Yays and nays
In a week full of think pieces, I think the most powerful contextualization of the murder of Renee Good in the broader map of the American struggle to live up to our ideals was the most recent episode of the recent-history podcast “Weird Little Guys,” from journalist Molly Conger. I encourage everyone to give it a listen.
In the nays column, whatever grotesque blend of racism and hedonism this is. Trigger warning for Mar-a-Lago.
In the yays column, a planned white nationalist march in downtown Minneapolis put on by a January 6th rioter who was pardoned after beating a Capitol police officer with a bat drew only 10 people, dwarfed by the counter-protestors who showed up and chased them off.
Somewhere in the murky area between yay and nay, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein shed light this week on internal ICE operations and strategies, as shared with him by a whistleblower. Similarly, Laura Jedeed from Slate managed to get herself hired by ICE with seemingly no effort put into vetting her or completing basic hiring procedures.
“The [recruiter] agent took the opportunity to gush about ICE’s new state-of-the-art semi-automatic tasers and brand-new pepper-ball guns. ‘It’s mostly very liberal cities—San Francisco, Los Angeles—where groups will come and try to stop ICE officers from arresting somebody. They’re like, “We’re going to form a human wall against you,” ’ he said. ‘When they do that, you can just pop ‘em up. Let them disperse and cry about it.’”
In the yays column is that Texas Democrats are running for every single state and federal race in the state this year. This may seem basic to folks from blue states, but the Democratic momentum in red states is a slow, steady thing often advanced with little to no resources, especially in thoroughly gerrymandered states like Texas.
And finally, in the nay column, in DAN’s backyard, our governor has opposed the proposed one-time billionaire wealth tax and sought common ideological ground with Ben Shapiro about ICE this week, so that deserves some calls to his office.
Let us leave you with this post, however, to remind us all that facing these things is traumatic and acknowledging that it takes a toll on us, creating a real need to be gentle and kind to ourselves and to each other.
