$5000 checks offered by a politician in 1935

What do we call this?  Coincidence?  Foreshadowing?

Relevant discussion re Sinclair Lewis' writing and modern politics, with a hat tip to an anonymous reader.

Dolly Parton for President

Reposted from 2023, when I wrote this as a serious post.  Irrelevant now because of her death, but it seems appropriate for me to re-express my tribute to her.  Imagine how totally different American lives would be nowadays had we elected a nonpolitical, education-funding, vaccine-supporting, people-loving, compassionate brilliant businessworman to be president of our country.

Dolly Parton is the only person who can unite the brutally divided partisan voters of this country.  She is eminently qualified to represent the values this country claims to hold dear.

Allow me to anticipate the potential objections:

"She wouldn't have the right qualifications for being president of the country"

Constitutional requirements for the president:  a natural-born citizen at least 35 years old and a resident of the country for at least 14 years.  Box checked.  Moving on.

Duties and responsibilities of the President, as defined at the U.S. Senate site:

As chief executive, the president presides over the cabinet and has responsibility for the management of the executive branch. With the advice and consent of the Senate, the president also has the power to make treaties and to appoint ambassadors, U.S. officers, and judges to federal courts. He is also the commander in chief of the armed forces. The president signs laws and can veto bills that have passed Congress.

We all know that every previous President has delegated those duties or fulfilled them based on recommendations from advisory committees (although Eisenhower may have been a real-life commander-in-chief).  No problems there.

"She has no political experience"

Exactly.  An asset, not a deficiency.  Dolly is the antithesis of a politician.  

"She is not part of a political party"

Exactly.  She has carefully avoided aligning herself with either the Democratic or Republican party.  She turned down the Presidential Medal of Freedom offer from Trump (twice) and from Biden; she felt that if she accepted it she "would be doing politics."

Here's a discussion of her recent "World on Fire" song lyrics:

“Don't get me started on politics, Now how are we to live in a world like this, Greedy politicians, present and past, They wouldn't know the truth if it bit 'em in the ass.”

These are the words read back to Dolly [by a host on the Today Show], who laughs as a response. She’s then asked which politicians she’s talking about.

“All of them. any of them.” She replies, plainly.

She then adds, “I don’t think any of them are trying hard enough… They worry more about their party than they do about the people.”

Dolly added the better approach would be “If we just do what we felt was the right thing rather than who’s going to lose or who’s going to win this, or who’s going to look better if they do this.”

Absofuckinlutely right.  Here's the video of that conversation. And most Americans will agree with her.

This comment about her own politics, as cited in Woman and Home:

As for her own political views, she knows what they are and that’s good enough for her. “I’ve got as many Republican friends as I’ve got Democrat friends and I just don’t like voicing my opinion on things,” she says.

“I’ve seen things before, like the Dixie Chicks. You can ruin a career for speaking out. I respect my audience too much for that, I respect myself too much for that. Of course, I have my own opinions, but that don’t mean I got to throw them out there because you’re going to piss off half the people.”

Here's the full video of her performance of "World on Fire" at the American Country Music Awards.  Listen.

She gets a standing ovation from a room full of cowboy hats after performing what can reasonably be described as a climate change anthem.

She wrote the lyrics.

"Liar, liar the world’s on fire

Whatcha gonna do when it all burns down?

Fire, fire burning higher

Still got time to turn it all around."

It’s difficult to say whether Dolly explicitly intended “World on Fire” as a climate song, though people are hearing it as such. But that’s how many of Dolly’s more “political” statements and artistic work come across — they tap into the zeitgeist without making any explicit political statements. Dolly is an expert at this.

Note also that the performance is a crossover of country music and rock and roll.  Dolly bridged that gap like no performer in history, recently accepting induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame after a lifetime of country music and Grand Old Opry.

Her new album, due out later this year, will include a cover of Prince's Purple Rain and duets with Sting, Steven Tyler, and Elton John, as well as a combined performance of "Let It Be" with McCartney and Ringo (see video above).  This from the most acclaimed "country music" artist of all time, because she believes in music and the lyrics of music, not in the politics of country vs. rock. 

This was Dolly Parton's comment regarding the Trump/Clinton presidential debates many years ago:

As far as she’s concerned, she said, it’s time that both Trump and Clinton stopped talking about each other.

‘Let’s talk about what we really need — taking care of us. I think people just want to have a feeling of security. It’s just like political terrorism right now, they got us all scared to death about everything,’ Parton said.

----------------------------------------

A pause in this nomination post.  Anyone who has ever written anything knows that it is easier to write the long version rather than a concise version.  I'm going to take the easy way out for the moment because I have so much to present, by inserting extended extracts from a variety of sources I've bookmarked over the years.  Later I'll need to come back to weed, summarize, correlate etc.  So here we go with some of the source material...

From The Washington Post:

“She is beloved across so many demographic groups because she really transcends politics,” said Lance Kinney, an advertising and public-relations professor at the University of Alabama. “And her magic lies on being a cipher onto which you can graft whatever political agenda you prefer.”

The allure that rings from honky-tonks in the rural South to gay bars in large coastal cities has everything to do with the persona Parton has meticulously cultivated since the 1950s, Kinney said. On the one hand, there’s the conservative-appealing story of Parton’s origins — or how she managed to pull herself up by her bootstraps after growing up poor in the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee. On the other, there’s the glitz and glamour of her towering wigs and acrylic nails, and the feminist anthem she created with “9 to 5,” an iconic song about workplace discrimination.

In recent years, Parton has turned the Imagination Library, her literacy-focused nonprofit, into a 2 million-book-a-month international operation and also helped fund Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine. She has supported the LGBTQ+ community and endorsed the Black Lives Matter movement — breaking with “the guardrail in country music of not talking about racial injustice in the present,” said Joel Schwindt, a music history assistant professor at Berklee College of Music.

“Dolly Parton, much like country music, is a paradox,” Schwindt said. “But I think she can get away with it because of her authenticity and also because she’s reached founders’ status in country.”

Regarding controversial issues, per Gizmodo:

She’s acknowledged, for instance, the role of the LGBT community in inspiring her stage persona. Yet when Tennessee banned public drag performances, she kept quiet. She publicly attested her support for Black Lives Matter with a spate of other country musicians as artists reckoned with the genre’s long silence on racial justice. Her speaking up came two years after she changed the name of her long-running dinner show from Dixie Stampede to Dolly’s Stampede after much criticism of its Confederate nostalgia. Parton insisted the original name was chosen out of “innocent ignorance.” (This move did divide some fans.)

In interviews, Dolly has certainly expressed support for environmental causes, in her down-home oratory style. “We’re just mistreating Mother Nature,” she told National Geographic last year.“That’s like being ugly to your mama.” ...

But Wilkerson feels that Dolly, and her companies, don’t own up to their part in damaging the region’s climate resilience or contributing to environmental catastrophe through the cumulative impact of all those cars and private jets. “It’s been the ruination of the Smoky Mountains,” Wilkerson said bluntly. 

From Vox in 2021:

But Parton knew what she was talking about when she suggested to the New York Times last fall that people were starting to get sick of her. She has now achieved the sort of hysterical and highly trendy adoration that can shade into overexposure in the blink of an eye — even for a legend with a reputation as durable as Dolly Parton’s. The pressure on Dolly Parton to be the single person who can unite a fractured America is so high, there is a slow and uneasy creep of incipient backlash all around her...

But in recent decades, everything that makes Dolly Dolly has swung back into trend. “One reason Parton’s approval rating is so high, though” Lindsay Zoladz posited in the New York Times in 2019, “is that all the attributes that used to set her up for criticism — the outrageous, hyper-femme style; the unapologetic business savvy needed to pull off her late-70s pop crossover; even the so-what acknowledgment of her own cosmetic surgery — are no longer taboo.”

Dolly Parton often explains that she modeled her look after the town tramp, who as a small child she thought was the most beautiful person she’d ever seen, and that she knows straight men don’t find it attractive and doesn’t care. “If I was trying to really impress men or be totally sexy, then I would dress differently,” she told Playboy in 1978. But why bother? “I’m already married and he don’t mind how I look.”..

For decades, this acknowledgment played as tacky or trashy. But in the 2010s, it came to be seen as empowering, even feminist: Dolly dresses for herself, not the male gaze. And Dolly’s self is a celebration of the artificiality of femininity and glamour, a finding of authenticity in what is fake. That’s downright avant-garde...

In 2008, Roger Ebert returned to his 1980 Dolly Parton profile, noting that it had missed something he considered very important: her presence, which he writes “enveloped” him. “This had nothing to do with sex appeal,” he says. “Far from it. It was as if I were being mesmerized by a benevolent power. I left the room in a cloud of good feeling.”

Ebert adds that when he spoke with his writing partner Gene Siskel about Parton the next day, Siskel reported the same feeling: “This will sound crazy,” he said, “but when I was interviewing Dolly Parton, I almost felt like she had healing powers.”

Lots more good information at that Vox article, including insights into the Dollywood Dixie Stampede dropping the term "Dixie" at her request, her refusal to join Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda in disrespecting Donald Trump, and the weaknesses inherent in embracing both sides of an argument.

In 2020 The New York Times offered "The Grit and Glory of Dolly Parton":

Only as an adult did I see how widely and warmly (if sometimes ironically) Parton has been embraced by people with little else in common. Her ability to navigate social and conceptual divides helps explain why this is: She is country without being retrograde; a friend to the outcast whose basic political philosophy, that people should get paid to do what they do best, is uncontroversial. She is beautiful without making beauty look easy; feminine but not fragile; white but not precious; principled but not hardened or fixed...

Most accounts of her life, of which there are many, begin with Parton’s humble origins as the fourth child of 12 born to an industrious sharecropper and a musical mother in the mountains of East Tennessee. Extremely poor, but confident and creative, Parton wrote her first songs at age 5 or 6, got her first guitar at age 8 and appeared on a local radio and television show at age 10. The morning after her high school graduation in 1964, Parton left her small town for Nashville. That day, she met her husband, Carl Dean, to whom she has been married for 54 years...

Parton addresses the wealth she has amassed through these ventures with predictable nonchalance, but she clearly knows the value of money, in a way familiar to those who have grown up without it. She supports several family members (she does not have children), and has donated millions to the Imagination Library, the literacy program she founded in 1990; to East Tennessee residents whose homes were destroyed by a 2016 wildfire; and, this spring, to Nashville’s Vanderbilt Medical Center, for Covid-19 vaccine research...

The word that you’re going to have to use over and over when describing her is ‘work,’” Summers tells me. I admit I have gleaned this from Parton’s description of how she “gets more done than most people do all day” by working every morning from 3 to 7 a.m. on her spiritual practice and any one of several projects she keeps lined up in plastic bins before her workday officially begins. Parton says she “lives on creative and spiritual energy” — and the more she talks about “rising above” her physical self to meet the demands of each day, I see she means this literally: She subsists on energy instead of typical amounts of sleep (she gets no more than six hours a night, and is fine on three)...

Even her gleaming exterior can be seen as a function of her working girl’s pragmatism. “I’m really not that ‘high maintenance,’” she writes in the new book, “I can put on my makeup, costume and wig and be ready for anything in 15 minutes or less.”..

She remains true to country music’s historical role, not as a bastion of conservative patriotism (as it was rebranded when it was aligned with Richard Nixon’s “silent majority” in the 1960s) but as an inclusively populist, working people’s music meant to give outsiders a voice. Hence her decision to write the song “Travelin’ Thru” for the 2005 film “Transamerica,” about a trans woman’s attempts to connect with her son; and, in 2017, to join Miley Cyrus on the pro-gay anthem “Rainbowland.”

The Imagination Library videos on YouTube, where Dolly reads bedtime stories to you (or your children) from the books that she gives away free to children every month in order to promote literacy. 

Re her childhood poverty and dietary preferences, from Rolling Stone in 2003:

Despite all the modern trappings of her fame and success, Dolly Parton is a living link to what seems like an impossibly remote past. She was born the fourth of twelve children in a log cabin in Sevier County, Tennessee, on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The doctor who brought her into the world was paid with a sack of cornmeal. The Partons didn’t have electricity or indoor plumbing, and her dad, a tobacco farmer, supplemented the family’s diet by taking his shotgun and heading off into the woods.

“People hear me talk about eating squirrel and groundhogs, but in the mountains like that, you really didn’t have much of a choice,” says Parton matter-of-factly. “There were twelve of us kids. We never ate possum — I remember Daddy saying, ‘That’s like a damn rat.’ But we ate everything — turtle, frogs. I just remember the big old groundhogs — whistle pigs, they called them — and you’d cook ’em with sweet potatoes, and you’d have different ways of making some of that gamy taste go away.” 

“Look,” she says triumphantly, throwing the cabinet doors open. It’s magnificent: cans of corned-beef hash, tins of Spam, loaves of white bread, a Costco-size brick of Velveeta. “I have to have my Spam,” she says. “And look at this!” It’s a pig-shaped ceramic jar. Inside is a baggie of bacon grease, neatly labeled with a date. “The people who come to clean my house every Thursday have to fry up bacon, so I have bacon grease to cook with. I have to have it in all my houses.” She brightens. “You want some Velveeta?” She saws off an orange hunk and offers it. “You didn’t believe me, did you?” she says. “I grew up with that stuff and I never got over it. Good, ain’t it?”  

She was the first in the history of her family to graduate from high school.  Lots more at the link. [note to self - extract more later,

From the New York Times in 2019 "Is There Anything We Can All Agree On?  Yes.  Dolly Parton":

The first episode of “Dolly Parton’s America” centers partly on the “9 to 5” songwriter’s reluctance to call herself a feminist. Earlier this year, Parton’s own sister, Stella, said she was “ashamed” of Dolly for not speaking out more about the #MeToo movement. In response, Parton told The Guardian: “I don’t feel I have to march, hold up a sign or label myself. I think the way I have conducted my life and my business and myself speaks for itself.”..

Like Cher, another 73-year-old multihyphenate icon, Parton has over the past few years ascended to a rarefied level of intergenerational celebrity: a saucy grandmother of social media...

Both-sides-ism rarely feels as benevolent as it does when coming from Parton, but that’s nothing new. When asked, in 1997, how she was able to maintain fan bases within both the religious right and the gay community, she replied, “It’s two different worlds, and I live in both and I love them both, and I understand and accept both.”..

Parton was born in January 1946, to parents so poor, they paid the doctor who delivered her in cornmeal. Their home at the foot of East Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains had “running water, if you were willing to run and get it” — one of Parton’s many, oft-repeated “Dollyisms” that makes light of her hardscrabble upbringing.

As a child — one of 12 — she had no exposure to movies or television, rarely even magazines, so her earliest ideas of glamour came from two seemingly disparate sources: the glittering kings and queens she heard described in fairytales and Bible verses, and from the “streetwalkers,” and “strumpets and trollops” she’d see when her family went into town. “I was impressed with what they called ‘the trash’ in my hometown,” she later mused. “I don’t know how trashy these women were, but they were said to be trashy because they had blond hair and wore nail polish and tight clothes. I thought they were beautiful.”...

For all the musical legends we’ve lost in the past few years, it’s heartening to see this show pony get her victory lap while she’s still around to bask in the glory. Not that she’s planning on going anywhere. Whenever she’s asked how she’d like to be remembered 100 years from now, Parton trots out one of her best Dollyisms: “I want ’em to say, ‘God, don’t she look good for her age!’”..

[In the WNYC podcast series "Dolly Parton's America,"] Abumrad narrates from his position as a relative outsider to what he calls the Dollyverse, presenting “Dolly Parton’s America” with the aesthetic language of the modern podcast: snippets of interviews, tonally appropriate background music, and the inviting, conversational voice of a man guiding you through his thought process as he travels down various rabbit holes of his own curiosity. Parton granted Abumrad quite a few sit-down interviews, and although seasoned Parton fans will find little of what she tells him to be new information, “Dolly Parton’s America” is a genial, compulsively listenable crash course in Parton’s lasting appeal...

And that will serve as a segue to my earnest suggestion that those wishing to understand Dolly Parton should listed to these podcasts.  The full 8-part series of podcasts is here [transcripts are also available for those who want to skim quickly].  In the "Dixie Disappearance" she explains why she modified Dollywood's chief attraction - the "Dixie Stampede" after learning it offended people:

Well, there's several reasons that we changed the name or a few reasons. Maybe I should say a couple of reasons. One being that out of ignorance, people do things you don't know. A lot of my things that I do wrong, just out of pure ignorance really, because you grow up a certain way and you don't know. The Dixie, we always thought way down in the land of Dixie, it's like a Dixieland or Dixieland music, Dixie. You know, I just thought of Dixie as a part of the, part of America. And it was offensive cause like I say out of ignorance, you don't know that you're hurting people, never thought about it being, about slavery or any of that. But when it was brought to our attention, and some woman wrote about it and I thought, well Lord have mercy, I would never want to hurt anybody for any reason. And being a business woman, we didn't really have that many people say anything about it.

But I thought, Lord, if I've offended one person as a business woman, I don't want to do that. So we completely cleared all that out and started over that. But we, I just wanted to fix it cause I don't want to ever hurt or offend anyone. And so I did it as a good faith effort to show that it was never meant to cause anyone any pain.

Back in 2019 after listening to Radiolab's introduction to "Dolly Parton's America," I posted a summary of the podcast, including this: 

JAD: Like, she tore right through all of that noise. Through the general election and beyond. And I kept bumping into people who would describe the experience of being at a Dolly show as, like, standing in an alternate vision of America than what was unfolding on the TV.

JESSIE WILKERSON: I remember just standing out in the lobby and just people watching, because it was the most diverse place I’ve ever been. I was seeing a multi-racial audience. People wearing cowboy hats and boots. I was seeing people in drag. Church ladies. Lesbians holding hands. Little girls who were there with their families.

WAYNE BLEDSOE: You had a whole audience of people who absolutely their philosophies were in opposition to each other co-mingling, and everybody is polite to each other.

JAD: So that was one thing that caught my attention. That in this very divided moment, Dolly seems to maybe be a kind of unifier. And after doing a little poking around, the data does kind of bear this out. If you look at her global Q Score, this is a measure of how well people think about your brand, globally. What they do is they assemble a very diverse sample of people, they ask them a bunch of questions, and out of all of these different brands that are out there, all these different performers, she is in the top 10 globally in terms of everybody's favorites. But she's almost number one when it comes to lack of negatives, if that makes any sense.

That's what the United States needs right now

-----------------------------------------

O.K.  That's the end of the multi-course dog's breakfast of my archived Dolly Parton links.  Now back to the "presidential nomination" part of this megapost.

First, I would like comments from international readers re what your reaction would be were the United States to nominate or elect Dolly Parton as U.S. president, and how she would play out on the world stage.  Björk had this to say back in 2003:

“Oh, Dolly’s big in Iceland,” says Björk. “Her voice is immaculate, really powerful. Her character is so warm and human, and she has a great sense of humor.” To Björk, Parton transcends her musical genre. “All my friends love Dolly, and most of them are people who would never listen to country music,” she says. 

But that's one talented musician talking about another one for a music-centered Rolling Stone magazine.  How would "regular people," diplomats, and other world leaders react?  Personally I can envision her attending a major international conference in the Hague, walking up to an obscure foreign minister to say "Hi - I'm Dolly," and him responding "Yes, I know.  My people back in Eastern Rumelia just love you."  "I'm so pleased to hear that.  Let's talk about this climate mess."

Second, we need to ponder a vice-presidential running mate.  Many years ago when Donald Trump was running for president, I thought the Democrats should counter with Tom Hanks, but at their convention they disastrously chose Hilary Clinton.  Now I would suspect that Tom Hanks would be too "woke" for this centrist new party.  Readers may have some reasonable suggestions, but in the end likely Dolly could come up with her own pick.  And what to call the party? (again, she can decide.  She built a multimillion-dollar business from scratch; she's good at this stuff).

The biggest problem is not getting her elected, but getting her to accept the nomination.  It would probably only take three degrees of separation for someone reading this post to ask someone they know to ask someone who knows Dolly personally to tell her that she needs to offer herself as a presidential candidate.  She will of course immediately decline.

I have no doubt that the idea of being president has been suggested to her many times in interviews.  The difference would be that this would be a serious appeal, not clickbait for a media video or post.  It needs to be emphasized to her that she needs to do this for the good of her country.  Dolly Parton probably has more true patriotism than all the congressmen combined, and she might well make sacrifices for that goal.  But her reply would probably also be a serious declining of the offer, because I believe her husband is probably in failing health.

Dolly has said that she would continue her music until her death and the only thing that would take her away from that would be if she is needed at home.  She has recently announced that she will no longer be touring - just doing occasional appearances, because she wants to spend more time at home with her husband.

The response to that would be an acknowledgement of her situation and the counteroffer that she can stay at home for the process.  She won't need to do any campaigning.  Just a simple 30 second video inserted during the upcoming Trump-DeSantis flame wars and during the Democratic staged "debates" in which she says "Hi - I'm Dolly, and I am also running for president.  Please write my name in on the primary ballots.  Thank y'all so much" would be sufficient to confirm her viability. 

And as president, she could also spend her time at home (except for those international conferences), Zooming with her cabinet.  This is the way business is done in the modern world.  What else does a president do in real life?  They go to tornado/hurricane/flood sites to hug victims and then get back in their motorcades of black SUVs back to their helicopters.  She could do that much much better.  And do it sincerely.

What can we do in the meantime?  Discuss this with friends and family as a serious matter, and start writing her name in on every online poll.  I've not been able to find her included in any FiveThirtyEight surveys, except for this casual aside: "these days it’s difficult to get 58 percent of Americans to agree on anything except perhaps distaste for airline travel and love of Dolly Parton."  Somebody over there please take notice.

I will offer this for her campaign song/theme video:

TLDR:  An intelligent, hard-working, compassionate businesswoman who puts people above politics is the best available representative for the United States at home and on the world stage.

Photo embedded at the top from the Associated Press, via a Los Angeles Times article on Dolly's receiving of the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy.

Addendum:  A Bloomberg article about Dolly Parton's business management techniques.

A review of J.D. Vance's book "Communion"

Excerpts from the London Review of Books:

Almost no politician​ writes his own books, and few people actually read them. J.D. Vance is different. Trump’s vice president was a writer before he was a politician, and brought a writer’s vices with him: a titanic but fragile ego, limitless self-interest and thirst for adulation, an unsleeping vigilance for any slight. Hillbilly Elegy, Vance’s first book, published in 2016, described his childhood poverty and rise out of it, and made him the liberal media’s favourite hick-whisperer. Communion (Collins, £20), its sequel, purports to be a memoir of Vance’s disillusionment with a series of creeds – evangelical fundamentalism, Randian libertarianism, chattering-class liberalism – and his subsequent conversion to Catholicism in 2019. It is an obvious, if nebulous, manifesto for a presidential run. His publishers assure us that he wrote it himself.

Communion is a bad book. It is sloppy, unfocused, stylistically uneven, ethically vacuous, intellectually tendentious and politically cynical. Hillbilly Elegy indicted an Appalachian culture degraded through addiction, indolence and despair. Communion mounts a much wider and more diffuse attack on the values and motivations of liberal and professional America, represented by Yale University and the media. That Vance’s critique proceeds by caricature and supposition does not make it worthless, though he is hardly the first person to discover that members of the elite are inward-looking or self-congratulatory...

Political lying degrades both individual and system. Perhaps this accounts for Communion’s acreage of strawmen. During the 2024 campaign Vance peddled the racist lie that Haitian migrants were stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. Confronted, he admitted to ‘creating stories’ to advance his cause. He also likes a conspiracy theory, claiming that a 2024 aid package for Ukraine contained ‘a hidden impeachment clause’ against Trump. In January this year, after an ICE agent shot the protester Renée Good in her car in Minneapolis, Vance called her ‘brainwashed’, a ‘deranged leftist’ complicit in ‘a tragedy of her own making’. When ICE agents shot the ICU nurse Alex Pretti in the same city later that month, Vance claimed it was the result of ‘engineered chaos’ in local authorities compromised by the far left...

The chief emotion of Communion, however, is fear. Vance fears he will jeopardise his relationship with his wife, Usha (whom he met at Yale), because his parents’ relationship imploded. When his first son was born, he writes, ‘I felt one emotion above all others: fear.’ His fear is both personal, that he will fail as a father, and social, that his country will fail his son. Vance is not alone in this feeling. Fear – of pollution, invasion, the enemy within, modernity – is endemic in the ultra-traditionalist wing of the Catholic Church and across a swathe of the US, bristling and vigilant behind its guns. Both desire their institutions to become punitive monocultures, bulwarks against the outside world...

Why would anyone buy this? Vance has been a willing participant in a squalid government sunk in graft which has gutted the agencies that might restrain or regulate private avarice. The labour share of income is at a historic low. The most obvious question is not whether Vance believes what he claims to believe, but why, if he believes it, he acts as he does. Halfway through Communion he quotes, without irony, a recovering addict who passed on some homely advice: show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future. Perhaps Vance has forgotten who he’s been hanging out with...

Communion’s characteristic error is clearest when Vance dismisses criticisms that mass deportations are ‘too tough’, but thanks the Church for forcing a consideration of the ‘moral trade-offs’. Abstract strictness of policy is not the issue here, but wanton cruelty: the families fed maggot-infested food, the cells flooded with sewage, those beaten or asphyxiated by guards, or handed off to foreign torturers. Vance may desire ‘a more Christian economy’, but it is one ringed with razor wire...

Brilliant

Found in The Babylon Bee ("Fake News You Can Trust"), where there is tongue-in-cheek discussion of the topic.

Homogeneity, exclusion, and inequity in the Civil Rights Division

A subtle and wry comment on current events

Image of Haley Joel Osment from his Oscar-nominated performance in the movie The Sixth Sense.  Updated with a cultural reference to current U.S. politics.  The scene occurs at about the 4-minute mark of this excerpt - but beware that this is a major spoiler for those who have not seen the movie.

Satire

The White House doubles down on Christian Nationalism

Pastor Paula White (2nd L) and other faith leaders pray behind US President Donald Trump during a National Day of Prayer event in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC, on May 1, 2025. © Jim Watson, AFP

As reported by France 24:

Thousands of people gathered Sunday in downtown Washington for a mass prayer festival featuring speeches by top Trump administration officials – an event critics see as an overt display of Christian nationalism undermining the separation of church and state...

The gathering was organized by the White House as part of a program of celebrations for America's 250th anniversary and, in a video message inviting Americans to attend, Hegseth said it was an opportunity to "rededicate this republic to God and country."

Muscular Christian nationalism has enjoyed a prominent platform since Trump's return to power, and evangelicals form a core element of the president's support base...

Attendee Sarah Tyson, holding a "Jesus Saves" sign, said she believes Trump was chosen by God to lead the nation through a new spiritual revival.

Addendum: Just to clarify one point, citing Heather Cox Richardson:

But the United States of America was not founded as a Christian nation. The Founders were quite clear about that. In the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli, ratified unanimously by the Senate just a decade after the Constitution went into effect, U.S. leaders said “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion” and has “no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of” Muslims. They went on to say that “no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between” the U.S. and Tripoli.

Thomas Jefferson, the key author of the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison of Virginia, the key thinker behind the Constitution, both wrote explicitly about the importance of keeping the government separate from religion. Jefferson wrote that “religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship.” “[T]he legitimate powers of government reach actions only,” he wrote, “[and] not [religious] opinions.”

Debunking the myth of American exceptionalism

Late last night I was browsing the Al Jazeera English channel, looking for early clues as to whether to expect any change in the adamant position the Iranian leadership has taken (short answer: no), when I encountered this video.  This is a longwatch (25 minutes) interview with Richard Wolff, who is emeritus professor of economics at UMass, and was a schoolmate of mine back in the 1960s (tho I never met him).  Wolff is a self-described Marxian economist, which is evident in his views on American capitalism.  

This video is a thorough takedown of claims of the United States as a world-leading empire.  The language is harsh, but the content is supported by relevant facts.  

"86" explained

This morning while doomscrolling I saw a headline indicating that the Department of Justice would be indicting former FBI Director James Comey "because he shared a photo of some seashells."  They are alleging that the "86 47" in the photo is indicative of inciting violence against the president.

Any idiot could look up 86 in Wikipedia:

Eighty-six or 86 is American English slang, generally meaning to "get rid of" someone or something.

In the hospitality industry, it is used to indicate that an item is no longer available, traditionally from a food or drinks establishment, or referring to a person or people who are not welcome on the premises. Its etymology is unknown, but the term seems to have been coined in the 1920s or 1930s.

There are multiple theories re the etymology, which you can read at the link.  Think of the countless hours expended by highly-paid attorneys on both sides, much of which comes at the expense of the public, and for no practical purpose.  I'm so tired of this shit.

America needs another New Deal

An excerpt from Heather Cox Richardson's April 13 "Letters from an American" -

Just as there is a blueprint for destroying democracy, there is also one for rebuilding it. “Let us now and here highly resolve to resume the country’s interrupted march along the path of real progress, of real justice, of real equality for all of our citizens, great and small,” New York governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt said to the delegates at the Democratic National Convention in 1932 as American democracy struggled to resist fascism.

“Out of every crisis, every tribulation, every disaster, mankind rises with some share of greater knowledge, of higher decency, of purer purpose,” FDR said. “Today we shall have come through a period of loose thinking, descending morals, an era of selfishness, among individual men and women and among Nations…. Let us be frank in acknowledgment of the truth that many amongst us have made obeisance to Mammon, that the profits of speculation, the easy road without toil, have lured us from the old barricades. To return to higher standards we must abandon the false prophets and seek new leaders of our own choosing.”

“I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people,” FDR concluded. “Let us all here assembled constitute ourselves prophets of a new order of competence and of courage. This is more than a political campaign; it is a call to arms. Give me your help, not to win votes alone, but to win in this crusade to restore America to its own people.”

(boldface added), More at the link.

It doesn't take long

From the time I left my house until I got back it was 11 minutes on my phone's stopwatch.  A simple ballot and an efficient crew at our neighborhood church polling location.

Addendum:  

In Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election, the Democratic-backed candidate sailed to a nearly 20-point landslide victory Tuesday in a battleground Trump carried less than two years ago. Meanwhile, a Georgia Democrat slashed Trump’s margin of victory by two thirds in the state’s reddest district despite losing the election — the most significant overperformance the party has seen across all seven House special elections so far this cycle.

The results in the battleground states — home to key Senate, gubernatorial and House races — are the latest repudiation from voters of Trump and his agenda and flashing warning signs for the GOP heading into November.

Wisconsin in last presidential election:

Results from yesterday's state Supreme Court election: 

Res ipsa loquitur.

Chuckleworthy

Found on Facebook.

The CIA confirms it overthrew Iran's Prime Minister, Mohammed Mosaddegh

Reposted in 2026 from 2016 to remind readers once again of what can happen when the United States (and Israel) decide to institute "regime change" in another country.  For the TLDRs - Mossadegh was democratically elected by Iranians, overthrown by the CIA in order to gain control of Iran's oil, replaced by the Shah, who unleashed the torturers of SAVAK on the people of Iran, which eventually led to their rebellion and the institution of their current authoritarian theocratic anti-Western system.

This was FAFO writ large on an international scale.

For those hopefully few who have doubts about whether the U.S. interferes in other countries to change regimes, I would recommend browsing just the paragraph headings in chapter 17 of William Blum's Rogue State.

[Reposted in 2016 from 2013 to serve as a counterpoint to all the recent hullabaloo about the possibility/likelihood that Russia influenced the most recent U.S. presidential election.]

Excerpts from an article at the National Security Archive:

Washington, D.C., August 19, 2013 – Marking the sixtieth anniversary of the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, the National Security Archive is today posting recently declassified CIA documents on the United States' role in the controversial operation. American and British involvement in Mosaddeq's ouster has long been public knowledge, but today's posting includes what is believed to be the CIA's first formal acknowledgement that the agency helped to plan and execute the coup.

The explicit reference to the CIA's role appears in a copy of an internal history, The Battle for Iran, dating from the mid-1970s. The agency released a heavily excised version of the account in 1981 in response to an ACLU lawsuit, but it blacked out all references to TPAJAX, the code name for the U.S.-led operation. Those references appear in the latest release. Additional CIA materials posted today include working files from Kermit Roosevelt, the senior CIA officer on the ground in Iran during the coup. They provide new specifics as well as insights into the intelligence agency's actions before and after the operation...

The issue is more than academic. Political partisans on all sides, including the Iranian government, regularly invoke the coup to argue whether Iran or foreign powers are primarily responsible for the country's historical trajectory, whether the United States can be trusted to respect Iran's sovereignty, or whether Washington needs to apologize for its prior interference before better relations can occur...

While the National Security Archive applauds the CIA's decision to make these materials available, today's posting shows clearly that these materials could have been safely declassified many years ago without risk of damage to the national security...

But all 21 of the CIA items posted today (in addition to 14 previously unpublished British documents — see Sidebar), reinforce the conclusion that the United States, and the CIA in particular, devoted extensive resources and high-level policy attention toward bringing about Mosaddeq's overthrow, and smoothing over the aftermath.  

The aftermath included the return to power of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi ("The Shah of Iran"), and the establishment of the SAVAK (secret police), whose torture methods included "electric shock, whipping, beating, inserting broken glass and pouring boiling water into the rectum, tying weights to the testicles, and the extraction of teeth and nails."

One can't emphasize enough that Mosaddeq had been democratically-elected by the people of Iran.  The U.S. and Britain had him overthrown in order to gain access to Iran's oil resources.

Does anyone still wonder why many Iranians distrust and/or dislike the U.S.?

Additional details in the relevant Wikipedia entry.  Via Reddit, where other relevant coups are listed.

Addendum:  An article this week in Salon emphasizes the same point -

None of this gives Vladimir Putin a pass. We don’t see enough reporting on the repression of religion and the media inside Putin’s Russia. But failing to acknowledge our own dark side when it comes to internal and external covert operations to twist political outcomes makes us look hypocritical in a world where so many nations have been victimized by our covert machinations, often with deadly consequences.

Evidently, this is the real-world meaning of “American exceptionalism,” where only we are exempt from the requirement to respect other nations’ sovereignty. There’s no better example of this than the 2014 Edward Snowden revelations that the U.S. had spied on many other countries, even allies like Germany, France, Italy and Japan...

For decades both Democrats and Republicans working for Washington law firms and global crisis management outfits like Hill & Knowlton or Black Manafort & Stone have helped the world’s most brutal and oppressive regimes hang on to power and marginalize their opponents, all while continuing to get U.S. military aid...

The U.S. has manipulated the internal domestic politics of other countries with escapades in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, the Caribbean and even in Europe...

We rarely get a glimpse behind that black curtain unless an Edward Snowden or a Daniel Ellsberg puts everything on the line to pull it back for us. None of that excuses the Russian attempt to meddle in an American election, but we should not feign innocence Trying to shape world events and our own politics through fake news, disinformation, deceit and deception are as American as apple pie.

MAGA turning on Trump?

The embed is from Facebook, which is often unreliable.  But I found confirmation in The Guardian.  

The 21-year-old man who was shot and killed after having entered Donald Trump’s Florida resort on Sunday – while carrying a shotgun – came from a North Carolina family of the president’s supporters and had reportedly become increasingly fixated on the so-called Jeffrey Epstein files.

The focus of the FBI’s investigation into the intrusion attributed to Austin Tucker Martin is tightening on his movements and motives. Martin was confronted by Secret Service agents and a local sheriff’s deputy inside the secure perimeter of Mar-a-Lago and killed after he had raised a shotgun into the shooting position at about 1.30am on Sunday, law enforcement said...

Martin’s cousin told the Associated Press that the family was staunchly pro-Trump.  "We are big Trump supporters, all of us,” Braeden Fields said. “Everybody.” He added, though, that Marin tended not to talk about politics.

There has been evidence of Trump's support eroding among voters, especially evident in some statewide elections where Democrats have easily won districts that were solidly Republican in the last presidential election.  But those results didn't clarify if the change was just in enthusiasm and turnout.  This looks different.

If this young man's focus was on the Epstein ties, I would bet his grievance is with pedophilia, rather than the (unproven) possibility that Epstein's entire operation was a honeytrap aimed at politicians and businessmen in order to influence national legislation and policy. 

Two images of an extrajudicial killing

Hats off to the Minnesota Star Tribune for posting this pair of images side-by-side.  I had seen the photo on the right and wanted to use it for the blog because of the extraordinary clarity of the image, but couldn't find a source to explain how such high resolution could be generated by citizen cellphone cameras.  The Star Tribune explains:

A widely shared image of federal agents surrounding ICU nurse Alex Pretti as one agent holds a gun to the back of his head appears as real as it does horrific.

But a closer look at the photo reveals a headless agent. Such bodily distortion is a red flag that an image used artificial intelligence. In this case, AI enhanced a low-quality screenshot of a bystander video, digital forensic experts said.

It’s the latest altered imagery from Minneapolis to make the rounds online during the federal government’s immigration enforcement surge. Other digitally manipulated images circulated after Renee Good’s killing by a federal agent. The White House also shared a fake image of activist and attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong, edited to make it appear that she was crying during her recent arrest for disrupting a church service. Video from the arrest showed there were no tears.

AI-enhanced and manipulated images are a new obstacle in the court of public opinion. Their proliferation online is eroding trust and inflaming divisions...

The AI image of Pretti’s killing is more nuanced than many, Farid said, because it combines something real with hallucinated elements.

In court, the edited image would never be admissible as evidence. But in the court of public opinion, an image that is based in truth but fabricated can make for difficult debates.

If someone calls out a friend for sharing the AI-generated image of Pretti and says, “This is fake,” for example, someone can argue that the person is siding with federal agents when really the person is only pointing out the image is digitally altered...

“The real poison here is not AI, it’s social media,” he said. “AI is just supercharging it. But if people could make these fake images and fake videos and there was no delivery mechanism, I mean, honestly, who cares? The problem is not the content itself. The problem is that these social media platforms eagerly absorb it and amplify it because it’s good for business.”..

At the very least, he advises people to slow down, think critically and look closely at images before spreading misinformation. He said images are made in an instant, often to provoke strong reactions and sow discord.

This article makes important points and should be shared widely.  The top right image will be labeled "fake" to imply altered facts, but the manipulation was done for visual clarity.  The photo of Nekima Levy's arrest was changed to present an alternate reality:

When I first saw it I assumed it was being distributed by a right-wing rag; I was deeply disappointed (but not surprised) that it came from a White House source.

We live in difficult times where visual (and auditory) information can be skillfully manipulated in an effort to manipulate our understanding.  Be careful out there.

Note:  Please limit your comments on this post to the use of artificial intelligence, not on the Alex Pretti killing per se.

I had to look this up

Apparently the phrase on the podium is real rathe than faked.  And it appears to be an official Homeland Security creation:

The podium sign link leads to the "Worst of the Worst" page at the Department of Homeland Security, but the phrase is not explained there.

The obvious implication would be "if you do something bad to our people, we will do worse to all of your people" but the historical context was unfamiliar to me.  Googling the phrase resulted in lots of hits.  There is a very detailed commentary at the Ask Historians subreddit; here is an excerpt -

Several variants of this post are going around online, and the majority of them seem to attribute this supposed Nazi quotation to the Lidice massacre of 1942, which was committed by the German occupation authorities in the 'Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia' in response to the assassination of the deputy governor of the province, Reinhard Heydrich, by British-backed Czech commandos in Prague ("Operation Anthropoid") on 27 May 1942. Heydrich survived the initial attack, but later succumbed to his wounds on 4 June. The (unfounded) suspicion that Heydrich's assassins had been given shelter by the villagers of Lidice led to that village's siege and subsequent sack and destruction on 9 June 1942. All male villagers aged 15 and up were executed by German forces, whereas female villagers and underage boys were fed into the concentration camps, mainly the women's concentration camp at Ravensbrück.

So this is where the "One of ours, all of yours" supposedly comes from: "[You kill] one of ours, [we kill (or capture)] all of yours". And that's where the history ends — because that phrase was never used by the German government. The Lidice massacre was not something that they particularly propagandized [EDIT: they did issue public statements notifying the public that the town was "razed to the ground", the women "interned in a concentration camp", the children "transferred to suitable institutions"; though my point was that they didn't make up fancy catchphrases to propagandize the deed.], and propaganda directed at the villagers was unnecessary, because they were to be the victims of armed force anyway. The young sketch artist and famous Holocaust victim Petr Ginz only noted the Lidice massacre in his diary on 13 June (four days late), implying that there was an information delay (through the rumor mill) that there definitely would not have been had Lidice been widely and purposefully advertised. 

There are more comments from other Redditors at that link.

There are other links, but what I have not seen is an official declaration from the Trump administration on why the phrase was chosen and what implications are intended.  If anyone sees such on Truth Social or such, please add a comment to this post.

ICE immigration officers are detaining NATIVE AMERICANS in Minnesota

For fox ache.  

The president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe (OST) in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, says that four of its tribal members were recently detained by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minneapolis.

OST President Frank Star Comes Out issued a statement Friday saying ICE agents detained four men who are homeless and living near the Little Earth housing project in south Minneapolis.  The statement continues to say that another OST tribal member witnessed their detainment and was able to confirm their tribal affiliation...

It comes amid an ongoing occupation of the Twin Cities by the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which has escalated under the auspices of targeting undocumented immigrants and fraud, but is increasingly seeing U.S. citizens detained and residents of the Twin Cities profiled based on their appearance or accent...

An incident that went viral on social media saw a Somali-American man working as an Uber driver at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport pulled over by CBP agents who demanded he prove his immigration status, with one agent saying: "I'm an immigration officer, I can hear you don't have the same accent as me ... I want to know where you're born."

It is literally and genetically impossible to be more American than a Native American.

Updated Monopoly cards

James Garfield - president for only 200 days

I have a new favorite president. Before reading this book, literally the only things I knew about James Garfield were that he was featured on the 20c prexie stamp (because he was the 20th president) and that he was assassinated while in office. Now I can add the following...

He grew up in Ohio in abject poverty – a one-room log cabin with a plank floor and windowpanes made of oiled paper. When he was two years old, his father died at age 33, leaving his mother with four children to feed. She farmed the land with the aid of his 11-year-old brother and saved money so that by age four James was able to get a pair of shoes. At age sixteen he began working on the Erie and Ohio Canal, but returned home after contracting malaria. By then his mother had saved $17, which was used to send him to Western Reserve Eclectic Institute, a one-building prep school. During his first year he worked as a janitor in exchange for receiving an education.

So vigorously did Garfield apply himself during his first year at the Eclectic that, by his second year, the school had promoted him from janitor to assistant professor. Along with the subjects he was taking as a student, he was given a full roster of classes to teach, including literature, mathematics, and ancient languages. He taught six classes, which were so popular that he was asked to add two more – one on penmanship and the other on Virgil. (p. 23) 

From there he moved to Williams College in Massachusetts and graduated in two years. He entered state politics in Ohio, then served in the Civil War in the Union Army, after which he was elected to Congress. He did NOT want to be president. He attended a nominating convention which was hopelessly deadlocked. On the 34th ballot, some electors voted for him. He rose to protest and was told to sit down.  On the 36th ballot, he became the Republican nominee – against his will. He was described as shocked, sickened, and pale as death during the proceedings. (pp 40-46).

He never participated in the campaign which was conducted on his behalf, preferring to work and receive visitors on his 160-acre farm.

He built a barn, moved a large shed, planted an orchard, and even shopped for curtains for the house…. he added an entire story, a front porch, and a library. Even with the new library, Garfield’s books filled every room. “You can go nowhere in the general’s home without coming face to face with books,” one reporter marveled. “They confront you in the hall when you enter, in the parlor and the sitting room, in the dining-room and even in the bath-room…” (p. 58) 

His campaign platform as a Republican emphasized civil rights and the welfare of the freed slaves, in which endeavor he was supported by Frederick Douglass. Voter turnout for the election was 78%, and he was elected by a narrow margin.

In the days that followed… Garfield could not shake the feeling that the presidency would bring hi only loneliness and sorrow. As he watched everything he treasured – his time with his children, his books, and his farm – abruptly disappear, he understood that the life he had known was gone. The presidency seemed to him not a great accomplishment but a “bleak mountain” that he was obliged to ascend. (p. 64) 

The assassin, Charles Guiteau, was a religious fanatic who was delusional to the point of frank psychosis. He borrowed $10 to buy a gun, used it to shoot the president not for any political or philosophical reason, but because he believed God wanted him to do it.

His first and primary defense was “Insanity, in that it was God’s act and not mine. The Divine pressure on me to remove the president was so enormous that it destroyed my free agency and therefore I am not legally responsible for my act.” (p. 237) 

The “insanity defense” was well established at the time. Interestingly, everyone at the time agreed that Guiteau was insane and that insane people were not liable for their actions. Everyone on the jury knew this also, but they were so angry that they basically said “he’s guilty – hang him anyway.”

Other interesting tidbits from the book: After Garfield was shot, the second physician who responded to the event was Charles Purvis, surgeon in chief of the Freedmen’s Hospital, 39 years old, one of the first black men in the U.S. to receive medical training at a university, and obviously the first ever to treat a president. (p. 140)

The White House of that era was like a slum residence, perpetually damp with rotting wood and vermin-infested walls and the odor of raw untreated sewage, situated next to a malarial tidal marsh. (p. 176)

Garfield was a Republican who embodied the party’s enthusiasm for helping immigrants, freed slaves, and impoverished people. He believed the key to improving the country lay in educating those people. (182)

It has been said that Guiteau did not kill the President – he shot him, but the doctors killed him by repeatedly probing the wound with ungloved, unwashed fingers. Guiteau used this argument in his own futile defense (“General Garfield died from malpractice.”). The bullet had lodged on the left side of his body behind the pancreas, but the attempts to find it on the right side resulted in profound septic sequelae:

One cavity in particular, which began at the site of the wound, would eventually burrow a tunnel that stretched past Garfield’s right kidney, along the outer lining of his stomach, and down nearly to his groin. An enormous cavity, six inches by four inches, would form under his liver, filling with a greenish-yellow mixture of pus and bile. (p. 196) 

He apparently developed septic emboli:

Just two weeks after the surgery, another abscess formed, this one on Garfield’s right parotid gland… the abscess had become so filled with pus that it caused his eye and cheek to swell and paralyzed his face. Finally, it ruptured, flooding Garfield’s ear canal and mouth with so much pus… that it nearly drowned him. (p. 216) 

The woefully incompetent Dr. Bliss treating him [“Ignorance is Bliss”] tried to cope with the president's rapid cachexia by feeding him intrarectally. The eventual cause of death (determined by autopsy) was hypovolemic shock following a rupture of the splenic artery (probably from a septic aneurysm).

Garfield does not get credit for any particular legislative achievements, because his time in office was too brief. Rather, his legacy is reflected in how his illness and death united the people of the country during the fractious time in the aftermath of the Civil War. And since Guiteau’s act had arisen in connection with the corrupt “spoils system” for giving out lucrative government job contracts, the popular revolt after the death led to the establishment of the civil service system. After his death, Garfield’s widow assembled his books and papers in a wing of their farmhouse, establishing the nation’s first-ever presidential library. 

The book is Destiny of the Republic. A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, by Candice Millard, published by Doubleday in 2011. I'm pleased to add it to my list of recommended books.

Addendum 2016:
I am delighted to report that the superb television series American Experience has just released a program entitled "Murder of a President," about President Garfield; it is based on the book I reviewed above in 2012.  The two-hour program is playing on PBS stations around the country, and it can be viewed online here.

Reposted from 2016 because of the upcoming Netflix series Death by Lightning, which is scheduled to drop later this year.

Reposted from June because the Netflix series drops in two days.  Watched the first two episodes tonight.  They follow the history quite faithfully; it was a bit sad to watch because I know what's going to happen next.