop the spread of misinformation.  Unfortunately, many of the countries are authoritarian regimes that don't offer us much help.  But worth a look to see what other democracies are doing.

MITIGATING MEDICAL MISINFORMATION: A WHOLE-OF-SOCIETY APPROACH TO COUNTERING SPAM, SCAMS, AND HOAXES

"This brief addresses how the public health sector, along with a coalition of civil servants, media workers, technology companies, and civil society organizations, can understand and respond to the problem of medical media manipulation, specifically how it spreads online. Here we present a supplementary research-and-response method in correspondence with the World Health Organization (WHO)’s already suggested framework for dealing with the infodemic, with a focus on media manipulation.2"

How to Slow the Spread of Disinformation: A Guide for Newsrooms - 

Congressional Panel On Internet And Disinformation... Includes Many Who Spread Disinformation Online - This one has a promising title, but it doesn't live up to the promise.  It demonstrates the problem of people writing about complex without really being experts themselves. (Like I'm doing here.)  This person writes very little about what was debated.  He basically pulls out stuff he disagrees with and throws up his hands.  The comments, though, offer a sense of the complexity and conflicts of goals involved in all this.  

How Data Privacy Laws Can Fight Fake News  - This post argues that by protecting personal privacy online, it would be harder for people to be targeted for mis- and disinformation.

That's enough.  People are working on this.  Find them and support them.  

Alaska's COVID Numbers Are Going Back Up

In the Alaska Daily COVID-19 Count 3 tab below the banner up top, I've got a spreadsheet with Alaska COVID stats since March 15, 2020. It's 3 because numbers 1 and 2 got so long and bulky, I needed a new one.  I started it because the state just kept replacing yesterday's numbers with today's and it was hard to know if things were getting better or worse.  They've got fancy dashboards now with graphs, but they are only posted three times a week now.  This week only twice because there was a holiday Monday.  Along with updated numbers on the chart.  I post some comments to give the numbers a little more meaning.  

In the last few weeks, the numbers have changed.  They were going down.  Then they seemed to level off.  And now they are going back up.  This isn't over yet.  I've kept my COVID posts mainly in the COVID tab, but given that we are moving up again, it seemed useful to repeat yesterday's (Friday) comments here in the main section of the blog.  You have to go to the tab to see the chart.

Friday, July 9, 2021 - Our direction has definitely changed.  We're going back up.

Two new deaths reported today for a total of 370 Alaskans. Note, reported doesn't tell us when they happened.  We don't know if it was in the last two days or ta while ago and that stats are just catching up.

There were 14 new hospitalizations.  27 COVID patients are hospitalized in Alaska.  There are 48 ICU beds available in Alaska.  That's a reasonably high number for the time I've been following it.  But it could drop if hospitalizations spike. That number is also affected by non-COVID patients.

You know that most of the hospitalizations lately are of unvaccinated people.  Not only are these people risking themselves, they're giving the virus time to mutate into ever more contagious and severe versions.  AND they are endangering all those under 12 who haven't been approved yet for vaccination. And they're using up medical facilities and the patience and time or health care workers unnecessarily. Most of the kids will probably have slight or no symptoms, but a number of them will get sick enough to be hospitalized.  But the anti-vaxers really don't seem to care about anyone but themselves.  It's like a bunch of are in a big rowboat trying to get to shore, but part of the group insists on jumping up and down and rocking the boat.  

117 more people tested positive in the last two days.  Nearly 60 a day.  

But what concerns me most is that Test Positivity was reported at 2.43.  That's the highest number I have (there were days when the numbers weren't available) since April 30, 2021.  There were about   6600 tests since Wednesday.  

Living Through A Pandemic Is A Little Like Living Abroad For A Year

Back in June there were various news stories about how high school students felt that they were being robbed, by the pandemic, of sacred high school experiences, like prom and graduation.  My reaction was that in ten years, their pandemic year stories will be much more meaningful than most people's graduation stories.  

As I thought about it more, it seemed that the pandemic has been, in many (not all) ways - a lot like living living abroad for a year.  

Of course, there are lots of ways to live abroad - with work, in the military,  a school year overseas, traveling from country to country, etc.  The impact of the year (or more) abroad ranges widely, depending on whether you live in an ex-pat bubble or you're the only foreigner in your community. Most people's experiences are somewhere in between those two extremes.  

Some key factors that affect the experience include:

• whether you have to learn and to speak the other language(s)
• how many others from your culture are there with you
• whether you work with locals or not

But regardless, there are certain things that happen to many people living in another culture.

• your new culture makes you think about your home country differently
• you think about things you miss, but also learn that the new culture has alternatives, some of which are better 
• you start comparing the two cultures, which is the first step to realizing that the way you've always lived isn't the only way to live, or even the best
• things you thought were necessary turn out not to be
• you see that your new culture interprets news about your culture differently - whether it's in the newspapers or comments from your new friends and colleagues
• you start thinking about what the new culture does better than your old culture and vice versa
• if you learn to speak the language well enough to negotiate life in it
• you find out that your native language is just one of many, many ways to communicate
• that translation is not simply substituting the foreign words for your native words 
• you learn that there are words in the new language that don't exist in your own, that give you different ways of thinking about the world, 
• as you master the grammar, what first seemed awkward or just plain weird, now becomes an alternative to what you once thought was the only way words could be arranged together
• there's a certain freedom to navigating without ever using your native language, a liberation from the biases and limits every language imposes on its native speakers
• If the new language has a different alphabet or characters instead of letters, you have to rearrange brain cells to adapt even more

• when you return you are not the same person who left - your mind and expectations have been expanded
• there's the pleasure of old food favorites and seeing friends and family
• but you start missing food specialties from the new culture 
• and your old friends haven't gone through what you've gone through and they don't realize you see things differently, and while they like the exotic pictures, they don't understand the less visible aspects of the other culture and how that's changed you

The list can go on and on.  But overall being in another country forces you to see your own country differently and also to see yourself differently.  You see that there are other possibilities than the life you used to live.  This is true if you went to the other country voluntarily or not (say, if your parents took you.)

I think the same will prove true for all of us who have lived through the pandemic.  

• It interrupted our routines and forced us to find other ways to do things.  
• We learned to order delivery or use curbside pick up for groceries and other items.  
• We learned to wear masks and gloves.  
• We learned to use zoom and streamed a lot more videos.  
• There were many things we didn't understand - particularly about the virus and how to respond to it - and it took time to figure out what worked and what didn't.  
• Some people resisted changing their routines. 
• They refused to believe that the virus was real.   This happens, say, to US citizens overseas who insist on only eating US food and will only speak English and think they are not subject to the new country's laws and customs
• We've had more time home alone or with our families.  Time to think.
• We've learned new vocabulary, from COVID to community spread and Zoom

Changes are already being reported.  I'm hearing news of people who want to keep working from home post pandemic.  Or even rethinking whether they want to stay in the same job or profession.  

Some people get back from an overseas stay with new insights, but gradually fall back into their old routines.

Other people's lives are profoundly different when they get back.  They gravitate to new friends who have overseas experiences too and can understand their new perspectives.  They cook their favorite foods from overseas and try to find ways to keep up their language skills.  They see bias in the media covering their new country.

Nobody chose to spend these past two years in a pandemic, but some people took advantage of the changes while others endured it kicking and screaming.  But even they will have learned from this experience.  I think of my son who did not want to spend a year in Hong Kong and didn't particularly enjoy all the changes in his life.  He was 15 at the time.  But he used his overseas experiences in his college essays when he got back.  Later he took Chinese in a community college so he could speak to work colleagues using their own language.  He taught English in China for a year, worked a year in Europe, and got a masters degree in SE Asia.  I don't think those things would have happened without the year in Hong Kong.  

One obvious difference between the pandemic and a year abroad is that the whole world participated in the pandemic at the same time.  And the pandemic exposed inequities between nations and within nations.  

For all of us, 2020 and 2021 will be landmark years in our personal lives and in the history of the world.  If we're lucky we will have learned a lot.  We'll be better prepared for a future pandemic.  We'll take climate change more seriously. We'll realize that changes to our routines to combat climate change may be initially challenging, but they will also offer opportunities we didn't expect.  

Florida Condo Squabble Over Repairs, Good Metaphor For US

The US in the title is for both the United States and 'us' as individuals.

 

Source

The headline of this Washington Post article republished in the Anchorage Daily News is probably a good reflection on the US democracy in general.  

Condo owners belong to associations and have to make group decisions about how to manage the condos.  Most stuff tends to get done by the board, but bigger issues have to get approved by the membership.  Things like making major repairs.  

I'm imagining the basic debates the owners had:

1. Technical Stuff:  How do we actually know how serious the problems with the structure are? How much repair do we really have to do to?  
2. Emotional Stuff:  How much is this going to cost me?  Am I really in danger?  Is someone trying to rip us off?

Engineering reports are fairly technical and most owners probably won't read them that carefully if at all.  And if they do read them, many don't have an engineering education they would need to judge the level of urgency of the required repairs.

And when they see the price tags - $80,000 to $300,000 per unit - they have to assess how that affects their life expectations and goals.  If that amount of money would seriously jeopardize their economic security, then they're much more likely to downplay the urgency.  

But we know, in this case, there are (as I write) 24 known dead and 124 missing.  Different owners are being affected differently, regardless of the positions they took on the repairs.  There's the dead and missing.  The other residents who now have had to evacuate their homes.  The owners who don't live there, just rent out their condos.  There are people who were visiting who knew nothing about the issue.  

The condo collapse is a very tangible (I'm resisting the term I'd normally use here - concrete) example of where we are in the US today on issue after issue - from COVID to guns to climate change.  

1.  We argue over the facts, over the science, over the likelihood of different scenarios.

2.  Our involvement is affected by our emotional involvement, our life dreams, our fears, and for the leaders, the level of their personal need for power.  How many people are Board members for the good of the condos or because it gives them power and some sort of standing, prestige?  Same question for our legislators.

3.  For US issues (and this is true around the world) we have a factor that probably didn't play a big role in the condo association - deliberate misinformation campaigns to stir doubt about everything, which lets the venal continue their actions in the confusion.

There were visible signs at the condo of the dangers - cracking, water seepage, concrete deterioration -  so that people could see something needed to be done.  The visible signs of climate change keep piling on, but we're like members of the condo association - squabbling rather than taking the obvious necessary actions we need to take. [A carbon fee and dividend is by far the most effective and viable way to prevent the most carbon release.  You can see more about that here. But Republicans (mainly) throw up roadblock after roadblock.]]

There are human variations that affect how people make decisions:

• Ability to deal with change 
• Ability to comprehend complex, abstract issues
• Comfort with risk and uncertainty
• Personal sense of power and ability to make a difference

Some of the items above are influenced by genetics, but also by the conditions we grew up with:

• Economic security and ability
• Educational opportunities and choices
• Amount of love we got from our families and communities

I'm sure you can all add to the lists.  

Step One to a better democracy:  people need to learn about themselves and where they are on these and other factors and what their relatively strengths  and weaknesses are.  

The obstacles for many people are not out there in the world, but lurking in our own sense of self.  

The Eight Pillars Of Caste And The Fight To Hide Truth

  The critics of "Critical Race Theory" are out in full force.  Today (I started this Friday) I heard Ted Cruz attacked CRT with lots of venom and no facts.  I read a piece by gay conservative Andrew Sullivan give a more nuanced description of 'liberal' defenses of CRT.  And I read about how the Southern Baptist Convention, while managing to elect a new president who promises a thorough investigation of sexual abuse complaints among Southern Baptists, also 

"approved a consensus measure regarding critical race theory that did not mention it by name but rejected any view that sees racism as rooted in 'anything other than sin.'"

[I read the AP article in the Anchorage Daily News, but getting a link now directly from AP, I see the handling of CRT by the Baptists was more complex than just this quote suggests.] 

I wrote a letter to the editor almost two weeks ago, because I think it's important for people to understand that this is a cynical ploy by conservatives to do two things:

• make people associate any talk of race with anti-white, anti-American, anti-capitalism
• supercharge an issue to rile up whites to vote in 2022 

In any case I've been wanting to add more information from a book that documents systemic racism and thus would be caught up in the very big net being cast by the anti-CRT campaign) to show how much this CRT and discussions of race are NOT what the conservatives claim.  CRT is based on well researched, factual evidence that the attacks make no effort to disprove.  Rather they have created a bogey man they call CRT without actually defining what it is.  They just list their supposed  dangers.   

I'm almost finished with  Caste by Isabel Wilkerson.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, she argues in this book that caste is a bigger factor than race in the subjugation of Blacks in the United States.  Though, of course, skin color is the critical marker of caste.  

She compares the caste system of India - the most clearly articulated caste system - to the systems in the United States and Nazi Germany.  In the US she says the two castes are White and Black with a gray zone in between.  In Nazi Germany she looks at how Jews were systematically dehumanized and treated as a subordinate caste to Aryans.  She compares the lowest class,  Untouchable class - the Dalits - to African-Americans.  

To make the comparison she identifies The eight pillars of Caste.  I'll describe the a little further here (Wilkerson takes 60 pages so my quick summary will be just that, a quick summary.  But first I'll just offer the list and let you speculate what each might entail.

• Pillar Number One:  Divine Will and the Laws of Nature
• Pillar Number Two:  Heritability
• Pillar Number Three:  Endogeny and the Control of Marriage and Mating
• Pillar Number Four:  Purity vs. Pollution
• Pillar Number Five:  Occupational Hierarchy
• Pillar Number Six:  Dehumanization and Stigma
• Pillar Number Seven:  Terror as Enforcement, Cruelty as a means of Control
• Pillar Number Eight:  Inherent Superiority versus Inherent Inferiority

That all makes sense, right?  I'm assuming mostly US readers here, though folks from India drop by as well regularly.  This list probably is easier for the lowest classes - Dalits and Blacks - to relate to than members of other castes, particularly the highest classes.  

1.  Divine Will and the Laws of Nature - The key point here, if I understood this right, is that opposing the caste system is to oppose the will of God, to attack the laws of Nature, because, according to caste upholders,  Caste system are not created by humans, but by God(s) or nature.  

She tells us about Manu, "the all-knowing" explaining the origins of the world 

"and then, to fill the land, he created the Brahmin, the highest caste, from his mouth, the Kshatriya from his arms, the Vaishya from his thighs, and from his feet, the Shudra, the lowest of the four varnas...

"Unmentioned among the original four varnas were those deemed so low that they were beneath even the feet of the Shudra.  They were living out the afflicted karma of the past, they were not to be touched and some not even to be seen.  Their very shadow was a pollutant.  They were outside of the caste system and thus outcastes.  [How many of you had ever considered 'outcastes' so literally before?]  These were the Untouchables who would later come to be known as Dalits, the subordinate caste of India."

Christians, Wilkerson tells us, also justified their treatment of Blacks with their holy book.  Going to the story of Noah.  Noah got drunk of the wine from his vineyard.

"The wine overtook him, and he lay uncovered inside his tent.  Ham, who would become the father of a son Canaan, happened into the tent and saw his father's nakedness and told his two brothers outside."

Shem and Japheth went into the tent backwards and covered Noah without seeing his nakedness.

"When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what Ham had done, he cursed Ham's son, Canaan, and the generations to follow, saying, "Cursed be Canaan!  The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers."

"As the riches from the slave trade from Africa to the New World poured forth to the Spaniards, to the Portuguese, to the Dutch, and lastly to the English, the biblical passage would be summoned to condemn the children of Ham and to justify the kidnap and enslavement of millions of human beings, and the violence against them.  From the time of the Middle Ages, some interpreters of the Old Testament described Ham as bearing black skin and translated Noah's curse against him as a curse against the descendants of Ham, against all humans with dark skin, the people who the Europeans told themselves had been condemned to enslavement by God's emissary, Noah himself." 

How does she know this?  She's quoting Thomas R.R. Cobb who wrote a history of slavery in the mid-1800s.  In the endnote she writes:

"This interpretation of Genesis was debated, oddly enough by some who were even more hateful of blacks than most enslavers.  They argued that this interpretation could not be true, because Africans were not human, they were beasts and therefore could not have descended from a son of Noah, cursed or not"

Okay.  Clearly I can't go into so much detail for each of the eight pillars.  But knowing about the Indian caste origins is probably not something most US readers know.  I also wanted here, at least, to show that these points are documented.  The other seven pillars are treated the same way.

I'd note that I haven't heard any CRT critics dispute facts like these.  They merely dismiss CRT as un-American and as attacks on whites, while I see it as offering us a factual counter-narrative to the history written by the victors - the people who enslaved Blacks and forcibly removed the Indigenous people from their land.  

Each of the pillars has the same kind of examples and documentation.  I won't go into as much detail because I think they're relatively easy for people to understand.  And those who can't, can borrow a copy of the book from the library or even buy one.  

2.  Heretibility-

"You were born o a certain caste and remained in that caste, subject the high status or low stigma it conferred, for the rest of your days and into the lives of your descendants."

Which requires the next pillar.

3.  Endogamy and the Control of Marriage and Mating - Engodogamy is the restricting of marriage to people within the same caste.  Wilkerson documents the many laws in many states that prohibited marriage between Blacks and whites.  

Which is also required because of the next pillar.

4.  Purity versus Pollution - This one is particularly obnoxious.  She talks about the extremes required to keep Dalits from (in some cases, even being seen by) the higher castes.  

"A person in the lowest subcastes in the Maratha region had to 'drag a thorny branch with him to wipe out his footprints' and prostrate himself on the ground if a Brahmin passed, so that his 'foul shadow might not defile the holy Brahmin.'"

The notion here is that the lowest castes can pollute the higher ones by their mere presence.  And if the Hindu example above seems extreme, Wilkerson talks about the sanctity of water and the near universality of US Blacks not being allowed to pollute the water that whites drink or swim in.  Separate drinking fountains and bathrooms in the South.  But bans of Blacks using white swimming pools and even beaches throughout the US. 

"In the early 1950s, when Cincinnati agreed under pressure to allow black swimmers into some of its public pools, whites threw nails and broken glass into the water to keep them out.  In the 1960s, a black civil rights activist tried to integrate a public pool by swimming a lap and the emerging to towel off.  'The response was to drain the pool entirely,' wrote the legal historian Mark S. Weiner, 'and refill it with fresh water.'"

Then she talks about blood quantum. 

"Arkansas first defined Negro as 'one in whom there is a visible and distinct admixture of African blood.'  Then in 1911, the state changed it to anyone 'who has. . .any negro blood whatever,' as it made interracial sex a felony.  The state of Alabama defined a black person as anyone with 'a drop of negro blood,' in its intermarriage ban. Oregon defined as nonwhite any person with 'with 1/4 Negro, Chinese or any person having 1/4 Negro, Chinese or Kanaka blood or more than 1/2 Indian blood.'"

5.  Occupational Hierarchy: The Jatis and Mudsill - Wilkerson explains 

"When a house is being built, the single most important piece of the framework is the first wood beam hammered into place to anchor the foundation.  That piece is called the mudsill. . . In a caste system, the mudsill is the bottom caste that everything else rests upon."

That explanation is needed by most of us today to understand the point of this US Senate speech from 1858: 

"'In all social systems, there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life,' Sen. James Henry Hammond of South Carolina told his fellow senators.  'That is a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill.  Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity.  Such a class you must have. . .  It constitutes the very mud-sill of society."

In India the castes themselves define the kinds of work caste members are allowed to do, but in the US it's less explicit.  Nevertheless,

"In 1890, '85 percent of black men and 96 percent of black women were employed in just two occupational categories,' wrote the sociologist Stephen Steinberg, 'agricultural and domestic or personal service.'  Forty years later as the Deression set in and as African-Americans moved to northern cities, the percentages of black people at the bottom of the labor hierarchy remained the same, though, by then, nearly half of black men were doing manual labor that called merely for a strong back." 

I hope you are getting the idea.  She's offering us the characteristics of caste and then example after example of how each characteristic plays out.  It's not some fictional narrative as critics of CRT argue.  It's not a screed against white people.  It's simply a factual recitation of the many ways that our law, regulations, and customs separated (and in many cases still do) whites from blacks.  

I haven't seen critics of CRT dispute facts like these.  Rather they make broad accusations of CRT being an anti-white attack on US democracy.   

Michael Harriot, mocking the claims of CRT detractors, started a Twitter trend today posting:

"CRT took my guns away and gave them to the transgenders.  How did CRT ruin your life?"

We only have three more pillars of caste.

6.  Dehumanization and Stigma - I think this is obvious enough.  Wilkerson gives examples of how the Nazis treated Jews as they arrived at concentration camps and the conditions they were forced to live in.  She writes about African slaves in the US South.  After a list of dehumanizing actions, she writes:

"Beyond all of this, the point of a dehumanization campaign was the forced surrender of the target's own humanity, a karmic theft beyond accounting.  Whatever was considered a natural human reaction was disallowed for the subordinate caste.  During the era of enslavement, they were forbidden to cry as their children were carried off, forced to sing as a wife or husband was sold away, never again to look into their eyes or hear their voice for as long as the two might live. . . Whatever humanity shone through them was an affront to what the dominant cast rep telling itself.  They were punished for being the humans that the could not help but be."

You might pause and say, well this is interpretation, not facts.  Yes, in this case I left out the facts - you can find a copy of the book and read them yourself.  This is, indeed, interpretation of the intent of those facts.  One can dispute the interpretation, though I find the context and the facts make this interpretation seem quite reasonable.  Especially given the many similar interpretations by contemporaneous observers.  What are some other interpretations?

I think about meeting a nicely dressed, very gracious, middle aged white man in Vicksburg, Mississippi who told me that they hadn't needed the  'Northern, communist, hippy agitators' who came to Mississippi in the 1960s to march for civil rights.  "Our Negroes were happy with how things were down here." That was in the year 2000.  

7.   Terror as Enforcement, Cruelty as a means of Control - 

"The crimes of homicide, of rape, and of assault and battery were felonies in the slavery era as they are today in any civil society.  They were seen then as wrong, immoral, reprehensible, and worthy of the severest punishment.  But the country allowed most any atrocity to be inflicted on the black body.  This twelve generations of African-Americans faced the ever-present danger of assault and battery or worse, every day of their lives during the quarter millennium of enslavement."

The book gets much more graphic. 

8.   Inherent Superiority Versus Inherent Inferiority - Wilkerson writes about Hollywood's portrayal of whites in superior positions and Blacks as servants (not simply in portrayals of the South), and then about how rigidly that was actually enforced in the South.

"Years after the Nazis were defeated across the Atlantic, African-Americanswere still being brutalized for the least appearance of stepping out of their place. Planters routinely whipped their sharecroppers for 'trivial offenses,' wrote Allison Davis and Burleigh and Mary Gardner in 1941.  A planter in Mississippi said that, if his tenant 'didn't stop acting so big, the next time it would be the bullet or a rope.  That is the way to manage them when they get too big.'  In 1948, a black tenant farmer in Louise, Mississippi was severely beaten by two whites, wrote the historian James C. Cobb, 'because he asked for a receipt after paying his water bill.'"

This is not "an interesting side topic."  

This issue is already a major thrust of the Republican effort to retain the House and the Senate, as well as winning local elections.  It's part of the current effort to disenfranchise lower caste voters and to pass laws that give Republicans the power to decide whether elections are fair and who the winners are. 

Trump is teaching them that refusal to abide by the law and facts is a winning strategy.  It didn't quite work this time, but it was a good trial run.  Next time, they'll fix the parts that didn't work for them.    

This is about the ability of democracy to survive in the United States.  Republicans are hoping that fear of losing their superior place in the US caste system will mobilize enough votes for Republicans to hang on.  For those of us who can see that strategy clearly, it's time to educate ourselves and everyone we know. And then to find those folks who, for various reasons, don't vote and help them understand what their not voting can lead to.