clean fresh water will prove to be far more valuable than precious metals etc at some point in the future, the way we are going these days. it is life itself...
-
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top of the heap to third world status in one generation
- Thread starter Gry
- Start date
clean fresh water will prove to be far more valuable than precious metals etc at some point in the future, the way we are going these days. it is life itself...
Our Highways Are an Ever-Expanding Museum of America’s Wars
I could hardly make out the words on the sign, but I knew what they said.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politic...iers-meaning/621011/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
I could hardly make out the words on the sign, but I knew what they said.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politic...iers-meaning/621011/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
I can understand that it may well seem as if more sex ed has negative outcomes, the reality is the opposite is the case.
My source for that would be my spouse who was an MD, MPH. who did study and track outcomes of social programs
for various parts of our society.
She would speak of the programs that worked very poorly, and of those that worked real well.
When it came to the programs on sexual education, they were very successful in terms of outcomes of reduced rates of
teen pregnancy, and trying to keep kids in school.
Like yourself, I would like it better if the kids could get a break, but that is not the kind of society we live in any longer.
The advertisers now directly target very young children, which I find reprehensible, but I know of no way to stop it.
Just as one can think of education as a form of indoctrination , the same can be said of advertising.
It appears to me that the first thing kids are being taught is to be good consumers.
I expect to see the targeting of children by advertisers increase.
Seriously, Upgrade Your Face Mask
Omicron is everywhere. Dr. Abraar Karan explains why cloth masks don’t cut it.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/202...-mask-to-an-n95.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Throughout the pandemic, wearing a face mask has been one of the best ways that anyone can easily reduce their risk of catching or spreading COVID-19. Putting aside the often contentious debate over mask mandates, face masks remain a crucial and effective individual tool, which is why it continues to be frustrating that most people, two years in, are not wearing better masks. That’s due in large part to how public health officials have mishandled the issue, including by giving mixed messages about whether to wear masks and which ones to use, but the bottom line is that the cloth masks everyone started buying in the spring and summer of 2020 were never a great match for an airborne virus like COVID and are even less so against the more and more transmissible variants that have emerged, such as Delta and Omicron. Surgical masks, when medical-grade quality and worn tightly across the face, are better than cloth masks. But high filtration respirators like N95s or KN95s — which are quite comfortable, provide gold-standard protection against airborne particles, and have been widely available from reputable sellers in the U.S. for a long time — are what everyone should now be using and what every institution should be making available. (And while most of these masks are designed for adults, there are now finally some KN95 and KF94 masks also being made in smaller sizes for kids.)
One of the most vocal advocates for the use of higher-quality masks throughout the pandemic has been Stanford infectious-diseases doctor Abraar Karan, who has researched COVID transmission and been calling for the use of high-filtration masks since the spring of 2020. His Twitter feed continues to be an invaluable resource for information on mask effectiveness, criticism of the inadequate public-health efforts regarding masking, and other commentary on COVID-19. I spoke with Dr. Karan about his ongoing campaign for better masks, their importance in the fight against Omicron, and why you should replace that cloth mask in your underwear drawer.
Why should people start using high-filtration masks like N95s and KN95s as their go-to, everyday masks rather than cloth ones?
The key reason is that transmission of the coronavirus is primarily through aerosols, which float around in the air — you inhale them — and are not filtered well by cloth masks. You really need melt-blown polypropylene, which you find in surgical masks and N95s, to stop these small particles.
So the materials used to make these masks make them better equipped to filter out the virus?
Yeah. The material is basically melt-blown polymers, like polypropylene, which form this complex sort of webbing which is then electrostatically charged, and that pulls the particles in when you’re inhaling and exhaling. Cloth masks are often just woven thread and other materials that don’t have that design. Cloth masks don’t provide great source control, either. The CDC is now letting people who test positive for COVID-19 stop isolating after five days and then wear a mask for five days. It would have been ideal for them to also recommend that be a better mask.
So do you think normal people should get N95 or KN95 respirators and then throw out their cloth and surgical masks?
I think the surgical masks can still work really well with a mask fitter [i.e., a frame or brace that is worn over the mask, ensuring an improved fit]. Surgical masks are also melt-blown polypropylene, three layers. They’re actual medical three-layer masks. So those are still pretty good if you can get the fit improved. In terms of cloth masks, I’d rather you wear something than nothing. But if you’re able to upgrade, that would be great.
As one of my colleagues has put it, just like you have a fire extinguisher, everyone should have access to respirators for an emergency. And I think that’s right. I think that the next time there’s a pandemic, or the next surge or whatever it is, if we need to wait for new vaccines and there are delays, you should be able to reach into your drawer, pull out a high-filtration mask, and feel protected. Not wear a bandana.
Right. Because respirators can provide protection against other airborne health threats, like wildfire smoke. They’re not just effective against viruses.
Oh, yeah, all kinds of stuff. I think the whole concept of cleaning the air is something that we have all sort of known, but didn’t take that seriously when it came to pollution and stuff like that. I think people are now starting to realize that the air we breathe is as important as the water we’re drinking or washing our hands.
How often can you reuse them? Does the electrostatic charge that attracts the particles wear off?
Peter Tsai, the scientist who invented the material used in N95s, has said that you could reuse them for a while and recommended buying seven masks and using a different one each day while letting the others sit out. Exactly how long the charge lasts, I think, really depends on the environmental conditions — humidity and sweat and things like that. But it’s up to the government to figure out how long an average person could use it. I think these are things that the CDC really should have been looking into. They’ve had a year and a half now. It’s crazy.
How has Omicron, which is clearly the most transmissible variant yet, changed your personal approach to managing your COVID risk, including when you decide to mask up outside of the hospital?
The transmissibility issue is a huge one, and masks are completely tied to that. The chances of catching COVID in transient or fleeting interactions, like being in the grocery store for a few minutes or being face-to-face with somebody for a conversation — I think it’s far more likely that I could get transmission now with this variant than with any others in the past. It changes my risk calculus.
I don’t think I’m going to get severely ill from this. I’m a healthy young guy, fully vaccinated. But I don’t want an infection for a few reasons. One is that I don’t want to transmit COVID to other people. Two, I don’t want to get infected at all. I can’t afford to be out of work. It’s the holidays, and the staffing isn’t great. I’m taking care of sick patients. Three, I don’t want to suffer potential morbidity effects, like long COVID and whatnot. I’ve treated and seen this in people that come in completely healthy, and they had ongoing symptoms for weeks after getting COVID. It’s real; I’ve treated patients who have this. We don’t know what to do with a lot of these cases.
And four, you don’t want to have a lot of infections at once. The problem with this high transmission is that you don’t want to surge. Surges are inherently bad. So when people are saying, “Well, I’m going to get this at some point anyways,” my response is that that may or may not be true, but it’s not good for everyone to get this at the same time. Because you may need to be evaluated in an emergency room, and people are still getting sick with other things that they had. And now some of those people are scared to go to hospitals, and they are getting delayed care for things that need urgent attention. There’s a lot of ripple effects from a lot of people getting sick at once. So, for me, it’s a no-brainer: This is not the time to increase your risk-taking.
What do you see as primary barriers when it comes to widespread public adoption of high-filtration masks?
I think that people don’t know which masks to get, or where to get them, and then actually being able to afford them. Those are issues that the government can address. They can literally just say, “Okay, let’s look into this. Here are four or five mask options that we think the public can use. Here’s an instructional kit on how to improve fit.”
It’s not going to be perfect, but we’re not aiming for perfect; we’re aiming for good enough to get transmission curbed significantly. Make these masks ubiquitously available. Make them available before you enter malls, before you enter grocery stores. Make them available in vending machines for a very low cost or no cost. Send some to people’s houses. There are so many ways to do this. It’s the job of some people in the government to figure these problems out. This is not my job. I’m in infectious disease taking care of patients; I’m not supposed to be telling the government how to do this. This is ridiculous.
Right.
I mean, these are operational problems. This is not even my expertise. I’m a doctor.
And this is not the first time you and others have tried to raise awareness about the need for better masks during this pandemic. It happened after Delta emerged, too.
It has come up like five different times. And let’s say it’s later, a different virus — do you want to be reaching into your underwear drawer again for a mask next time? This is ridiculous.
Another concern people seem to have about wearing better masks is fit. This seems to have always been the issue with surgical masks, which I rarely see anyone wearing correctly — tight across the mouth and nose with no open gaps. I know my beard, as illustrated by that periodically viral CDC infographic, reduces the protection my masks provide. I’ll sometimes buzz it down to try to get a tighter seal with my N95 when I know I’ll be going into a higher-risk situation. But while somebody with a big beard might think, What’s the point?, an imperfectly fit N95 is still better protection.
Exactly. And I’ll tell you, I feel completely protected now. I wore an N95 to the gym and worked out, and everything felt totally fine. I didn’t have any issues breathing. I felt protected. From day one of this pandemic, if you wanted to not shut down and you wanted people to still go into workplaces, there have been ways to do this. You can wear a good mask, go to work and then if you need to take a break, step outside. There are ways to do this and not have people bring the virus back home and infect their families.
To me, if you lose a few percentage points of efficacy here or there, that kind of pales in comparison to if everybody had better masks on, even if those masks were not completely, perfectly fitted or perfectly working at 95-plus efficacy. Even if they were working at 80 percent, if everybody was doing it, compared to 20 percent, it would still have such an immense impact on stunting transmission. That is the big picture here. People who argue, “Well if it’s unfitted, it may not be 95 percent effective,” are missing the forest for the trees.
Editors’s Note: Dr. Karan has also criticized a comment CDC director Rochelle Walensky recently made in which she said that while KN95 and N95 masks offer more protection, they “are often not as comfortable” and that might make people less likely to keep them on:
How do you and other health-care workers, in a higher-risk environment like a hospital, make sure your N95s fit properly?
We get fit tested once in the beginning of the year and then we don’t have a required fit test daily or anything after that. You use the mask that you’re fit-tested with and then you basically want to make sure that you don’t have facial hair, that you have a tight seal, and that your nose bridge is tightened in. And then, if you are feeling a lot of air coming out, you have to possibly readjust it. I haven’t had that happen yet though. My fit has never felt compromised with the mask I’m fit-tested for. And even with the masks I’ve used that I’m not fit-tested for, outside the hospital, it feels fine. I don’t feel any air leaking. It feels like a tight solid fit.
I’ve seen hundreds of cases, and I’ve never tested positive, let alone developed actual symptoms or gotten sick. So I really believe in the efficacy of these masks. And I believe health-care workers shouldn’t just be wearing them for patients with confirmed COVID, because during surges there’s a lot of occult transmission. So you have people who are testing positive that didn’t come in with COVID or didn’t test positive when they first came in, and you have a lot of community transmission that’s coming into hospitals from health-care workers and staff. So right now, during the surge, I am wearing my N95 when we go to the wards for all patients.
Studies seem to show that ventilation can have a larger effect than masking does, what do you make of that?
At a community level? Yeah. Ventilation has a uniform effect where you’re cleaning the air out. The difference is if you’re extremely infectious and someone’s right in front of you, it doesn’t matter unless you’re outdoors — ventilation is not going to be sucking particles out constantly to the extent that you’re going to completely stop transmission. Whereas if you’re wearing a mask in those closed settings, it would. And I think it’s an additive effect. All of these interventions are building upon one another to help. And so I think it’s not one versus the other.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity, and has been updated.
The Strategist’s guide to face masks includes recommendations for numerous NIOSH-approved N95 respirators, as well as good KN95 and KF94 masks, and advice on how to avoid counterfeits.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/202...-mask-to-an-n95.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Omicron is everywhere. Dr. Abraar Karan explains why cloth masks don’t cut it.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/202...-mask-to-an-n95.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Throughout the pandemic, wearing a face mask has been one of the best ways that anyone can easily reduce their risk of catching or spreading COVID-19. Putting aside the often contentious debate over mask mandates, face masks remain a crucial and effective individual tool, which is why it continues to be frustrating that most people, two years in, are not wearing better masks. That’s due in large part to how public health officials have mishandled the issue, including by giving mixed messages about whether to wear masks and which ones to use, but the bottom line is that the cloth masks everyone started buying in the spring and summer of 2020 were never a great match for an airborne virus like COVID and are even less so against the more and more transmissible variants that have emerged, such as Delta and Omicron. Surgical masks, when medical-grade quality and worn tightly across the face, are better than cloth masks. But high filtration respirators like N95s or KN95s — which are quite comfortable, provide gold-standard protection against airborne particles, and have been widely available from reputable sellers in the U.S. for a long time — are what everyone should now be using and what every institution should be making available. (And while most of these masks are designed for adults, there are now finally some KN95 and KF94 masks also being made in smaller sizes for kids.)
One of the most vocal advocates for the use of higher-quality masks throughout the pandemic has been Stanford infectious-diseases doctor Abraar Karan, who has researched COVID transmission and been calling for the use of high-filtration masks since the spring of 2020. His Twitter feed continues to be an invaluable resource for information on mask effectiveness, criticism of the inadequate public-health efforts regarding masking, and other commentary on COVID-19. I spoke with Dr. Karan about his ongoing campaign for better masks, their importance in the fight against Omicron, and why you should replace that cloth mask in your underwear drawer.
Why should people start using high-filtration masks like N95s and KN95s as their go-to, everyday masks rather than cloth ones?
The key reason is that transmission of the coronavirus is primarily through aerosols, which float around in the air — you inhale them — and are not filtered well by cloth masks. You really need melt-blown polypropylene, which you find in surgical masks and N95s, to stop these small particles.
So the materials used to make these masks make them better equipped to filter out the virus?
Yeah. The material is basically melt-blown polymers, like polypropylene, which form this complex sort of webbing which is then electrostatically charged, and that pulls the particles in when you’re inhaling and exhaling. Cloth masks are often just woven thread and other materials that don’t have that design. Cloth masks don’t provide great source control, either. The CDC is now letting people who test positive for COVID-19 stop isolating after five days and then wear a mask for five days. It would have been ideal for them to also recommend that be a better mask.
So do you think normal people should get N95 or KN95 respirators and then throw out their cloth and surgical masks?
I think the surgical masks can still work really well with a mask fitter [i.e., a frame or brace that is worn over the mask, ensuring an improved fit]. Surgical masks are also melt-blown polypropylene, three layers. They’re actual medical three-layer masks. So those are still pretty good if you can get the fit improved. In terms of cloth masks, I’d rather you wear something than nothing. But if you’re able to upgrade, that would be great.
As one of my colleagues has put it, just like you have a fire extinguisher, everyone should have access to respirators for an emergency. And I think that’s right. I think that the next time there’s a pandemic, or the next surge or whatever it is, if we need to wait for new vaccines and there are delays, you should be able to reach into your drawer, pull out a high-filtration mask, and feel protected. Not wear a bandana.
Right. Because respirators can provide protection against other airborne health threats, like wildfire smoke. They’re not just effective against viruses.
Oh, yeah, all kinds of stuff. I think the whole concept of cleaning the air is something that we have all sort of known, but didn’t take that seriously when it came to pollution and stuff like that. I think people are now starting to realize that the air we breathe is as important as the water we’re drinking or washing our hands.
How often can you reuse them? Does the electrostatic charge that attracts the particles wear off?
Peter Tsai, the scientist who invented the material used in N95s, has said that you could reuse them for a while and recommended buying seven masks and using a different one each day while letting the others sit out. Exactly how long the charge lasts, I think, really depends on the environmental conditions — humidity and sweat and things like that. But it’s up to the government to figure out how long an average person could use it. I think these are things that the CDC really should have been looking into. They’ve had a year and a half now. It’s crazy.
How has Omicron, which is clearly the most transmissible variant yet, changed your personal approach to managing your COVID risk, including when you decide to mask up outside of the hospital?
The transmissibility issue is a huge one, and masks are completely tied to that. The chances of catching COVID in transient or fleeting interactions, like being in the grocery store for a few minutes or being face-to-face with somebody for a conversation — I think it’s far more likely that I could get transmission now with this variant than with any others in the past. It changes my risk calculus.
I don’t think I’m going to get severely ill from this. I’m a healthy young guy, fully vaccinated. But I don’t want an infection for a few reasons. One is that I don’t want to transmit COVID to other people. Two, I don’t want to get infected at all. I can’t afford to be out of work. It’s the holidays, and the staffing isn’t great. I’m taking care of sick patients. Three, I don’t want to suffer potential morbidity effects, like long COVID and whatnot. I’ve treated and seen this in people that come in completely healthy, and they had ongoing symptoms for weeks after getting COVID. It’s real; I’ve treated patients who have this. We don’t know what to do with a lot of these cases.
And four, you don’t want to have a lot of infections at once. The problem with this high transmission is that you don’t want to surge. Surges are inherently bad. So when people are saying, “Well, I’m going to get this at some point anyways,” my response is that that may or may not be true, but it’s not good for everyone to get this at the same time. Because you may need to be evaluated in an emergency room, and people are still getting sick with other things that they had. And now some of those people are scared to go to hospitals, and they are getting delayed care for things that need urgent attention. There’s a lot of ripple effects from a lot of people getting sick at once. So, for me, it’s a no-brainer: This is not the time to increase your risk-taking.
What do you see as primary barriers when it comes to widespread public adoption of high-filtration masks?
I think that people don’t know which masks to get, or where to get them, and then actually being able to afford them. Those are issues that the government can address. They can literally just say, “Okay, let’s look into this. Here are four or five mask options that we think the public can use. Here’s an instructional kit on how to improve fit.”
It’s not going to be perfect, but we’re not aiming for perfect; we’re aiming for good enough to get transmission curbed significantly. Make these masks ubiquitously available. Make them available before you enter malls, before you enter grocery stores. Make them available in vending machines for a very low cost or no cost. Send some to people’s houses. There are so many ways to do this. It’s the job of some people in the government to figure these problems out. This is not my job. I’m in infectious disease taking care of patients; I’m not supposed to be telling the government how to do this. This is ridiculous.
Right.
I mean, these are operational problems. This is not even my expertise. I’m a doctor.
And this is not the first time you and others have tried to raise awareness about the need for better masks during this pandemic. It happened after Delta emerged, too.
It has come up like five different times. And let’s say it’s later, a different virus — do you want to be reaching into your underwear drawer again for a mask next time? This is ridiculous.
Another concern people seem to have about wearing better masks is fit. This seems to have always been the issue with surgical masks, which I rarely see anyone wearing correctly — tight across the mouth and nose with no open gaps. I know my beard, as illustrated by that periodically viral CDC infographic, reduces the protection my masks provide. I’ll sometimes buzz it down to try to get a tighter seal with my N95 when I know I’ll be going into a higher-risk situation. But while somebody with a big beard might think, What’s the point?, an imperfectly fit N95 is still better protection.
Exactly. And I’ll tell you, I feel completely protected now. I wore an N95 to the gym and worked out, and everything felt totally fine. I didn’t have any issues breathing. I felt protected. From day one of this pandemic, if you wanted to not shut down and you wanted people to still go into workplaces, there have been ways to do this. You can wear a good mask, go to work and then if you need to take a break, step outside. There are ways to do this and not have people bring the virus back home and infect their families.
To me, if you lose a few percentage points of efficacy here or there, that kind of pales in comparison to if everybody had better masks on, even if those masks were not completely, perfectly fitted or perfectly working at 95-plus efficacy. Even if they were working at 80 percent, if everybody was doing it, compared to 20 percent, it would still have such an immense impact on stunting transmission. That is the big picture here. People who argue, “Well if it’s unfitted, it may not be 95 percent effective,” are missing the forest for the trees.
Editors’s Note: Dr. Karan has also criticized a comment CDC director Rochelle Walensky recently made in which she said that while KN95 and N95 masks offer more protection, they “are often not as comfortable” and that might make people less likely to keep them on:
How do you and other health-care workers, in a higher-risk environment like a hospital, make sure your N95s fit properly?
We get fit tested once in the beginning of the year and then we don’t have a required fit test daily or anything after that. You use the mask that you’re fit-tested with and then you basically want to make sure that you don’t have facial hair, that you have a tight seal, and that your nose bridge is tightened in. And then, if you are feeling a lot of air coming out, you have to possibly readjust it. I haven’t had that happen yet though. My fit has never felt compromised with the mask I’m fit-tested for. And even with the masks I’ve used that I’m not fit-tested for, outside the hospital, it feels fine. I don’t feel any air leaking. It feels like a tight solid fit.
I’ve seen hundreds of cases, and I’ve never tested positive, let alone developed actual symptoms or gotten sick. So I really believe in the efficacy of these masks. And I believe health-care workers shouldn’t just be wearing them for patients with confirmed COVID, because during surges there’s a lot of occult transmission. So you have people who are testing positive that didn’t come in with COVID or didn’t test positive when they first came in, and you have a lot of community transmission that’s coming into hospitals from health-care workers and staff. So right now, during the surge, I am wearing my N95 when we go to the wards for all patients.
Studies seem to show that ventilation can have a larger effect than masking does, what do you make of that?
At a community level? Yeah. Ventilation has a uniform effect where you’re cleaning the air out. The difference is if you’re extremely infectious and someone’s right in front of you, it doesn’t matter unless you’re outdoors — ventilation is not going to be sucking particles out constantly to the extent that you’re going to completely stop transmission. Whereas if you’re wearing a mask in those closed settings, it would. And I think it’s an additive effect. All of these interventions are building upon one another to help. And so I think it’s not one versus the other.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity, and has been updated.
The Strategist’s guide to face masks includes recommendations for numerous NIOSH-approved N95 respirators, as well as good KN95 and KF94 masks, and advice on how to avoid counterfeits.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/202...-mask-to-an-n95.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab
My wife and I made an 11,000 mile road trip across the USA. On the border between Utah/Colorado was a Highway Sign so I pulled over to take a picture. We discovered it was more than just a sign.
Three Berries
Active member
- https://assets2.hrc.org/files/assets/resources/2018-YouthReport-NoVid.pdf?_ga=2.134619825.1102 244158.1526302453-846000759.1523970534
- 2018 LGBTQ Youth Report
- HUGE collection of data concerning difficulties LGBTQ people face
- 67% of LGBTQ youth hear their parents make negative statements about LGBTQ people - rises to 78% if child is in closet.
- 48% of LGBTQ youth say their family makes them feel bad for their identity
- This pretty much ends the argument right here.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5178031/
- Broad international study of trans suicide rate
- “Gender-based victimization, discrimination, bullying, violence, being rejected by the family, friends, and community; harassment by intimate partner, family members, police and public; discrimination and ill treatment at health-care system are the major risk factors that influence the suicidal behavior among transgender persons”.
- https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/AFSP-Williams-Suicide-Report-Final.pdf
- Massive demographic analysis which codifies the many social & institutional factors which contribute to trans suicide rates
- Surprise surprise, discrimination & abuse play a huge role. Read the summary.
- http://transpulseproject.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Impacts-of-Strong-Parental-Support-for-Trans-Youth-vFINAL.pdf
- Analysis of the ways in which parental support affect elements of disadvantage experienced by transgender youth.
- Most notably, strong parental support decreases the likelihood of a suicide attempt within the past year from 57% to just 4%.
Three Berries
Active member
So what's the answer? More counseling? Why is it now such a home issue? Who is pushing the gay agenda?
Nobody is pushing gayness on your kids. It’s simply your interpretation.
it's pretty clear family rejection/alienation/disownment/etc is the main cause
67% of LGBTQ youth hear their parents make negative statements about LGBTQ people - rises to 78% if child is in closet.
48% of LGBTQ youth say their family makes them feel bad for their identity
strong parental support decreases the likelihood of a suicide attempt within the past year from 57% to just 4%.
Three Berries
Active member
Well what are you going to do? Some would call that moral training I guess, social pressure to adhere to certain mores. But you cannot make people accept what is not normal or acceptable to them.
No. We can’t lesson your fears nor erase your prejudices. Won’t ever expect any tolerance of anybody’s rights you don’t feel that they have or deserve. After all they took your job.
Imagine most people would be quite willing to generate more acceptance if they understood more clearly what the lack
of it would cost them.
Three Berries
Active member
You are. Playing victim to a victimless act.
somehow they equate OTHER people having the freedom to live their lives as they choose - with THEM being forced to live like that. fear of the different. it didn't bother them as long as they were allowed to ostracize the "others" to try to feel better about themselves.
Sedition Day: Overthrowing Democracy is Not the Same Thing as Protesting Police Violence
As Biden told us, we stand at an inflection point of history. The fate of democracy here and around the world is actually hanging in the balance. Hopefully our Attorney General was listening...
Today’s the anniversary of hundreds of Capitol police, House and Senate staffers, Members of Congress and others who work in the seat of our nation’s government successfully fighting back the first violent assault on a congressional session in the history of our republic.
Trump’s followers and fellow-travelers — including 139 Republicans in the House and 8 in the Senate — tried their best to end our way of government. They incited, participated in, and now are justifying the first violent attack on Congress since the Constitution was signed 235 years ago.
They failed. Congress resumed their session deep into the night of January 6th to complete the transition of presidential power, a process that had always in the past been peaceful.
The 147 members of the “Sedition Caucus” — Republicans all — who endorsed and tried to complete the murderous work of Trump’s mob will be remembered by history along with America’s greatest cowards and traitors. Their names will go down as peers of Benedict Arnold and Robert E. Lee.
The rest of Congress — Republicans and Democrats — who stayed and completed the job of certifying President Biden’s election are heroes.
As are the staffers and police who helped hold the building and protect the ballots while preventing the planned assassination of the Vice President and Speaker of the House.
Therefore, I believe, future January 6ths should be days of celebration for democracy’s victory late that night one year ago today.
England has a similar moment in its history, when Robert Catesby, Guy Fawkes and their fellow seditionists tried to blow up Westminster in 1605 “during the state opening of Parliament, while James I and his chief ministers met within…”
“In the aftermath,” the Encyclopedia Britannica notes, “Parliament declared November 5th a national day of thanksgiving, and the first celebration of it took place in 1606.”
Today it’s celebrated with fireworks and revelry: the traitors were defeated and the nation still stands. We may want to consider something similar here.
We should celebrate our victories.
But our “Guy Fawkes Day” situation isn’t yet resolved.
On the eve of the anniversary of America’s Sedition Day, our Attorney General, Merrick Garland, spoke to the staff of the Department of Justice and the nation.
One high note was when Garland explicitly noted that (conservatives on) the Supreme Court gutted voting rights in the Shelby County case, and therefore Congress needs to act now to return to the DOJ the power to defend voting rights against state governments hell-bent on racialized voter suppression.
He discussed the horrors of Sedition Day in admirable length, concluding: “The Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law — whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy. We will follow the facts wherever they lead.”
One would expect, of course, nothing less. He left far more ambiguous, however, the question about what will be done with people in Congress who conspired to overthrow our government.
Garland then noted that “violence” is happening across America:
He mentioned that “election officials and election workers; airline flight crews; school personnel; journalists; local elected officials; U.S. Senators and Representatives; and judges, prosecutors, and police officers have been threatened and/or attacked,” and that it was the work of the DOJ to hold the perpetrators to account.
Virtually all of the acts of violence directed at ending our form of government were perpetrated by followers of Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
Garland, however, chose not to mention that, or even to imply that Trump and the Republican Party following him have been at the core of most of this political violence, to the point that many of them are raising money over it.
The two non-partisan exceptions to Republican-led violence were a man with no discernible political motivation who attacked a federal judge who’d ruled against him, and a handful of anti-fascist protesters (who also distrust Democrats) in Portland and a few other cities who damaged property and engaged police in riots.
None of these represented efforts to overturn a presidential election and end democracy in America.
But instead of calling out the political violence being incited and promoted daily on rightwing media and exclusively by Republican politicians, Garland’s sole reference to “white supremacy” was in the context of the era in the 1870s when Reconstruction collapsed.
In this speech he had the opportunity to differentiate between the politically motivated violence that happened on Sedition Day and the more random violence of a lone pissed-off criminal or people protesting killings by police. He could have made that clear.
Instead, he specifically referenced that one Black criminal (whose picture is sure to pop up soon on Fox “News” as it already is on message boards), who stalked and attacked a federal judge two months ago:
This man’s crime was completely unrelated to January 6th, unrelated to the politically motivated violence we’re seeing on airplanes, and unrelated to the armed white supremacist militias who tried to end our form of government while waving their Trump flags.
So why would Garland conflate that one man’s crime with those of 10,000 Trump followers on January 6th in Washington DC and thousands of acts and threats of violence by militia groups around the country since in his very next sentence:
“These acts and threats of violence are not associated with any one set of partisan or ideological views.”
Seriously: Say what?!?
It’s totally understandable that the Attorney General and the Department of Justice want to appear even-handed in their administration of the law, particularly after Bill Barr lied about and then redacted the Mueller Report and used the DOJ to punish Michael Cohen when he “ratted out” Trump, among other things.
And Garland presides over a DOJ that probably has as many Republicans as Democrats working for it, including a significant number of Trump administration holdouts.
But to suggest that political violence and an effort to end our form of government — the topic of his speech given in the runup to Sedition Day — was “not associated with any one set of partisan or ideological views” is the most tragic form of both-siderism.
I had hoped that Garland would have the courage to call out the rightwing white supremacist violence specifically associated with Donald Trump and his followers in the Republican Party, and condemn it. His own FBI, after all, has already identified it as America’s number one terrorist threat.
I tweeted about this yesterday:
I can't believe I just heard Garland say, essentially, that political violence is a problem on both sides. This "both-sides-ism" is a cancer in our political & media arenas that simply gives more license to neofascists who advocate, threaten & use violence. I'm astonished.January 5th 2022
627 Retweets2,516 Likes
The avalanche of trolls who attacked me were almost uniformly trying to conflate the January 6 attack on our democracy with the “BLM/Antifa” outliers who engaged in local vandalism to protest police violence.
The two are completely different issues, but clearly this is now the Trump faction of the Republican Party’s strategy.
Whenever patriotic Americans mention the Sedition Day effort to end our form of government, Trump apologists will shout about protests against police killing unarmed Black men as if the two were identical or even similar.
They are not.
Garland has a tough job. Our nation is under attack not just by neofascists within but by several foreign governments giving them encouragement and online support through armies of trolls on the outside. They’re working together to bring down democratic governments across the world, and aren’t shy about it.
But if you don’t face reality and take it on, it has a way of biting you in the ass further down the road.
One wishes our Attorney General had the courage and honesty to bluntly lay out for the American people and the world the genuine threat our form of government faces because one of our political parties has been captured by neofascists, instead of implying that there are “bad people on both sides.”
Today’s speech by President Biden, however, specifically and clearly pointed out the dangers we face because the Republican Party has embraced a wannabe fascist dictator who openly disdains democracy.
It was brilliant.
As he said, we stand at an inflection point of history. The fate of democracy here and around the world is actually hanging in the balance.
Hopefully our Attorney General was listening.
Thom Hartmann.com
As Biden told us, we stand at an inflection point of history. The fate of democracy here and around the world is actually hanging in the balance. Hopefully our Attorney General was listening...
Today’s the anniversary of hundreds of Capitol police, House and Senate staffers, Members of Congress and others who work in the seat of our nation’s government successfully fighting back the first violent assault on a congressional session in the history of our republic.
Trump’s followers and fellow-travelers — including 139 Republicans in the House and 8 in the Senate — tried their best to end our way of government. They incited, participated in, and now are justifying the first violent attack on Congress since the Constitution was signed 235 years ago.
They failed. Congress resumed their session deep into the night of January 6th to complete the transition of presidential power, a process that had always in the past been peaceful.
The 147 members of the “Sedition Caucus” — Republicans all — who endorsed and tried to complete the murderous work of Trump’s mob will be remembered by history along with America’s greatest cowards and traitors. Their names will go down as peers of Benedict Arnold and Robert E. Lee.
The rest of Congress — Republicans and Democrats — who stayed and completed the job of certifying President Biden’s election are heroes.
As are the staffers and police who helped hold the building and protect the ballots while preventing the planned assassination of the Vice President and Speaker of the House.
Therefore, I believe, future January 6ths should be days of celebration for democracy’s victory late that night one year ago today.
England has a similar moment in its history, when Robert Catesby, Guy Fawkes and their fellow seditionists tried to blow up Westminster in 1605 “during the state opening of Parliament, while James I and his chief ministers met within…”
“In the aftermath,” the Encyclopedia Britannica notes, “Parliament declared November 5th a national day of thanksgiving, and the first celebration of it took place in 1606.”
Today it’s celebrated with fireworks and revelry: the traitors were defeated and the nation still stands. We may want to consider something similar here.
We should celebrate our victories.
But our “Guy Fawkes Day” situation isn’t yet resolved.
On the eve of the anniversary of America’s Sedition Day, our Attorney General, Merrick Garland, spoke to the staff of the Department of Justice and the nation.
One high note was when Garland explicitly noted that (conservatives on) the Supreme Court gutted voting rights in the Shelby County case, and therefore Congress needs to act now to return to the DOJ the power to defend voting rights against state governments hell-bent on racialized voter suppression.
He discussed the horrors of Sedition Day in admirable length, concluding: “The Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law — whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy. We will follow the facts wherever they lead.”
One would expect, of course, nothing less. He left far more ambiguous, however, the question about what will be done with people in Congress who conspired to overthrow our government.
Garland then noted that “violence” is happening across America:
“We have all seen that Americans who serve and interact with the public at every level — many of whom make our democracy work every day — have been unlawfully targeted with threats of violence and actual violence.”
He mentioned that “election officials and election workers; airline flight crews; school personnel; journalists; local elected officials; U.S. Senators and Representatives; and judges, prosecutors, and police officers have been threatened and/or attacked,” and that it was the work of the DOJ to hold the perpetrators to account.
Virtually all of the acts of violence directed at ending our form of government were perpetrated by followers of Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
Garland, however, chose not to mention that, or even to imply that Trump and the Republican Party following him have been at the core of most of this political violence, to the point that many of them are raising money over it.
The two non-partisan exceptions to Republican-led violence were a man with no discernible political motivation who attacked a federal judge who’d ruled against him, and a handful of anti-fascist protesters (who also distrust Democrats) in Portland and a few other cities who damaged property and engaged police in riots.
None of these represented efforts to overturn a presidential election and end democracy in America.
But instead of calling out the political violence being incited and promoted daily on rightwing media and exclusively by Republican politicians, Garland’s sole reference to “white supremacy” was in the context of the era in the 1870s when Reconstruction collapsed.
In this speech he had the opportunity to differentiate between the politically motivated violence that happened on Sedition Day and the more random violence of a lone pissed-off criminal or people protesting killings by police. He could have made that clear.
Instead, he specifically referenced that one Black criminal (whose picture is sure to pop up soon on Fox “News” as it already is on message boards), who stalked and attacked a federal judge two months ago:
“n 2020, a federal judge in New Jersey was targeted by someone who had appeared before her in court. That person compiled information about where the judge and her family lived and went to church. That person found the judge’s home, shot and killed her son, and injured her husband.”
This man’s crime was completely unrelated to January 6th, unrelated to the politically motivated violence we’re seeing on airplanes, and unrelated to the armed white supremacist militias who tried to end our form of government while waving their Trump flags.
So why would Garland conflate that one man’s crime with those of 10,000 Trump followers on January 6th in Washington DC and thousands of acts and threats of violence by militia groups around the country since in his very next sentence:
“These acts and threats of violence are not associated with any one set of partisan or ideological views.”
Seriously: Say what?!?
It’s totally understandable that the Attorney General and the Department of Justice want to appear even-handed in their administration of the law, particularly after Bill Barr lied about and then redacted the Mueller Report and used the DOJ to punish Michael Cohen when he “ratted out” Trump, among other things.
And Garland presides over a DOJ that probably has as many Republicans as Democrats working for it, including a significant number of Trump administration holdouts.
But to suggest that political violence and an effort to end our form of government — the topic of his speech given in the runup to Sedition Day — was “not associated with any one set of partisan or ideological views” is the most tragic form of both-siderism.
I had hoped that Garland would have the courage to call out the rightwing white supremacist violence specifically associated with Donald Trump and his followers in the Republican Party, and condemn it. His own FBI, after all, has already identified it as America’s number one terrorist threat.
I tweeted about this yesterday:
I can't believe I just heard Garland say, essentially, that political violence is a problem on both sides. This "both-sides-ism" is a cancer in our political & media arenas that simply gives more license to neofascists who advocate, threaten & use violence. I'm astonished.January 5th 2022
627 Retweets2,516 Likes
The avalanche of trolls who attacked me were almost uniformly trying to conflate the January 6 attack on our democracy with the “BLM/Antifa” outliers who engaged in local vandalism to protest police violence.
The two are completely different issues, but clearly this is now the Trump faction of the Republican Party’s strategy.
Whenever patriotic Americans mention the Sedition Day effort to end our form of government, Trump apologists will shout about protests against police killing unarmed Black men as if the two were identical or even similar.
They are not.
Garland has a tough job. Our nation is under attack not just by neofascists within but by several foreign governments giving them encouragement and online support through armies of trolls on the outside. They’re working together to bring down democratic governments across the world, and aren’t shy about it.
But if you don’t face reality and take it on, it has a way of biting you in the ass further down the road.
One wishes our Attorney General had the courage and honesty to bluntly lay out for the American people and the world the genuine threat our form of government faces because one of our political parties has been captured by neofascists, instead of implying that there are “bad people on both sides.”
Today’s speech by President Biden, however, specifically and clearly pointed out the dangers we face because the Republican Party has embraced a wannabe fascist dictator who openly disdains democracy.
It was brilliant.
As he said, we stand at an inflection point of history. The fate of democracy here and around the world is actually hanging in the balance.
Hopefully our Attorney General was listening.
Thom Hartmann.com
My thoughts just don’t dwell on the gay lifestyle. It has no bearing on my life. I have no reason to upset theirs. They don’t upset mine.
Jan 6 should be referred to as Democracy awareness day.. Millions do not want to use democracy to pick our leaders anymore. Be prepared for another election shit show coming soon..
Three Berries
Active member
Technically we have never used Democracy to elect the President. It's why we are a Republic and not a Democratic form of government.
