I have just returned from a few days in Minnesota, spent visiting relatives and rediscovering tennis. It was my first visit to the Gopher State since summer 1986, apart from passing through it on the Amtrak Empire Builder in 1998.

Highlights of the trip included playing tennis with Mom and her friends, seeing a very live production of West Side Story at the legendary Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, devouring a rhubarb pannekoeken at the Pannekoeken Huis in Saint Louis Park, hearing Minnesota regional accents everywhere dontcha know, and dinner with a friend who moved to the Twin Cities from Houston last year and absolutely loves the place.

​Not-so-highlights included a visit to the Mall of America (it's just not my thing), constant political ads on the TV, and noticing how incredibly white my parents' summer neighborhood is. And it is very much a summer neighborhood: Owners can live there only between 15 April and 15 October.

Next visit, I definitely want to go to St. Cloud (or the Cities) and try some Somali cuisine.

Here's a shortish entry to counter-balance the lengthy one that I posted earlier today.

This 18th installment of the Common Censored podcast, featuring DC-based comrades Eleanor (Act Out!) Goldfield and Lee (Redacted Tonight) Camp, is worth listening to in its entirety. If you can't consume the whole thing, please listen to the part that starts about 37 minutes in.

Goldfield starts with the concern-troll habit of trying to force a post-racial world into existence by saying, "Race is just a construct! So stop talking about it!" They both go on to explore issues of identity politics from multiple angles, including Camp's observation (about 41 minutes in) that it is sometimes abused in leftist organizations to the point of keeping these organizations from getting anything done. (I'm thinking of a particular group that shall remain unnamed in this post.)

I agree completely that white folks in progressive and radical groups need to be more sensitive to our society's systemic white supremacy and their own assumptions, or white and male is the default and not an identity. (I do not exempt myself from this responsbility.) I also agree that these groups have a duty to encourage people from historically oppressed demographic groups to speak their truth, raise their issues, and propose solutions.

But I also agree with Goldfield's prescription: that perceived racial and gender slights can be addressed outside the meeting. Certainly, call people out for misusing their privilege, but do so when and where you can more effectively make them see their error, rather than derailing the meeting. Strive to make your comrades, your organization, and future meetings better, rather than giving up on them based on one or two faux pas.

It is not your responsibility as a person of color to educate white folks on their insensitivity; however, the potential upside in making them even a bit more woke is huge. If they resist these educational overtures, they're not very woke to begin with, and then you can give up on them. Tell them to go find another group that's more their speed.

Yesterday, in some primary elections, Progressives got a little more to cheer about. The Intercept provides the most thorough recap I've seen thus far (with a little editorializing because it's The Intercept).

These mostly Millennial-age candidates may talk like, well, a bunch of Millennials, but, like, once you get past the cadences of their speech, it emerges that, like, they really know something about policy. They may not get everything right, but they are using their platforms to advocate passionately for a government that takes care of people and the environment, that sees human beings as more than just donations and votes, that can halt the damage from humanity's worst ecocidal tendencies (to borrow a word from Caity Johnstone). For that I salute these young candidates, even if they are running as Democrats.

Fifty years ago this month, a crowd of mostly Baby Boomers gathered in Chicago, in a mass demonstration against the Democratic Party's nomination process, among other things. Since then, the party has changed a lot, in multiple directions, but the net change has been for the worse. The Baby Boomers have taken over both parties, and the vision of peace and justice that the demonstrators brought to Chicago is far from realized. Progressive and radical activists still demonstrate at these quadrennial conventions, in smaller numbers, and usually within the designated Free Speech Zones.

Perhaps the Millennials can do what their parents and grandparents could not: forge a true people's party, either with the Democratic Party's infrastructure or by creating something entirely new. I don't hold out much hope for them #GreenEntering en masse.

Reminder: The United States of America remains the only nation to use atomic/nuclear weapons. Seventy-three years ago this week, the USA used those weapons on two militarily important cities in Japan, with the full knowledge that thousands of civilians would be incinerated. This nation has no moral authority to dictate to any other nations what weapons they may or may not possess—especially given that, as we speak, it is participating in a non-nuclear holocaust in Yemen. (UPDATE: not just participating.) One would hope that an international authority such as the United Nations could move toward a consensus that all nations with nuclear weapons should dismantle them as quickly and safely as possible—and then act on that consensus.

Over the weekend, I received a notification that Cindy Sheehan had been invited to return to Hiroshima and give a speech there. Also, while grocery shopping Saturday, I saw a gentleman wearing a cap that said WORLD WAR II VETERAN. I calculated that the youngest veterans of World War II would now be in their 90s and reckoned he might be about that age. For his display of courage in visiting Generic Kroger on a Saturday morning, even with the aid of his wife and an electric scooter, I salute that veteran.

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Here's the blog post and lefty news roundup.

In ordering the Trump administration to immediately begin locating immigrant parents and reuniting them with their children, a federal judge declared that the danger of creating "permanently orphaned children" will be "100% percent" the responsibility of the federal government.

Calls for a state investigation and to cease approving licenses for immigrant detention centers were made after a report that a toddler died after being released from a facility in South Texas, and allegations of sexual abuse of at least eight immigrant boys at centers in Arizona run by Southwest Key, the company that wants to open a "baby jail" in Houston.

Texas Standard wonders if Pope Francis' call to eliminate the death penalty will change any minds among Texas Catholics...like Greg Abbott.

Since dropping a hint about it in Monday's post, I've been putting this off, partly because I don't like devoting blog space to personal matters, and partly because I'm not sure exactly what I want to say. So I'll decide what to include as I go, which is not unusual for me. Life is jazz. I like to improvise.

Today I celebrate seven days without alcohol. OK, not entirely without alcohol: I drank an Italian soda that Kayleen made with a shot of Chambord. My abstinence is due not to any recognizable drinking problem, nor to a flare-up of gastritis, but to alcohol's incompatibility with my new medication regimen.

The Next Thing
Last fall, I indicated in an entry here (sorry, can't find it) that my mental state was not suitable for a political candidacy in 2018. I may have even hinted that my particular issue is depression, sometimes accompanied by anxiety. Mine is not the sort of debilitating depression that I've seen friends and family members suffer; I still get through my day with all its obligations. But there I times when I'd rather just curl up in a ball and die than face The Next Thing.

The Next Thing can be any task of any size: e.g., making and eating breakfast, filing a tax return, shopping for gifts, getting my shit together for a weekend camping trip, or even posting on this blog.

​Or getting myself to a doctor.

I was ill much of last week, which is my excuse for no new posts since last Monday. The illness started Tuesday morning (actually Monday evening) with my usual queasy stomach and inability to digest anything, continued with the sinus aches that often accompany the stomach problem, progressed into difficulty getting to sleep, then difficulty staying asleep, and eventually difficulty accepting the reality of having to awaken from a deep slumber.

​Yes, I went to the doctor; yes, I have a whole new medication regimen. More on that in a separate post later this week.
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With less than a hundred days remaining before the November election, the Texas Progressive Alliance's blog posts and related news took note of the temperature rising on statewide candidates and debates—or lack thereof.

PDiddie at Brains and Eggs watched as Ted Cruz suddenly flinched, probably at his sagging internal polling numbers, and acquiesced to five debates with his surging challenger, Beto O'Rourke.

Socratic Gadfly gives his snarky lowdown on the proposed Cruz-O'Rourke face-offs.

Justin Miller at the Texas Observer sees Democratic lieutenant gubernatorial candidate Mike Collier with a problem: Dan Patrick ain't taking his bait. The following excerpt reveals the reasons:

I don't usually copy the graphics from PDiddie's Weekly Wrangle along with the text. This time, I'm making an exception and grabbing the Ted Rall cartoon from the top.

​Many of my highly intelligent friends accept—yea, even embrace—the scientific fact that gender is not strictly binary in humans and other animals. One wonders, then, why so many of them have such difficulty accepting that political affiliation is also non-binary.

Certainly, these friends grasp that one can vote for candidates who do not wear the (R) or (D) party label, and even act as an activist for their non-duopoly party of choice. But they still exhibit great difficulty with certain simple concepts: e.g., despising Hillary Clinton is not the same as admiring Donald Trump, or stating that Trump cannot be proven guilty of treason is not the same as stating that he is innocent of all wrong-doing. 

I'm a peaceful man, but I hereby declare war on the Fallacy of False Alternatives. I am challenging it to a dualism, as it were.

This is where PDiddie takes over.

The duopoly cognitive dissonance has been in full flower lately. As Trump becomes more unhinged, as the Bernie Sanders/Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wing of the Democratic Party ascends, the Old Guard feels more threatened, gets more paranoid, and moves closer toward former (?) Republicans like James Comey. (Wasn't Comey the guy who did that thing with the letter that cost Hillary Clinton the election?)

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Here's the Texas Progressive Alliance's roundup of blog posts and news from the week previous.

David Collins strongly advises those suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and Russophobia to avoid watering the tree of liberty with hyperbole. 

Socratic Gadfly offers detailed thoughts on Robert Mueller's indictment of the GRU 12 and what it does and does not say.

Somervell County Salon collects a few interesting bits and pieces about the hypocritical servility of John Bolton. 

Well, I figured this Facebook post from last night, copied and pasted verbatim below, would ruffle a few feathers. So far it has ruffled only a few. It reflects my exasperation at the jaw-dropping and breathlessness people of various political stripes have exhibited in response to something our Dumpster-Fire-in-Chief said and/or did in Helsinki.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald takes to Twitter to resurrect a 2006 blog post of his that examines the problem of applying loose definitions to words like "treason."

Donald Trump says that he takes the word of Vladimir Putin over that of the US intelligence services. Trump is a habitual liar—and yet people are taking him at his word. The US intelligence services have a documented history of lying to the people and Congress to manufacture consent for wars and capitalist excesses abroad and domestically—and yet people are taking them at their word that Russia is up to the same old Cold War tricks (which, of course, the US has also played).

To quote the Worst President Ever, "Sad."

Even sadder is the dichotomous thinking I'm seeing among Democratic voters of my acquaintance: There are only two electoral alternatives, and anybody who votes for a third party is just a dangerous weirdo siphoning votes from the only two parties that actually exist. Everyone who voted for Johnson or Stein would have voted for Clinton in their absence. We can't talk about the greater numbers of Obama voters who switched to Trump. We can't talk about the even greater numbers in the big swing states who didn't vote at all.

If you're getting whipped into a lather over talk of treason, please stop, drop, and roll. Then take a few deep breaths, tell your lizard brain to calm the fuck down, and let your neocortex take over. As bad as Trump is, and as much as we'd like to see him gone, treason cannot be proven (yet). An impeachment process launched from some dipshit comments made at an international meeting of two elected tyrants will be a waste of time, money, energy, and human resources.

If the Mueller probe ever produces any actual evidence of actual malfeasance worthy of impeachment, I'm ready and willing to see it. Then it's just a matter of whether Republicans in Congress are willing to believe it. Meanwhile, if we must refresh the Tree of Liberty with the blood of this tyrant and his crew, let's make sure we're acting on something provable in a court of law. Acting on mere accusations is a recipe for decades of deadly ugliness.

If there's any "good" news to be found in the whole Shocked! Shocked, I say! kerfuffle, it's that establishment Republicans are turning on The Donald in greater numbers. It's no longer just the George Wills and the Bill Kristols, but Republicans who have run interference for him in the past, including his enablers on Fox News.