2nd impeachment

And so it begins . . . again . . .

2.7bn defamation suit against Fox, Rudy and Sidney, et al.

The insurrection that Trump incited against the Capitol on January 6 injured 140 policemen, some of them seriously, and was responsible for the death of one police officer.

I thought Trump was the president of law and order, as the GOP is said to be too.

Trump will forever have blood on his hands from January 6th, and be no more able to wash that blood off than Lady Macbeth.

Most of us figured something like this would be occurring. Seems members of Trumps Impeachment legal team are excusing themselves from representing the former President.

Maybe Jared finally got James Baker to help?

Naw just kidding. Baker would not humiliate himself.

In all seriousness the new legal team will hold a presser tomorrow from the Four Seasons. Landscape and Lawn care.

Ppps.

Phnxfun,

My whiteness and my maleness has not always worked to my advantage in job applications.

I did not receive job offers at two places in 1986 because, as I was later told by people who interviewed me, that while I was the preferred candidate by most in the room, they needed to hire a person of color or a woman to diversify.

But it has worked to my advantage so I was in a position to get the education that enabled me to get such jobs.

I attended an elite private all-boys school in NJ that enabled me to get into an elite college, and I was accepted into that college also because I was an excellent soccer player in high school (I was a sports admit, in effect). (The college at the time had no women's varsity soccer team.)

Can I give you a data analysis of all the advantages or privileges I feel I have enjoyed as a white person in the USA? No, but I can give you lots of anecdotes and subjective experiences.

As EA suggests, reality is not always measured by data.

How do you measure the look in the eye of a white policeman in a mostly white place in a Red state who pulls you over for a traffic stop if you are a white person versus if you are a black person?

Maybe the police officer gives everyone he pulls over the same look in the eye.

It's would be revealing to have data on how many white policemen identify with white nationalism or white supremacy. There were some such policemen involved in the riot against the Capitol.

It' scary enough just to have white congressmen and senators inside the Capitol who appear to identify too much with white nationalism along with a sympathizer to white nationalism or white supremacy in the White House from 2016-2020.

I'm sure you could probably get Steve Scalise and Marjorie Green to impeach the holiday for Martin Luther King Jr., which Governor Meacham of Arizona also opposed in the 1980s.

Phnxfun,

Again, you keep putting words in my mouth and then attacking or questioning them.

I never called for "equal social privilege."

There is no governing document in the USA that calls for equal social privilege.

But there are commitments to equal rights, equal opportunity, equal justice.

In regards to putting numbers on the advantages of privilege, this has been done extensively by those who study such things as health and who has the best chance to fulfill an average life span, and how and why lower social status affects health to such people's detriment.

One of the best studies of this is Michael Marmot's "The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects our Health and Longevity."

There are many studies being done in the fields of medicine and public health about "health disparities" in relation to race, social status, and gender.

There are many studies that have been done on "social mobility" and the chances of someone in the lower class to reach the middle class or upper class.

Studies show that such social mobility is better in Sweden and and some so-called socialist countries than in the USA right now. In 1950s and 1960s, social mobility in the USA is higher than it is now.

The USA has is more solidified in its economic/class hierarchies than in the past, with the rich getting richer while people in the bottom of the ladder stay the same.

What does it feel like to be rich or upper class in the USA? Can a poor person accurately feel that? I say no.

What does it feel like to be Black or Latinx in America? Can a white person accurately feel that? I say no.

What does it feel like to be a woman? Can a man accurately feel that? I say no.

Here we do get into subjective experience measured by such things as how people or strangers look at you especially if you are a poor person among a high majority of rich people or a Black person among a high majority of white folks or a woman among a high majority of men?

People who interact more and develop friendships and intimate relationships with people different from themselves in terms of social class, gender, sexual orientation and race/ethnicity are probably better able to feel differences of privilege according to any of those categories.

Is it an advantage to be a white man who is 6'2" versus a white man who is 5'5" inches. Well, Fortune 500 CEOs are 2 inches taller than the average male, suggesting there is some benefit to being tall rather than short for rising up in the ranks in the power structure of a Fortune 500 corporation.

Obviously, many white men do not feel right now that they have any privilege over people of color, which is one reason for their resentment and sense of grievance, as they feel that white people have been losing status in the USA.

White men have lost some of their supremacy and superiority since before 1964 (or in the time that Trump thinks America was Great), and that loss has been more in the South than anywhere else thanks to the end of legalized white supremacy.

It seems that for some white men. to feel equal to people of color is a loss.

Indeed, some white guys are willing to do a mob riot against the Capitol in order to preserve their sense of superiority and advantage over African Americans.

Phnxfun: Here's an interesting piece of data I wish I had: How man white supremacists participated in the attack on the Capitol on January 6th?

And how many times did Trump make racist comments about Black and Brown people or figures during his presidency and since 2007?

ps.

Franklin Roosevelt knew that what he was calling for his "Four Freedoms" speech would mean higher taxes but he called upon Americans to "put patriotism ahead of their pocketbooks."

We had much higher tax rates on the wealthy or the top 1-5% back in the early 1960s than we have now. I am very willing to go back to a time before Reagan's tax cuts and particularly Trump's tax cuts that benefitted first and foremost the rich or the top 1-5%

Ronald Reagan loved to quote from John Winthrop's 1630 sermon "A Model or Christian Charity." He would cite the lines of Winthrop becoming a "city o a hill" and he added "shining" to Winthrop's words. Reagan helped make Winthrop's words famous in our politics.

Alas, he did not quote from the following words of Winthrop in that speech where he explains what we the people need to do to create that model. He was very concerned, as he makes very clear in the opening words of his sermon, that the in model community (the Puritan "commonwealth") he was trying to create that would put into practice the words of Jesus Christ, he argued:

'For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body."

My idea of success for the USA involve some combination of what Winthrop envisions for the community of Pilgrims he was leading to America and what FDR calls for.

The irony about Winthrop's speech, which of course President Reagan missed, is that what Winthrop is calling for is much closer to socialism than free-market capitalism. Indeed, Winthrop sounds like some combination of Jesus and Marx, and not like Reagan in his politics.

I leave data analysis and numbers ton policy wonks.

I care about guiding principles and ideals such as Winthrop, the Declaration, the Constitution, and what is given to us in the the speeches of FDR and Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. who gave us four things to crusade against in the USA:

(1) racism, (2) poverty, (3) materialism, and (4) militarism. Combine that with FDR's "Four Freedoms" and its a great vision for a more perfect union.

Phnxfun,

OK, let me answer your question more specifically about politics and American democracy.

Here I feel there is no better statement for what I believe that what Franklin Roosevelt articulated in his great 1941 Inaugural Address called "The Four Freedoms":

From FDR's speech:

For there is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy. The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple. They are:

--Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.

--Jobs for those who can work.

--Security for those who need it.

--The ending of special privilege for the few.

--The preservation of civil liberties for all.

--The enjoyment . . . the enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.

To do this:

--We should bring more citizens under the coverage of old-age pensions and unemployment insurance.

--We should widen the opportunities for adequate medical care.

--We should plan a better system by which persons deserving or needing gainful employment may obtain it.

He ended his speech with a call for government to protect and ensure the follow 4 freedoms:

1. Freedom of speech and expression.

1. Freedom of every person to worship God in his own way.

1. Freedom from want. (which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants everywhere in the world).

1. Freedom from fear (which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor–anywhere in the world)

Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights and keep them

For me, those rights include a right to food security, shelter and affordable healthcare.

Phnxfun,

Au contraire, I give much attention to thinking and reading and sharing what I read about what is success and how to measure it.

I've posted about this before. My favorite measure of success I've learned is from a colleague whose wife had died of ovarian cancer two years earlier. I mentioned something over lunch together that reminded him of his wife. I saw tears come into his eyes. He then turned to me and said, calling me by name, "You know, we should measure our lives by who we have loved and who has loved us?" I've never come across a better measure.

Or I love the advice about success that Langston Hughes, an African American poet, gives in his poem "Advice":

Folks, I'm telling you
Birthing is hard
And dying is mean
So get yourself some loving in between

Other studies about happiness have shown that one of the best ways to create more happiness for ourselves is to give or create happiness for others.

Robert Easterlin, an Economics professor, has come up with now a much studied phenomenon called the "Easterlin Paradox." It argues that after a certain point, making more money does not increase happiness. There is no straight line equivalence between making more money and feeling more happy.

His studies have led to the Gross National Happiness Index. Instead of measuring and ranking countries by how successful their GDP is, we also now rank countries by their GHP (and the social economists and other political analysts have come up with various ways of measuring the felt happiness among people in a country.

USA gets a 7.4 on a scale of 10, making equivalent to the ranking of people in Mexico and Colombia.

The countries that include are at the highest in Gross National Happiness include those notorious socialist countries as Denmark and Sweden with Germany and Canada and Switzerland also ranking higher than the USA.

One of my favorite self-help books, favored by many in the Business world, is Stephen Covey's "7 Habits of Highly Successful People." Check it out: He includes the ability to listen and the ability to empathize as one of those habits.

Similarly, Daniel Goleman has written another book that is something of a self-help book called, "Emotional Intelligence." He says Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is a better measure than IQ for leading a successful, happy life.

Many people believe the American Dream is a dream of material success--big home, expensive car, etc.

For me, the American Dream is is a dream of justice and equal opportunity for all and some good measure of social security for all too and doing what the Constitution calls for in its Preamble: a federal government committed to promoting "the general welfare."

And the one-trick pony is back!!!!!

He wants to measure subjectivity. If you can't measure it, it does not exist.

Professor, and respectively here is the significant difference between us. You enjoy waxing poetic, reading from the past, spending time imprinting students hanging out in libraries and sloganeering. All admirable traits yet you fail to articulate a arrival point. You've got your launch point (history) but sorry, you've never once articulated what success looks like, other than unmeasurable slogans that look GREAT on the evening news but don't move the dial.

As they say at the corner of Wall and Broad no one rings a bell at the top or the bottom of the market. In that same vein I'd never expect a proclamation from the grievance industry that the battle of racism, social justice, economic justice, climate justice, racial justice, criminal justice (etc etc) has been obtained. There are WAY to many Benjamins to fold into WAY to many pockets for that to occur.

So let's just take you. One white progressive guy in Los Angeles. Give me your top 5 indications with a means to measure when success as you define it has been achieved. For bonus points using your top 5 measures of success how far is each away from the arrival point? Since it's Friday and I'm in a good mood, I'll even offer you an extra credit on top of the bonus points. For each of your top 5 how much of your (made up term) white privilege must you sacrifice and how will you demonstrate adequate and sufficient sacrifice?

PhnxFun,

I like the argument made in a book I just started reading that critiques the equality or fairness of justice—in particular decisions by the Supreme Court since Nixon.

The book is not arguing that there is an inequality of rights but an inequality in justice.

Here’s a paragraph from Adam Cohen, “Supreme Inequality: The Supreme Court’s Fifty Year Battle for a More Unjust America.”

“Contrary to what most Americans believe, the Court does little to protect the rights of the poor and disadvantaged; in fact it has not been in their side for fifty years. Many of the successes of the Warren Court, in areas such as school desegregation, voting rights, and protecting workers, have been abandoned in favor of rulings that protect corporations and privileged Americans, who tend to be white, wealthy and powerful.”

(I like that last line in terms of being nuanced about who has privilege in the USA, as well as the paragraph as a whole in emphasizing the point I’ve been making that the struggle of BLM and liberal-progressives is so much about equal
justice.)

Phnxfun,

Let's see how much curiosity you have to learn something that you pontificate about in rather unknowing ways.

Check out on Amazon the following book: Michael Marmot, "The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects out Health and Longevity" (2004).

Here a blurb on it: "In this landmark book, epidemiologidst Michael Marmot marshals evidence from nearly thirty years of research to demonstrate that social status is not a footnote to the causes of ill health--it is a major cause.... The status syndrome is pervasive. When you graduate from college you increase your lifespan, and your coworker who has a slightly better job, or you neighbor with a slightly larger house, is more likely to live a healthier life. The status syndrome affects the chances that you will succumb to heart disease, stroke, cancer, infectious disease, even suicide or homicide. ...And the issue, as Marmot shows, is not just one of income or lifestyle. IT IS THE PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPERIENCE OF INEQUALITY--HOW MUCH CONTROL YOU HAVE AND THE OPPORTUNITIES YOU HAVE FOR FULL SOCIAL PARTICIPATION--THAT PROFOUNDLY AFFECTS YOUR HEALTH."

The first chapter of this book is entitled, SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS. Marmot in this chapter studies the various factors that make some more (and less) equal than others, and he includes factors such as race/ethnicity, social class (income level), gender.

In analyzing who is more equal than other, Marmot is not looking at equal rights under the law. He's looking at so much else, and so am I when I have been writing about who has more or less status or more or less privilege in the USA.

And as LBJ famously said, as quoted by another poster: "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

Trump was expert--or demagogic--in how he appealed to white voters to look down at Black and Brown people and others, and too many swallowed the bait hook, line and sinker.

Of course, those that swallowed the bait were already primed by Conservative politics and Fox News to do that.

PhnxFun,

You were confused and mistaken about the Black Lives Matter protests and what is the focus of the concerns of that movement: Again, its about equal justice and just and fair treatment by the law and law officers.

You are very quick to correct me, but retarded or negligent in your ability and willingness to correct yourself.

The discourse about social privilege and white privilege has been very well-articulated in various fields of academic study and in studies aimed at a more general audience. That you are not familiar with such studies does not make them non-existent.

Similarly, there have been extensive studies--with quantification--about how African Americans still today face different outcomes in the processes of law and justice.

The best ways to become understanding about social privilege and the lack thereof in regards to Anglo and African Americans include not just quanitative studies in fields such as Sociology and Political Science and Law but from reading memoirs and autobiographies and essays by African American authors that update and expand upon what writers such as James Baldwin explored and revealed in his own writings.

Again, have you ever read a literary essay, a memoir, an autobiography by a contemporary African American author? I'm curious about how you feel you know something about the the lived experience of African Americans in the USA today and in the recent past. Is it just from misreading posts by African Americans in the SLS political forum?

DO YOU KNOW WHAT "GASLIGHTING" IS? 95% of the masses don't even know that they are being gaslighted. Look it up.

SAPP---->Phnxfun. You are confused and getting it wrong about the BLM protests. The protests are calling not for equal rights but for equal justice and equal—or equally fair and just—treatment by law officers and the Justice system and equal and fair protection of their rights.

See Professor we are making progress. So you'd agree that by not calling for Equal Rights then their rights as Black Americans are equal to my rights as a White American? Yes? I could have saved you close to 2,000 words and about 5-6 posts had you not danced around the original question of rights in 2021 based immutable characteristics.

SAPP---->The protests are also not about obtaining “equal social privilege,” You are making up language, putting it unfairly in my mouth and the mouths of BLM protests, and then beating it down with silly vehemence.

Sorry Professor it was you not I that introduced the so far undefined, undocumented, unmeasurable term of equal social privilege. Now as I said, if equal social privilege is "a thing" all I'm inquiring about is a) where does the Government document the list of equal social privilege, b) who decides equal social privilege and c) how do you measure equal social privilege? I would think an esteemed scholar such as yourself would have those answers at your fingertips especially given you introduced the term to the conversation.

Ps

The protests are also not about obtaining “equal social privilege,”

You are making up language, putting it unfairly in my mouth and the mouths of BLM protests, and then beating it down with silly vehemence.

So pride yourself in destroying a straw horse you’ve built, and then you have the gall to claim liberals are taking over Greg language.

Language has power, and so much of politics is about whose language counts abs who gets to interpret the law and tell the story of our history abs the state of justice for all today.

I pledge allegiance to justice for all...not fair justice for some and unfair justice for others—but equal justice and equal and fair enforcement of the law for all.

The talk about White privilege is mostly an effort to get white people to understand their privileges and how so much of our privilege and status today is based on unequal rights and unequal opportunity because of unequal rights.

African Americans and White people both served in the military in WW 2, abs after the war there was a significant GI bill for veterans of such service, but the benefits of the GI bill were for white and not black servicemen

Similarly, so much of the benefits of New Deal legislation under FDR were for white people, not African Americans. FDR knew that Southern Democrats would not have supported his New Deal legislation if those benefits were given equally or at all in some cases to Black people.

If you had white parents who
benefited from New Deal legislation or the GI bill, your status today is based in part on unequal rights and privileges.

I could post also a lot about the degree to which our political language is shaped by the right, especially
now since Conservatives dominate on the Supreme Court and approved abs shaped the language of Citizens United decision that turned corporations into people and donations of money into free speech.

I like fighting against Con control of our political language, and Liberals have had some victories too in controlling and interpreting the language that governs us

Phnxfun

You are confused and getting it wrong about the BLM protests.

The protests are calling not for equal rights but for equal justice and equal—or equally fair and just—treatment by law officers and the Justice system and equal and fair protection of their rights.

It was the Civil Rights movement that focused on obtaining equal rights for African Americans.

I can cite you many, many studies about inequities in equal justice under the law for African Americans. Just look at differences in sentencing for the same crimes.

@PHX

"Progressive's taking over the language with unmeasurable terms."

Really?

Friendly fire

Collateral damage

This happens all the time with people. They use phrases that defy the english language to get their point across.

SAPP---->Equal legal rights and equal social privilege are two different things. You are talking bananas. I was talking apples

That's odd. Whenever I've seen a mostly peaceful protest, absent burning down the local CVS they are not clamoring for equal social privilege's, it's equal rights. This is where I will go back to the Progressive's taking over the language with unmeasurable terms. Sorry Professor you are dangerously close to "if you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there.

However I could be wrong. Since any enforcement action to ensure "equal social privilege's" (made up term) would come from the DOJ, can you direct me to the Government approved, defined list of equal social privilege's? So produce the list and we can continue the conversation about how equal social privilege's are being measured. But let's have the discussion based on an existing baseline.

However I think we've concluded the discussion on equal rights as no one has yet to provide an example of a right I possess today that a black man does not. Correct?

@EA-thanks for stopping by. I wasn't talking to you though. Honestly, I don't have much to say to you because I don't keep up with any of your postings.
@sapp I was just suggesting doing further research. Looking at many sources... left, right, middle, no affiliation of party, just reporting the news.
They both suck-Biden and Trump!

@CUM

And you are not?

Don't be the person in the glass house screaming about rocks.

@sapp
Just not worth it. Your to full of your beliefs. Thank goodness for further research. hint

PhnxFun,

I was also pointing out that my privilege today is built on a deep foundation of unequal rights—including unequal rights in the relatively recent past of my parents life—that favored white over black in so many areas.

Phxfun,

Equal legal rights and equal social privilege are two different things.

You are talking bananas. I was talking apples

Did you vote for MLK Jr Holiday or against it as McCain did?

Cumwatch: Please feel free not to read my posts. But if you do, and if you call me out for hypocrisy, explain the hypocrisy. I don’t see it.

“ I thought you were all talking equal rights as they apply today? You know in 2021.”

Those should be the same equal rights as 2020, 2010,2000, 1990..... Why would they have changed in 2021? How have they changed? Please show a formula as to what they changed? You know the routine n