Bang, Bang

Guns, for many people in the United States, are more than objects, or even weapons. They're a facet of identity. And while for many people who feel that guns are too prevalent in the United States that identity is one of machismo and aggression, for the people who hold it, it's about the ability to protect themselves, and the people and property that are important to them. If you pick up a random handgun or self-defense magazine from a store newsstand, it's easy to conclude that somewhere, there is a photographer who's living the good life from the royalties of photos of distressed-looking White women being vaguely menaced by sketchy guys in hoodies.

One of the things that tends to become apparent when you talk to people who have concerns about crime, is that "crime that they care about/frightens them" and "crime" are treated as synonymous. And that the difference between the reporting of or on crime and the actual incidence of crime is purely academic. For all that people can note that "if it bleeds, it leads" as a mantra of modern news media, it never seems to occur to many people that the stories that may their way to them fall into that category.

And people in general tend to treat guns as if they were some sort of death ray; pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger simply does them in, and this is true of anyone, whether they've spent enough time on a shooting range to actually know how to handle their weapon well or not.

And so they become seen as easy solutions to a ubiquitous problem, except by those people who have spent enough time around weapons and understand enough about the law (and how people interact with it) to know better. But they're a part of the discussion more rarely than might be hoped.

Flagged

There's a house, a couple of miles or so away from where I live, where the owners often display flags from nations around the world. These are accompanied by the name of the nation (or state) in question and the name of the capital. This has been going on for years, and I suspect that it's lasted through different owners of the home.

Today, however, was a slight exception to the normal pattern.

The flag on display was the "Stars and Bars" or the first national flag of the Confederate States of America. And it was identified as such, and the second line was "Civil War."

Now, I suspect that "the Confederacy" would have been a tight, or even impossible, fit for the sign on the banister. But if the flag is going to be displayed, I think that the historical context is useful, given that many Americans have a fairly tenuous grasp of the nation's history. For many people, the Confederate battle flag, with the stars on diagonal stripes (and also incorrectly referred to as the "Stars and Bars") is what comes to mind when they think of the defunct CSA, which is what makes it such a lightning rod.

Does it make a difference whether people actually understand what flag were flown by the Confederacy? Not really. But I think a better understanding of the Civil War, its players and their motivations would be helpful. Unfortunately, it's often considered a subject best avoided.

Inattention

"If you're not angry (and/or outraged) you're not paying attention."

It's an old trope, but it's having a day again in the aftermath of the recent United States Supreme Court rulings in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., Et al. v. Bruen, Superintendent of New York State Police, Et al. and Dobbs, State Health Officer of the Mississippi Department of Health, Et al. v. Jackson Women's Health Organization Et al.

My favorite variation on the theme this time out is: "If you aren't angry AND terrified, then you're part of the problem." But as I've said before, it is possible to pay attention, and not be outraged, because comprehension does not require emoting. Furthermore, anger and outrage 1) don't change anything, and 2) are neither a substitute nor prerequisite for effective action to bring about change.

But in this case, I would make the point to people who are upset about the Supreme Court's stances on guns and the right to abortion, is that their current outrage is born of inattention six years ago. Had former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton carried Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all states carried by President Biden, the Supreme Court would not have a 6 to 3 partisan lean in favor of Republicans. It would, in fact, be the opposite. And it's not like the desire for Conservatives/Republicans to have a Court that would back their plays was a secret. It's a project that's been in the works pretty much for the past 50 years.

In the end, the culprit is likely threefold (at least). Fold one is the negative partisanship of the broad American public, and the effect this has on the "two-party" system. Put simply, if one is not a Republican, the only viable option in the majority of the country is to be a Democrat. There's the odd independent here and there, like Bernie Sanders (who tends to be a Democrat just long enough to run in the party's Presidential primary), but for the most part, "third-parties" (of which there are actually several), are more or less hopeless when it comes to Federal or statewide offices; the big-name independent and third-party candidates that get anywhere or make a splash in the attempt tend to be running on personal name recognition. The upshot of Democrats as simply being pretty much everyone who wants to be politically active or engaged but doesn't want to vote Republican is that the Democrat's "big tent" is large enough to include groups who aren't otherwise on speaking terms. It's said that there's a "moderate wing" and a "progressive wing" of the Democratic Party, but that implies that they're firmly attached to the same bird, a characterization that I am dubious of. And the infighting between the two has prevented

The second fold is the segregation of Democratic and Republican voters at the national level. Recall that while Secretary Clinton lost the Electoral College vote, she won the popular vote. The clustering of "Blue" voters in high-population states hurts Democrats at the national level, as the size of the House of Representatives is capped at 435 seats, and all states must have at least one. States with populations of less than 750,000 or so wind up pulling House seats, and thus Electoral College votes, from the larger states. And each state receives two Senators, regardless of size, and so the fact that there are simply numerically fewer reliably "Blue" states than "Red" ones can make winning the Presidency difficult for Democrats.

Fold the third was the unwise adoption of a philosophy that "demography equals destiny." As Democrats assured themselves that the White grievance politics that appeared to animate the Republican Party would drive away everyone who wasn't White, Rural, Old, Male and Evangelical, they stopped looking for ways to court the voters who didn't fit that profile. And when it turned out that many people from Latin American backgrounds had come to associate Progressivism (and Democratic Socialism... remember that term) with the disastrous socialist dictatorships that had prompted their families to come to the United States in the first place, the fractious party had nothing else ready to offer them outside of motivated misunderstandings of Trumpian rhetoric.

And none of this is new. These are things that could have, and should have, been addressed years ago. But they weren't. Anger and outrage over their consequences won't turn back the clock and fix them, either.

Did You Hear About

There was a story on the NPR website today about a business I've never heard of in a town in Maine that I've never heard of. Someone there put up a sign disparaging Juneteenth, and the Internet became involved. Public relations departments swung into action, relationships were severed and local people expressed their surprise and disappointment that there was actually someone unenlightened in their town.

This is national news, why? I get that the Internet isn't a particularly constrained resource, especially not for an outlet like National Public Radio, but the whole thing strikes me as trivial. It's little more than a "bah, humbug!" applied to a different holiday. It's the sort of thing that people will point to when they decry racism as an active mindset in the United States, but anyone who lives somewhere with more than a dozen other people in the immediate vicinity could find an example much closer to home.

But outrage drives clicks. And what good is a news outlet without an audience? To the degree that the NPR audience is one that rewards putting trivial displays of pettiness on the front page, then that's what NPR will do. People like me still drop in from time to time looking to keep up with what's going on in the world, and so the numbers stay good, and NPR sees no reason to change. But it's occurred to me, and not for the first time, that I should change. Rather than spend my time digging through bits of outrage mining looking for something actually useful, I should go where the useful information is. This will, of course require that I subscribe to something, but since spending attention alone hasn't worked, maybe putting money on the table will be more productive.

Roadside

Some flowers, growing by the side of the street in Seattle. I'm not one for stopping to smell the flowers, but I will pause to photograph them sometimes.

Uncollected

A few days ago, someone asked me what Black people thought of Juneteenth having become a federal holiday. I simply shrugged; after all, I'm just some random person, not a public-opinion pollster. But it reminded me of something common in the way people in the United States tend to think of large demographic groups.

Black people in the United States are a community in the sense that we all have in common some visibly significant descent from the various ethnic groups that comprise the long-standing populations of sub-Saharan Africa. And that's about it. This is different from being a hive-mind, or some other form of group consciousness. And the other racial groupings in the United States, for all that they are arbitrary, and therefore changeable, operate in the same way.

The habit of inter-group competition for (or, more accurately, conflict over) the available pool of resources has created a mentality of seeing what would otherwise be disparate and diverse groups of people as teams; and in that sense, united. But what can pass for a common skin tone is not the same as common experience; and therefore does not translate into common world view or common interests. This should not be a surprise, given that it's understood that a common nationality doesn't translate into those things, but still, there seems to be an expectation that visible appearance is significantly more than skin deep.

Street Sculpture

A sculpture, found along a street north of downtown Seattle, near the waterfront.

Go Get It

"You are not in solidarity with us if your behavior during this time in addressing Lizzo can be read as problematic [and] offensive," [Black disabled activist Vilissa] Thompson said.
As Lizzo was called out for ableism, many Black disabled people felt overlooked

I call BS. Basically because Ms. Thompson's statement, like those of a lot of people, really, makes an assumption that isn't likely as true as it seems. Namely, that there is some sort of behavior that cannot be read as problematic and offensive. While it may be true that the only way that offense travels from one person to another is by being taken, offense can be taken at pretty much any time for any thing; loading up on it, even when the other person has no intention of giving it, is not a form of theft (but, come to think of it, perhaps it should be).

Ms. Thompson's statement doesn't square with that reality, even leaving people who want to "problematize" things aside. Try as one might, it's pretty much impossible to offend a newborn; they simply don't have the social understanding required, because it's learned. And what people are taught is problematic and offensive is not subject to any sort of external critique or approval at the time it's being taught. There is simply a general social sense that kicks in when someone is in the presence of others. If one's peers agree that taking offense is reasonable, the response is lauded, otherwise it's shut down. It's a lot like trying to make "fetch" happen. And what people decide can, or cannot, be read as disrespectful, dismissive, racist or what have you, doesn't have the be written down anywhere.

It just has to be bothersome to some unknown number of people, whom the person who had given offense doesn't even need to have heard of. It's all subjective. And, so, for that matter, is who is allowed to be injured enough to be offended by something.

The suggestion seems to be that women, and in particular white women, are numerous and powerful enough to absorb a comedian’s casual hostility, while gay and, especially, trans people are not. But if there was a meeting where this was decided, no one invited me.
Helen Lewis “Dave Chappelle’s Rorschach Test” The Atlantic. Wednesday, 13 September, 2021

The upshot of all this is the common idea in Left-leaning, non-White and/or queer circles that problematic and/or offensive behavior is always an unforced error; one that can always be avoided simply by being caring, sensitive and deferential enough.

But there is no objectivity here. Sure some things are broadly known to be troublesome to fairly large groups of people (even if the exact rules are still unclear) such that being called out is more or less a given. If the only people that one can conceive of as terrorists are Moslems, there's going to be a problem when word, or the tweet, gets out. But a lot of other things are less clear-cut; is holding a door for a woman simply a form of polite behavior one would offer to anyone? A way of showing respect and deference to "the fairer sex?" Or a way of publicly displaying that one believes women to be incapable of helping themselves in day-to-day life? Is "Happy Holidays" a recognition that there's more than just Christmas in the last part of December? Or part of a hateful plot to move people way from The One True God? What possible way of engaging with those situations cannot be read as problematic and offensive?

If there is a category of unjust behavior that it little more than conveying to someone that you see them (or not) other than how they prefer (or demand) to be seen, then problematic and offensive behavior, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. It's an aesthetic judgment, not anything that reflects reality.

Activists, and other forms of would-be social engineers, can try to cast offensive behavior into something that has a reality outside of whatever people are involved (or involve themselves) in an interaction. But like fetch, it isn't going to happen.

Old Days

So there's this bit in Axios about "American Gerontocracy." It posits that there's something wrong with having old people in high elected offices.

Diversity and technology are making the workplace, home life and culture unrecognizable for many older leaders. That can leave geriatric leadership of government out of step with everyday life in America — and disconnected from the voters who give them power.

But if those voters don't seem to care, why should anyone else? It's not as if the ages of President Biden, Donald Trump, Speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader McConnell are state secrets. The way seniority in Congress tends to work offers a positive incentive for voters to send the same people to Capitol Hill again and again, but still, it's not as if people don't understand that old people are old. As for being out of step, that tends to be criticism that's only leveled during campaign season, or by someone looking to stir up popular resentment of an incumbent. Congress isn't a place where the Representatives and Senators go to explain their constituents to one another. If the person that someone feels will get the job done (whatever job they happen to have in mind) is 80 years old, they can be out of touch all day, every day. So long as they vote the right way on the floor, and back projects that funnel federal dollars into local projects, age is nothing but a number.

I'm not the first person to make this point, but I think it's a useful way of looking at things, so here it is: A lack of understanding and connection isn't likely to change voter behavior. Clear evidence of mental deterioration, or someone simply going to pieces might. Like Congress itself, the public tends to vacillate between ignoring potential problems and overreacting to them, and so it's possible that a serious incident could wind up sweeping the Baby Boomers from Washington in favor of younger people. But as long as the status quo seems to work, there are unlikely to be any changes to it.

Famed wise man David Gergen, 80, told Judy Woodruff last month on "PBS NewsHour": "I think people like Biden and Trump ought to both step back and leave open the door to younger people."

And why do younger people need to have the door left open for them? They can stand for election like anyone else.

While I'm not really an advocate for "people power" in the way the term is commonly understood, one of my general gripes with left-leaning media outlets is their general fondness for telling stories in a way that implies that only a certain minority of the population is capable of making rational decisions. Everyone else is painted as having no agency in their lives, other than dejectedly selecting between whatever bad options are handed to them.

Running for Congress, or for President, is difficult, and it's expensive. The general apathy and disengagement of the American public as a whole results in a system where politics becomes about raising the vast sums of money needed to constantly place messages in front of people who can't be bothered to seek out the information themselves. This has created a donor class, and they tend to choose who they give the resources needed to cut through the noise. And often, that donor class goes with known quantities and people who have long records. That selects for age. But there are always younger people breaking through to the public. There's nothing that stops another Representative Ocasio-Cortez from being elected, or a whole slew of them. The public simply has to want people like that in office, no different than any other popularity contest.

Unfurled

I don't keep up with goings on in the LGBT et cetera community. I understand that June is Pride month, which is why one can find the flags flying in various places, but I hadn't paid enough attention to the evolution of the flag understand what all of the colors and their placements stand for.

But what I hadn't really noticed until I was looking at this picture on my monitor was the newness of this particular flag that had caught my eye. The creases where the flag had been folded into a square for sale/shipment are still clearly visible. It sort of reminds me of the relative newness of the awareness of the community and its assertiveness in voicing its concerns.

These flags strike me as existing in a space where the optimistic view is that they won't be needed for very long. Eventually, the community will feel enough acceptance so that they won't feel the need to call attention to itself with banners like this. I wonder what rituals will grow up around retiring these flags, when that day comes.

Gateway

This is the Historic Chinatown Gate, in Seattle. I was somewhat surprised to learn its name; I would have expected something with bit more flair to it. And it seems strange to refer to something as "historic" when it's less than twenty years old. I don't know how common these are in cities; I know that Portland also has one like it. Perhaps it's a West Coast thing.
 

Trading Places

The problem with coming to the conclusion that a particular viewpoint is unintelligent or nonsensical is that it’s then a simple matter to not bother with understanding why it might not be so. I’m going to quote here at length, as I sometimes do, because I would like to present an argument in as much of its context as I can, without simply resorting to asking all of you to read the complete Prindle Post column.

In any event, Nicholas Kreuder is seeking to explain why “replacement theory” is, at its core racist, with the goal being to offer up an explanation that avoids falling back on simply labeling any wrongthink about race with the pejorative.

Some fear “replacement” for a different reason, claiming that changing demographics will result in new majorities exacting revenge. The idea being that, after white citizens become a political minority, the new political majority will engage in retributive measures for past injustices.

This view of the dangers of “replacement” indicates that a majority can use our political institutions in ways that unjustly harm minorities. In fact, it seems to even acknowledge that this has occurred. So, why leave that system intact? The far better response would be to reform or maybe even replace current systems that allow a majority to perpetuate injustices against a minority.

And we now see clearly why fear of “replacement” stems from racism. Being afraid of changing demographics requires denying that all citizens of a nation deserve an equal say in how it is run. It means conceiving of a particular culture as superior to another. And, ultimately, it involves thinking our institutions ought to be designed in ways that allow a majority to commit injustices against a minority. In these ways, the person who fears “replacement” endorses a hierarchical worldview where some deserve to count for more, are superior to, and deserve power over, others. It is only through this lens that a change in racial and ethnic demographics can be worrisome.
Nicholas Kreuder “Why Some Fear ‘Replacement’”

I’m going to start with the third paragraph, and work from there. There is nothing about a fear of changing demographics that “requires denying that all citizens of a nation deserve an equal say in how it is run.” In point of fact, it can be an absolute commitment to the ideal that provokes such a fear. Here is where the two sentences of the first paragraph quoted become important. The fact that a believe may be nakedly self-serving does not make it insincerely held, and if one honestly believes in the idea that once Black, Hispanic and/or Native Americans become the majority, they are going to set about recreating the injustices of the past, only with themselves reaping the benefits at the expense of White (and possibly Asian) Americans it is not at all necessary that one believe that “institutions ought to be designed in ways that allow a majority to commit injustices against a minority.” Likewise, simply reforming or replacing the legal framework that allows for same is not foolproof. White police officers, attorneys, judges and juries were quite capable of ignoring the law when it suited them to do so; why would anyone think that it couldn’t occur to others to do the same?

There is more to racism than the idea that one group of people counts for more, are superior to, and deserve power over others by dint of the color of their skin or the nation their distant ancestors were born on. The idea that others believe in the ideologies of racial superiority due to the color of their skin also qualifies. Culturally speaking, Americans have very short historical memories, and sometimes lack them entirely. When I was in high school, classmates would piously inform me that racism had died at the end of the Civil Rights movement; even though that end was just coming about when we were born. Combine this with the American myth that all babies are born equally impoverished, and it’s easy to understand the conclusion that as grievous as the crimes of the pre-Civil Rights era may have been, they were no longer relevant to anyone’s day-to-day life.

And people who understand themselves to be innocent (and not even the unwitting beneficiaries) of past injustices don’t see retribution as justified. Instead, they see it as hateful, and a repeat of the wrongs that had been perpetrated in the past. In other words, for those people who see Black anger as unjustified, that anger becomes little more than a self-serving cover for an expectation of inequality.

Whatever racism exists in the minds of those who believe in Replacement Theory need not be due to a feeling that they deserve to be superior. It can also be an understanding that they are the only ones who don’t feel that they deserve to be superior. There is a sense in which Replacement Theory rests on the idea that only those threatened with replacement are enlightened enough to not wish unwarranted harm upon their fellow men.

In the end, it doesn’t matter whether Replacement Theory is racist or not. It is corrosive, and that is bad enough. The heroic stories of an America gone by where everyone was united in a common project of liberty and justice for all are misremembrances at best and outright fabrications at worst. I would like to think that admitting to that would go at least some way in allowing people to set aside their grudges and resentments, but that’s likely asking more than can be delivered. Instead, I suspect that it will take a lifting of the sense of pervasive and unjust poverty that people carry around with them for things to change. But I’m not confident in that happening, either.

In the end, it’s easy to understand “Why some fear ‘replacement’.” Numbers are a bulwark against disappearance and political power means safety, plain and simple. It doesn’t take a particularly astute understanding of history to realize the bad things that have happened to disfavored groups that were too small to prevent others from victimizing them. There may be an element of racism in the idea that those not like the self lack a commitment to ideals of justice and equality. But it’s just as easily an understanding (correct or not) of human nature.

Outreach

In the drugstore today was a Limited Edition jar of Vaseline "healing jelly." What, exactly, it is supposed to heal, I don't know. It stood out to me because it had a number of stylized representations of faces on it. It looked as if it were doing some sort of recognition of Black women. And the label read "equitable skincare for all." It caught my attention because I'd seen some complaints about it online. Nothing to rival the teapot tempest that sprung up around Walmart's Juneteenth ice cream, but feathers did appear to have been ruffled.

Personally, nether the "Celebration Edition: Juneteenth Ice Cream" nor the Vaseline Limited Edition bother me. Okay, corporations are looking to show that they're paying attention to the Black community and hoping that this will translate into some combination of sales and ongoing goodwill. This is what corporations do. It should be about as surprising as water making things wet. And their flat and impersonal overtures are also just how corporations do things. The pushback against these things tends to be framed as if it were a personal affront; and the sort of things that corporations would have realized would have been poorly received if they'd been paying attention.

But the Black community in the United States is just that; a community. That's different from a hive mind. Had Unilever asked me if the Vaseline Limited Edition were a good idea, I likely would have shrugged and told them that I didn't have a problem with it. It's not really my thing, but there's nothing wrong with it. I don't have a sense that corporations ought to interact with me with an eye towards making me feel respected and valued. But I also understand that, despite the fact that corporations are always interested primarily in their bottom line, that as clumsy as things like this are, someone meant well. So I'm willing to recognize that for what it is. I understand the things that people, especially activists, want from corporations: more intentional hiring from, and directed investment in, minority communities. And that's fair. Putting out new themed products doesn't satisfy that. But I've also worked in corporate America long enough to understand doing things for communities can be more difficult than people think it is, when those things have to be done in accordance with existing corporate practices and rules. (My recent work on a corporate responsibility project was an education unto itself.)

Of course, I don't really need anything from corporate America in a community sense. I don't live in an area that's suffering from deindustrialization, blighted by crime or impoverished due to high unemployment. I can see these supposed missteps as well-meaning, but ultimately hollow, gestures. I don't need the energy and resources that have gone into their creation to have been put to "better use." And I'm not sure that relying on corporations to wade into social problems is a useful strategy anyway. To the degree that the broader Black community has problems that need solutions, I suspect that the long and grinding process of finding internal solutions will be more fruitful in the end.

Irreplaceable

I used to read The Atlantic quite a lot. Then they adopted a soft paywall for their content, and I find myself reading less of it, never having decided that I would subscribe in order to be allowed to do more than sample the content a few times a month. But I do still like many of the writers at The Atlantic, and so I pop over there from time to time. Like today.

In No, Ann Coulter, I Am Not Responsible for the ‘Great Replacement’ Theory, Ronald Brownstein takes aim at the fact that rightist pundits like Ann Coulter (whom I had not realized was still a thing) and Tucker Carlson (whom I am starting to grow weary of hearing about) were blaming Mr. Brownstein, the authors of The Emerging Democratic Majority (which I have not read) and other Liberal thinkers as the people responsible for White "nativist" Americans' fears that there is a global plot afoot to replace them with voters who are more likely to vote Democratic as a means of stripping them of their rights via democratic processes. But as vapid as I find "Replacement Theory," my disdain for it is not in concept, but in scale. There have been other schemes of this sort, such as the Christian Exodus movement, which planned to move enough people into South Carolina "to establish a government based on the Ten Commandments and conservative Christian values," and possibly even secede from the United States. So the idea of a demographic hostile takeover of a place is not one that always targets Conservative America. But the idea that there could be any sort of coordinated, yet secret, plot to do the same over the whole of the United States is laughable, especially considering that these people would all have to be shuttled in Red states, to vote out their Senators and secure their Electoral College votes.

Instead, I and other analysts have long argued that Democrats have the opportunity to build a multiracial coalition composed of both the increasing minority population and groups within the white population that are most comfortable with a diversifying America: namely those who are college-educated, secular, urban, and younger, especially women in all of those cohorts. The combination of these white groups (many of which are growing) and the expanding minority population is what I have called the Democrats’ “coalition of transformation.”

Fair enough. But there's an assumption there. One that Mr. Brownstein doesn't call out, and one that I think people like Ms. Coulter and Mr. Carlson are well aware of. For the "expanding minority population" to reliably be part of "the Democrats' 'coalition of transformation'," that population, as a whole, has to have different perceived interests than the stereotypical "coalition of restoration" that Mr. Brownstein identifies as making up the Republican base. Otherwise, their growing numbers wouldn't push Democrats towards a majority. And what I think the right-leaning pundits have done is simply doubled down on that assumption, and then laid out a simple scenario: If there are non-White people who could be reliably expected to vote for Democrats, why wouldn't the Democrats want them to come to the United States?

And it's worth pointing out that while Le Grand Remplacement draws upon themes that were around in the 19th century, The Emerging Democratic Majority was published nearly a decade before Renaud Camus published his book. To be sure, I agree with Mr. Brownstein's assessment that it's incorrect to blame people who believe that a more diverse America will favor Democratic policies for the idea that Republicans are being subjected to "'genocide' by substitution," both thought processes involve buying into certain of the same assumptions. And I'm not so certain that those assumptions will hold up in the long run.

But as long as they are in place, there is something of a problem. Granted, people like Mr. Brownstein see newer non-White immigrants to the United States as having different, but interdependent, interests then "White America," but they don't have the ear of Ann Coulter and Tucker Carlson's audiences. And they don't appear to have a plan to gain it. Imagining what would happen "if instead of trying to convince older white Americans that younger nonwhite Americans are displacing them, political leaders from both parties emphasized the growing interdependence between these two groups," is pretty much a concession that Mr. Brownstein and company have no means of emphasizing this themselves.

And that's really the problem. The ideas that Mr. Brownstein and those like him have put forward are reaching the ears of others only after being filtered by people who wish to use those ideas for their own political ends. And so it doesn't matter if the theory of demographic change is one of interdependent populations having an ability to enjoy prosperity together. What matters is the United States has never been a unified political body; and visual differences between groups have typically been the dividing lines. Complaining about being misrepresented won't change that. Finding a way to take the message directly to the people one wants to hear it just might.

A Gate Unkept

One of the common clichés one hears about the Internet is that it "Democratizes" things. It removes "gatekeepers" so that "anyone" can be a fill-in-the-blank. And one of the most common words to go into the blank space is "journalist." And this expansion of the ranks of "journalists" has lead to an expansion of the definition of "media" to pretty much anything that bills itself as some sort of news and/or commentary site.

Which is all fine and good, but it makes criticism of "the media" a lot like shooting fish in a barrel. One simply waits for someone to present something stupid, inaccurate or un-sourced, and the pounces. Which is my basic gripe with the NPR opinion piece: "Media coverage of monkeypox paints it as an African virus. That makes me mad". To be sure, I understand Dr. Nsofor's irritation. The stories people read about things can quickly shape opinions that then become very hard to dislodge or change, and it's common for people to seek to protect themselves from perceived threats by attaching those threats to people visibly different from themselves and avoiding (or attacking) those people. There's a reason why the World Health Organization considers naming diseases after the places where they're first identified to be a bad idea.

But I think that it's worthwhile to be at least somewhat selective in whom one anoints with the title of "the Media." Here's something that Dr. Nsofor took special exception to:

Here's how a story from the publication "Voice from Europe" described the first case of monkeypox in England in 2018: a "horrible Nigerian disease called monkeypox spreads in the United Kingdom for the first time."

I'd never heard of "Voice from Europe" before, but the construction of the headline left me with an immediate suspicion that the author was out to make a racist/nationalist point. So I decided to find the article in question. And couldn't. In fact, the only reference I could find to the article was the paper: "Lay media reporting of monkeypox in Nigeria," co-authored by Dr. Nsofor, which notes "A European headline (from the Voice of Europe) was ‘Horrible Nigerian disease called monkeypox spreads in the United Kingdom for the first time’." Aha. So now I had a more accurate rendering of the name. And that enabled me to find an article titled: "Voice of Europe closes down following Big Tech censorship and ad service ban," on a site call ReMix. Of itself ReMix says: "Remix offers news and commentary from Central Europe, the Visegrád countries of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia." And it doesn't take long to understand where it stands, politically. The headlines lay it out pretty well:

• Almost 2 gang rapes happen every single day in multicultural Germany, and cases more than doubled in just 3 years
• Turkish migrant dad chokes out teen football player and pulls knife on playing field named after George Floyd in Berlin
• Macron tries to silence non-conformist media in France, but French MSM only worries about lack of media pluralism in Hungary
• US: Google employee admits company manipulates search results in favor of Democrats in Project Veritas video
• Big Tech censorship: YouTube blocks Polish conservatives
• YouTube removes video criticizing LGBT ideology

In any event, ReMix had this to say about Voice of Europe in June of 2020.

In a farewell note posted to its website, Voice of Europe stated that it was ceasing operations due censorship on social media and a decision from ad networks to pull all ads from the site, leaving the publication unable to generate revenue to continue operations.

The publication was widely read for its reporting on Europe’s ongoing migrant crisis, but also covered topics related to the culture wars, economics, and other global news topics.

Despite having been "widely read" there is no immediate trace of the site today. It's apparently been taken down, and mostly lost to history. A direct search on the text of the headline brings up only two pages of Google search, with all of the results being either the paper or Dr. Nsofor's op-ed. Not even an archived copy of the original article pops up. Of course, that might be because I live in the United States, and Google presumes that I'm not interested in European Internet archives. (I also tried Bing, but Bing seems not to understand that placing text in quotes means "search for this string exactly as presented," and I wasn't going to sift through page after page of unrelated Monkeypox stories to maybe find what I was looking for.)

I don't disagree with Dr. Nsofor's impression that Voice of Europe's headline was designed to cast Africa in a bad light. But I do disagree with the good Doctor being willing to grant Voice of Europe a status equal to that of "BBC, the Independent, CNBC and ABC News" and labeling them all as simply "Western journalists." Sure the stock photo of a Black African covered in blisters from the disease doesn't help people understand that other people have it, and can spread it (albeit with some amount of difficulty). But a stereotypical choice of stock photo does not rise to the same level as intentionally attempting to create a link in people's minds between Nigeria and Monkeypox. It doesn't count as the "echo" that Dr. Nsofor says it is. Voice of Europe set out to create a "Blame Africa" message. As far as I'm concerned, the biggest problem with using a few stock photos of infected Africans in Europe and the United States is that it likely doesn't give an accurate expectation of what people should expect to see, should they somehow encounter someone with Monkeypox.

"Colonialism" is a convenient villain, but "thoughtlessness" is a more likely culprit in many cases. And one worth calling people out for. Not that it's likely to do any more good. The media is drawn to drama; and people who are suffering from severe, untreated cases of the pox make for more dramatic images than people whose infections are under control. A few angry op-eds is not going to change that. So rather than a passive-aggressive missive on racism in the media, I suspect that a crash course on medical media literacy would be more helpful. But anger drives more clicks. (Guilty as charged.)

Morning Bloom

A rose, after an overnight rainfall.