There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who think there are only two kinds of people, and those who know better.

Since I seldom watch television, and even seldomer spend my evenings engrossed in cable news, I barely know who Marc Lamont Hill is. However, a glance at Twitter this morning made me want to know him better. CNN has jettisoned Hill as a commentator because he dared to call for full human and civil rights for the Palestinian people.

One of the problems inherent in Twitter, and social media in general, is that it gives a virtual soapbox to people who react and respond to information without really thinking about the context or implications of that information. Tweeters assume that anyone who opposes A must therefore support B, because there can be no other alternatives to the A-B dichotomy.

One of the problems inherent in today's mainstream Media Industrial Complex is that our trusted information sources do the exact same shit and get rewarded handsomely for it. Think-tanks and political consultants leverage people's instinct to dichotomize: They propagate the message that, if you support A, then B is the opposite of everything you hold dear and thus your enemy. They traffic in fear, because fearful people buy stuff to make them feel better.

B is not your enemy. A is not your enemy. Dichotomistic thinking is your enemy.

I almost never share these petition thingies, but I found this one from World Beyond War particularly timely.

As World Beyond War notes, during his 2016 presidential campaign, Vermont Senator Bernard Sanders was eerily silent on the subject of foreign & military policy. His website said very little on the topic, particularly about the Middle East. This was a canny calculation, betting that voters were mostly interested in bread & butter issues (see Bill "It's the Economy, Stupid!" Clinton, 1992).

Bernie & friends also knew that any talk of Israel—especially criticism, no matter how politely phrased—is a third rail that sitting US Senators must avoid. He may be making some noise at the Capitol about ending US involvement in Yemen, but only under pressure from his constituents and supporters. It took Chris Murphy (D-CT) to bring it up in the Senate—and, even then, only when Barack Obama was no longer Commander-in-Chief.

I have admired & respected Bernie since he was mayor of Burlington. However, this reticence on his part was one of several reasons I could not support his campaign.

Way back in 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King identified militarism and military spending as a grand theft from the people. Several years before that, President Dwight D. Eisenhower said something similar on national television. Why have mainstream politicians, even the progressive ones, lost sight of that undeniable fact?

1. My Facebook post from Sunday morning:

2. Tributes from Texas Leftist, Democracy Now! and the Houston Chronicle's editorial board.

3. A memorial gathering at Houston's City Hall (hope the link works for you) this Sunday, 2 December.

Kayleen made a delicious pumpkin pie to take to the Thanksgiving potluck at the church. I did most of the prep work for the Tofurky Feast that was my contribution. Both were quickly demolished, but fortunately I had enough leftover Tofurky for lunches the next two days. Neither of us needs a government-sanctioned holiday to express our gratitude, let alone one that supposedly commemorates the beginning of the European conquest of New England. As for me, I was most grateful for the chance to spend time chatting and chewing with friends old and new, with almost zero talk of electoral politics.

Today I thank the Blogiverse for some fascinating reads, plus one item from the Dallas Observer that PDiddie and I both missed last week but Socratic Gadfly caught.

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Lisa Gray at the Chron wrote a moving pre-obituary for Houston activist and civil rights icon Ray Hill last Tuesday, whose heart ultimately did give out on Saturday.

The passing of Houston Texans owner Bob McNair on Friday, and his complicated legacy as both philanthropist and Trump Republican, prompted this cogent Tweet from Evan Mintz of the Chronicle.

If you're just tuning in, this blog has featured multiple entries centered around or casually mentioning Ranked Choice Voting and other Instant Runoff–style systems. The one in which I scolded Samantha Bee for her binary thinking is my favorite of the bunch.

​Several days after Jared Golden in Maine's 2nd Congressional district became the first person to win a federal election via Ranked Choice Vote, I'm finally getting around to saying something about it directly here at dbcgreentx.net. And what I'm saying is...I'm psyched. RCV won't always produce the results we want, or even results we can tolerate, but it will reflect the will of the majority. Despite outgoing Rep. Bruce Poliquin's petulant protest (and lawsuit), RCV is also the will of the voting majority in Maine; it worked, and I'm pleased as Punch.

I would like to introduce to you my fascinating friend, whom I have never met in person. We have been friends via Bridge Base Online for several months, during which time we have had some hilarious and poignant conversations about music, classic cinema, progressive/radical politics, New Jersey, Italy, baseball, and numerous other topics.

Yes, I do play bridge online—sometimes at home, sometimes when things are slow at work. Like crossword puzzles, it keeps the problem-solving parts of my brain active. I don't play extraordinarily well, still occasionally making rookie mistakes, so I play only at the Relaxed tables, where frothy-mouthed bridge pedants are less likely to hang out.

She goes by Edie, which is American for Aïda. Since we are cyberspace acquaintances, I don't know with 100% certainty if she's really a twenty-something Italian-born runway model who lives in Beverly Hills and spends her plentiful free time playing Bridge, or even if Edie is her real name. However, she has given me no evidence to cast doubt on her story, inadvertently or otherwise. Whatever. She's awesome. She is the queen of whichever virtual table she plays. Her knowledge of socialism and radical history has admirable breadth and depth. Plus, we're fans of a lot of the same political channels on YouTube. What's not to like?

By way of introduction, I originally shared some of her writing, lightly edited, but she now says she would like to retract her essay on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in its entirety. She has a new essay (link pending), casting AOC as a sell-out to the Democratic establishment like her hero Senator Bernard Sanders.

Despite some suspicions, and despite agreeing with Edie that the Democratic Party is where progressive ideas go to die, I haven't written off AOC completely. Occasional nods to the authority of the Pelosi-Schumer squad are not the same as selling out. Knowing the Democrats, I wouldn't put it past them to build up or whole-cloth create this Young Progressive wave as a way to keep young voters and DSA types on the reservation—"See? There's hope for a progressive revolution within the party! Greens and Sandernistas, come back! All is forgiven!" But not putting it past them is not the same as believing that they're clever enough to pull it off. Devious enough, yes, but not clever enough.

I'm about to do what I call Kuffnering—not the thing Chuck Kuffner does wherein 85% of his post is one gigantic blockquote from the Houston Chronicle or other such, but the thing wherein he tosses out a whole bunch of numbers and proceeds to draw some conclusions (or at least strong inferences) from them. I haven't given the blockquote thing a name yet.

This entry is light on links; go look up stuff for yourself.

​Some of you who pay attention to electoral matters already know some of the facts I'm about to relate. But now that I've seen the numbers on US House elections in Texas and some other states, I'm mildly shocked.

To see the analysis of Texas's Congressional races, click the Read more link and scroll down past the California and North Carolina sections.