Do we really need another essay on freedom? When’s the last time you read one? It’s good to be reminded occasionally of meaningful basics. We get accustomed to being unfree, so it’s a good idea to be reminded of what freedom is. It’s also useful to be reminded that freedom, in the form of unfree people, is at the root of the American birth defect. We fought a Civil War over that idea. It’s also useful to note that there are fake or faux freedoms, like the desire, effort, and ability to overthrow free and democratic elections, as Trump supporters and many Republicans attempted after the November 2020 elections. Jefferson Cowie in his book Freedom’s Dominion: A Sage of White Resistance to Federal Power, noted that the Right has turned “freedom” into a dog whistle.
All posts by Marc Brenman
Comparisons of Anti-Vietnam War Protests and Pro-Palestinian Protests – by Marc Brenman
Recently I was asked to compare and contrast the Anti-Vietnam War Protests of the mid to late 1960’s and early 1970’s with the current Pro-Palestinian, Pro-Gaza, and Anti-Israel protests, largely on college campuses. I was very active in activities against the War in Vietnam while in college and graduate school. I have some regrets at some of the stupid things I said and did. Therefore I try to understand the current demonstrators. I had a ox being gored—fear of being drafted. Thus, I had a personal stake in the actions. Today’s students have no such stake. It is especially notable that most of the groups opposing Israel’s stance in the Gaza War have no stake whatsoever in that part of the world.
Politics, Supreme Court and Decisions 2024 – by Marc Brenman
Very recently, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that only Congress could keep anyone off a ballot due to “[engagement] in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof,” under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. The Colorado Supreme Court had kept Donald Trump off the state’s ballot because of his participation in the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The Court was silent on whether Trump has committed insurrection or not. Allegedly, the Court’s 9-0 decision was due to its fear that political chaos could result if it ruled in Colorado’s favor.
This judicial philosophy is know as consequentialism, making decisions based on the anticipated consequences of the decision. Other major ways of making decisions include stare decisis, depending on previous decisions; strict constructionism, depending on the plain black letter words of Congress and the Founding Fathers; and Originalism, depending on the intent of the Founding Fathers and authors of the Constitution.
The current conservative majority of the Supreme Court has pretended to be Strict Constructionists and Originalists. They showed this tendency for example, in the anti-abortion decision, where they noted that a right to abortion is nowhere found in the Constitution. They shoved the decision off to the states to make. But wait! Secretaries of the states have always made the decision as to who would be allowed on ballots. So the current Court is at a minimum inconsistent, if not hypocritical. Another example of them straying from their beliefs is their decisions on gun control. Here they ignore the plain, original language of the Constitution, which prefaces a right to bear arms with the phrase “a well-regulated militia.” Clearly, no individual acting on his own is a well-regulated militia or a militia of any kind.
If one thinks along the consequentialist lines of the current Supreme Court, where does one end up? The next shoe to drop will be the Court’s decision on Trump’s desired immunity from prosecution. If the Court rules that he is immune, they are giving up American democracy and creating the probability of an American emperor. If the conservative majority rules this way, they will have ignored what President George Washington tried to teach us when he refused to become king.
American democracy has been a mixed bag; we’ve had only about about 140 years without slavery, 100 years of women’s rights, about 80 years of Asian-American rights, about 50 years of children who don’t speak English being able to get a public education, and less than 50 years of disability rights and environmental justice. Even those timelines were sullied by Jim Crow, segregation, redlining, domestic violence, discrimination, and inadequate enforcement of civil rights laws. It was a noble experiment, now ready to be handed back to white male nondisabled suprematists who have nostalgia for slavery and declared War on Women. Trump and his American Nazis are ready to declare victory. About 38 to 48% of the American electorate are ready to surrender their human rights to achieve their view of economic prosperity. This is similar to the Peoples Republic of China, and includes about 52% of white women, half of people with disabilities who vote Republican, and even a substantial minority of African-Americans and Hispanics, all voting against their self-interest.
There seems to be no remedy for masses of people who desire to harm themselves. Undocumented people coming across the southern border have tried to save us from ourselves. Their criminal conviction rate is about 45% below that of native‐born Americans in Texas. But maybe Texas is an aberration. On the other hand, these undocumented people have been growing our food, caring for our children, fixing our roofs, mowing our lawns, and generally doing all the hard work we’ve gotten too lazy to do.
Meanwhile, Democratic congresspeople and mayors in Michigan and senators from Maryland and Virginia are focusing on issues a third of a world away in Palestine instead of serving their constituents. For example, 47% of Cong. Tlaib’s constituents are Black, who have no stake whatsoever in the Middle East, but have many domestic challenges and needs. There must be some middle ground. But as the saying goes, if you see a turtle on its back on a fencepost, it didn’t get there by itself…
10 Strategies for Leadership in Divisive Times – by Marc Brenman
There are a great many extremely difficult challenges facing humanity in near-future years. How can leaders be assisted in navigating these challenges? Some of the leaders are causing or exacerbating the challenges, and so can’t be helped. Other of the challenges are lead by long term trends or technological developments. So for many of the challenges, there isn’t much hope. National culture change in a positive direction is extremely difficult, and is usually overcome by ideology, climate, geography, evil, natural resources, culture, and technology. Each has its own trajectory. Artificial intelligence provides a good example—can effective intervention be obtained before the technology runs away?
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Current Implications of Black History Month – by Marc Brenman
In 1926, Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson, an African-American historian, writer, and educator, created Negro History Week to honor the contributions of people of African descent in the U.S. He founded the Association for the Study of Negro (now African-American) Life and History in 1915 and the Journal of Negro History in 1916. Born in 1875 to former enslaved people in New Canton, Virginia, the Harvard-educated Woodson chose February for Negro History Week because the birthdays of abolitionist Frederick Douglass and President Abraham Lincoln fall then. He wrote, “What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race, hate, and religious prejudice.” Dr. Woodson contributed to our understanding that a better knowledge of history is critical for people in the African diaspora to achieve greater pride, self-determination and collective progress. Negro History Week itself changed. About fifty years later, near the close of the Black Power period (early 1970s), the celebration was renamed Black History Week and later expanded to Black History Month in 1976.
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Diversity and Equity Trends 2023 – by Marc Brenman
What we can anticipate and expect
The current Supreme Court will continue to whittle away at civil and human rights. Advocates will continue to sign petitions, march, and hold demonstrations, as if these activities would cause the federal judiciary to change its mind. They won’t.
The US will continue to become more diverse, especially by Hispanics and Asian-Americans. More people will identify as multi-racial. The percent of African-Americans will continue to remain relatively constant. However, despite this, the diversity practitioner and CDO field will continue to be dominated by African-American women.
The Chief Diversity Officer function will continue not to be represented at the executive team table along with other mission critical functions.
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Threats to Affirmative Action and DEIA – by Marc Brenman
There is much confusion today between affirmative action, which is under threat by lawsuits in the U.S. Supreme Court, and Diversity, Equity Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA), which is under no such threat, as long as practitioners stay away from race-based quotas and preferences. How can we educate the field about this?
The Supreme Court cases involve allegations by some Asian-American groups that their applicants should be admitted to prestigious colleges like Harvard at a higher rate because other applicants like African-Americans are given a preference. One should bear in mind that Asian-American students are already enrolled in such colleges at a rate far exceeding their presence in the American population, so these cases are not about proportional representation, or a “student body that looks like America.” In some cases, such as the University of California at Berkeley, the undergraduate enrollment is about 48% Asian-American. So these cases involve an extreme form of a desire for merit-based judgments by gate holders.
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The Devil, You Know – by Marc Brenman
Some psychologists, linguists, feel-gooders, and progressive reframers want us right thinking people to seriously listen to those on the extreme right, consider their thoughts and feelings, and show empathy and compassion. This is supposed to be a route to mutual understanding, reconciliation, agreement on some issues, and a reduction in discord and violence. But is this really possible? I think it might be in a few isolated cases, if the practitioners on the left are skilled enough and the rightists open-minded enough. But the greater reality seems to be that many of those on the extreme right are white evangelical Christians who have strayed far from any real Christian beliefs. Some core Christian beliefs include feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, healing the sick, welcoming the stranger, and turning the other cheek.
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U.S. Indian Boarding School Report – by Marc Brenman
In April 2022, the U.S. Department of the Interior issued the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report. The report was probably prompted by several year’s ago Canadian report on First Peoples boarding schools, and by the appointment of the first Native American Secretary of the Interior. The Canadian report was issues by the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in 2015.
The U.S. report has much interesting information on cultural eradication. Native American children were forced from their families and into schools that were little better than prisons, beginning in the early years of the American Republic. Esteemed Founding Fathers like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin expressed anti-Indian beliefs. Interestingly, these sentiments were sometimes expressed in confidential memos to Congress, as if it was known even then that the actions were morally reprehensible.
Continue reading U.S. Indian Boarding School Report – by Marc Brenman
Anti-abortion and the Descent into Fascism – by Marc Brenman
What can be said about the anticipated anti-abortion decision from the US Supreme Court that hasn’t been said already? From a civil rights and social justice perspective, the reasoning in Justice Alito’s draft opinion is dangerous. It presages and exemplifies anti-democratic tendencies already present and vigorous on the American right. There are many “rights” that are not mentioned explicitly in the Constitution. Even though Alito’s draft says the decision should not be used as precedent in restricting other rights, the effort is already underway to do so. These include privacy, LGBT rights, the rights of people with disabilities, and the education of non-citizen children in public schools. And of course, the rights of women, educational rights, and the right to housing, to eat, and to live in a clean environment. Although we hear about it relatively little, the Equal Rights Amendment has never been added to the Constitution. However, there are many laws from Congress on protecting women, people with disabilities, and the environment. Women’s health advocates want Congress to pass similar laws protecting abortion. This is unlikely to occur, with the close division between the parties in the Senate, and the likely loss of Democratic House seats in the mid-term election. In addition, the Supreme Court can overturn acts of Congress if they believe the laws are not rooted in the Constitution.
Nothing stops a conservative Supreme Court from declaring that statutes that provide rights not mentioned in the Constitution are not constitutional. Even school integration, required by Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, can be declared bad law. The Supreme Court has already pulled the teeth of the Voting Rights Act, making voter suppression easier, and already provided religious rights mentioned nowhere in the Constitution. In an act of supreme hypocrisy, the Court has enabled Christian believers, organizations, and corporations to impose their beliefs on others. The Constitution, in its mention of the separation of church and state, nowhere permits such imposition. And of course the Court has protected and enhanced only extreme Christian beliefs, leaving out the many other religions and their belief sets. Another example is gun rights, where the Constitution refers to a “well-regulated militia,” but the federal courts studiously ignore this phrase, and let unregulated shooters run rampant.
Although the accusation has perhaps been overused, these tendencies of the rightwing are very similar to the tenets of fascism. When democracy is eroded, the vacancy invites in fascism, anarchy, libertarianism or communism. Social media does sometimes feel like anarchy, and with Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, it will probably feel more like libertarianism. We’re already seeing the victory of libertarianism in the legalization and decriminalization of marijuana growing and use. The Supreme Court, if it was consistent, could do some good in doing away with some bad old court decisions, such as the one from 1911 that declared that corporations are people. But we cannot expect consistency from this Court. They are ideologically driven.
The descent into fascism is part of a larger trend toward the manifestation of evil in society. Elements include too many guns, lying, hypocrisy, conspiracy thinking, hate, misogyny, xenophobia, antisemitism, homophobia, ablism, and racism. Trump, the Antichrist, manifests all of these. His followers enable and support him. We are observing in the Ukraine what can happen when a regime like communism is replaced with fascism—genocide, mass murder, crimes against humanity. And recall that Trump worships Putin.
What prevents that from happening in the United States? Already we’ve heard from some scholars that civil war could occur in the US. Recall that we had a civil war here, in which the nominally losing side fought to preserve slavery and the benefits it drew from slavery. But the Confederacy did not really lose. Rather, it morphed into domestic terrorism and guerilla warfare, through the KKK, White Citizens Councils, Jim Crow laws, lynching, redlining, etc. Now those with nostalgia for slavery wish to enslave women, LGBT people, and immigrants. The enablers include those who vote against their self-interest, such as the 52% of white women who voted for Trump, the half of people with disabilities who vote Republican, and the increasing number of Hispanic men who vote Republican. We who have tried to educate people about civil rights and social justice have made some very bad mistakes, including telling people they should not just vote their self-interest. Unfortunately, we were listened to, and many people today vote their conscience of conspiracy and their warped moral judgments. A marginally more moral and ethical case can be made for anti-abortion if those on the right were to guarantee healthcare, education, housing, and food for all children. And to clamp down hard on men who rape, who commit incest, who do not support the children they have been instrumental into bringing into the world, who do not support the women they have forced into childbearing.
What is to be done? Marching and demonstrating don’t help much. Signing petitions has almost no effect. Only a few actions will help much, including voting for liberal and progressive Democrats all up and down the ballot, and contributing money to their campaigns. Some actions are almost guaranteed not to help, such as racial, sexual, and LGBT essentialism. Manifestations of this include the idea that unless you look like me and have my preferences, I don’t want you as an ally. We see other “shoot yourself in the foot” phenomena such as the belief among some progressives that merit does not exist. We see extreme manifestations of rights such as insisting that transgender minors can use the bathroom of their choice, the idea of “neurodiversity,” and the imposition of required ethnic studies programs in public schools while the pandemic has set educational attendance and achievement back by two years. In an ideal world, all these concepts might be marginally good, but we don’t live in an ideal world. We live in a world under extreme threat and real and present danger. The movement against the right to abortion and women’s health care is yet another area of discrimination against women, added to existing disparities such as lack of pay comparable to men, the glass ceiling in employment, and lack of pay for work that mostly women provide, such as daycare.
Awhile back, I was researching a project on how to draw some Trump voters back toward the political center. I asked the question, and added a second one, roughly should progressives and liberals negotiate and/or compromise with those on the right? I received such angry feedback from progressives that I stopped asking the second question. If no compromise is possible, then we may well end up with two Americas—one a democracy and one a fascist empire. In addition to what we are already seeing as many women flee to states where abortion is legal and available, we may see “democracy refugees” of African-Americans making a new journey to the North.