Goodbye Earl Trump

“Well, the weeks went by and spring turned to summer
And summer faded into fall
And it turns out he was a missing person
who nobody missed at all”

Listen, this has been really over since mid Wednesday morning. Am not sure how long The Arizona Republic has called this race, but pretty sure it has been at least a day or more. Even if the drama happy cable networks won’t acknowledge it.

But even MSNBC and CNN are chiming. So, it is really over. Goodbye Earl Trump!

Some good college football on today. ASU at USC starts it off. Houston at Cinci could be interesting. Best game could be Gators at the UGA. But the oxygen in the room goes to…..Clemson at The Golden Domers. Having Taylor Lawrence out puts a large dent in this, bet Clemson can still put up a fight.

I’ll be back in a bit with the pros.

The Chicks with Goodbye Earl.

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Congratulations, America — Once More, with Feeling [UPDATE-1]

[NB: Updates at bottom of post./~Rayne]

FINALLY we can breathe again. I swear the White House minions must have worked together to push Trump to get out and go play golf so that the media could finally make the call.

Election coverage has now taken over the entire Washington Post site, which now shows Biden at 273 electoral votes to Trump’s 214. This number varies depending on the news outlet; some have already added Nevada though that state is still counting ballots in Clark County.

People are celebrating all over the country:

.

.

.

.

Nothing yet from central to western U.S. but probably just a matter of time. The relief is so palpable even over social media.

It’s difficult to convey the amount of joy women especially women of color feel right now.

Words fail trying to express what it means to have so many firsts finally achieved — first woman, Black, South Asian, Jamaican American as VP — when the Equal Rights Amendment remains unratified since 1972, when so many Americans of color were denied their right to vote by myriad forms of suppression.

There will surely be attacks on Joe Biden’s history; his role in the Anita Hill hearings remains a bone of contention for me. But by choosing Kamala Harris as his running mate he kept faith with more than half of this country which has been systematically denied representation in their own democracy.

And in choosing Harris, Biden has also ensured the executive office hasn’t lost sight of the transition of power from one generation to another.

We have a lot to celebrate, not only because we can finally see an end to the Trump administration in 74 days. We can celebrate real change is coming.

~ ~ ~

UPDATE-1 — 3:00 PM ET —

Still joy-scrolling through my timeline. Someone cracked wise and said the celebratory crowd in DC is bigger than Trump’s inauguration crowd. Based on the photos I’ve seen so far, I wouldn’t be surprised one bit.

Sure hope somebody gets a drone shot or two from a decent elevation so we can guesstimate a head count.

But this one made me sniffle:

It’s as if we’d been at war and the war is finally over. How horribly sad this is. And yet we really have been at war with the rest of the rational world; the U.S. formally left the Paris Agreement on climate change yesterday after Trump announced we would leave a year ago.

Now the work begins as we fix the damage, restore other allies’ faith in us, and return to work together on the existential crisis facing humans.

p.s. bmaz launched a Trash Talk post for those of you who still need a sports fix.

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Distraction and Disinformation: The Stakes of Lessons Not Learned

The other night (I’ve lost track of which night — they’ve all blended together), when Trump’s campaign first rolled out the rent-a-mobs and invent-a-law challenges to the MI election, I was frantically trying to get journalists I know and respect to do two things: stop reporting that Trump had sued until they had paperwork in hand, and stop using a term for the mobsters, “challenger,” which has a specific legal meaning in MI.

Challengers are defined individuals provided credentials to operate under specific rules. While there are NGO challengers as well, each party gets two challengers in a precinct, but just one can watch the actual vote tally. The GOP had the designated number of challengers in the polling room when the rent-a-mob got called (indeed, aggressive challengers are reportedly what caused a delay in the counting of my own vote in Grand Rapids, assuming it did get counted), and yet the mobsters were referring to themselves as challengers.

The frivolous lawsuit filed well after the mobsters descended claimed that challengers weren’t being given access.

In other words, the Trump campaign had created a disinformation event by obscuring the law and creating a media event for the media to cover.

That’s not new. It has been going on for five years. Indeed, Trump’s success at using disinformation and distraction to tell a false story of victimhood surely is part of why he did better in 2020 than he did in 2016. COVID Donny is a story-teller, and many Americans in the post-exceptionalism era gravitate to stories that explain away personal failures to victimhood. (There has been some of this on the left, too, though usually with more basis in fact.)

To be fair, the press has done a less bad job of falling for Trump’s distraction and disinformation since Tuesday than it has for most of his presidency. (That may be because they’re increasingly certain they won’t need to rely on access going forward.) Even Fox is insisting that Trump provide actual evidence for the claims being made — before, often, treating those claims as credible whether or not evidence supports it.  Most outlets even turned away from a presser where Trump falsely claimed victory.

Still, one after another paranoid hoax — a red wagon pulling camera equipment, an alleged sticky note, former senior Administration officials sprinting away from cameras — has been floated and taken as credible long enough to make it appear like Trump’s manic claims of fraud and those of his conspiratorial followers might have merit.

The press has done a good job demanding proof, and dismantling the claims by showing what would be necessary for proof one by one. GOP officials are adopting one of two stances — either admitting there is no proof, or stating that before Trump claims fraud he has to provide it (even while giving air to some of the claims that have been debunked) — that may eventually bring us to closure.

Still, the press is chasing every one of these claims without caveating that this delay was intentionally caused by the GOP, Trump telegraphed he’d be using this strategy even before the election, and all evidence suggests that when the counting is done Joe Biden will have a solid victory in the Electoral College and a far bigger one in the popular vote.

In any other election, we’d be pestering Biden to learn who will be Attorney General and who will be Secretary of State, but instead we’re still chasing Donny’s distractions.

Still, it is an improvement. It will likely get us through this period, possibly even before any of Trump’s supporters succeed at unleashing violence (though a handful have been trying).

I wonder what it would have taken to accomplish this far earlier in the presidency, before Trump used it to undermine a very damning Russian investigation, before he used it to successfully beat back impeachment, before he used it to undermine any response to COVID, and before Trump used it in an effort to criminalize Joe Biden. We need to think about this because the right wing has gotten this manic hoax-chasing into its bloodstream, and for far too many of these hoaxes, the press just ignores the claims rather than shows how a basic adherence to truth will debunk them.

We need to find a way to better debunk and ignore this guy, otherwise he will become a dangerous martyr doing further damage to this country.

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Steve Bannon and His Competent Lawyers Part Ways

It has been hard to understand Steve Bannon’s desperate efforts to sell a Hunter Biden conspiracy in recent weeks outside the context of a pardon audition. He is already charged with fraud for diverting funds donated to build a wall to his own pocketbook. And there’s a lot about the Hunter Biden story that reeks of fraud, if not serving as an Agent of a Foreign Power.

Then, last night, he said that Anthony Fauci and Chris Wray should be beheaded and have their heads put on pikes outside the White House as a warning. He got banned permanently from Twitter as a result.

If you consider the fact that the investigation — led by the FBI — into Bannon’s charged fraud is ongoing, that comes off as a threat to someone involved in his case (though is probably not why he made the comment). Roger Stone did far less and got a gag placed on him while he was out on bail.

Today, William Burck, the very competent lawyer who shepherded Bannon through a whole lot of evolving testimony in the Mueller investigation sent a letter saying they’re going to withdraw from the case.

On behalf of Defendant Stephen Bannon, we write respectfully to request an adjournment of the status conference currently scheduled for Monday, November 9 at 1:00 p.m. Mr. Bannon is in the process of retaining new counsel, and Quinn Emanuel intends to move to withdraw. As a result, Mr. Bannon respectfully requests that the status conference in this matter be adjourned for three weeks so that he may formally retain new counsel.

We have conferred with counsel for the government and for Defendants Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato, and Timothy Shea, all of whom consent to an adjournment. This is the second request Mr. Bannon has made for an adjournment of this status conference.

This could be nothing more than Quinn Emanuel’s unwillingness to represent someone who engages in such action. Or, there may be a larger underlying strategic dispute, one that might extend to how Bannon might audition for a pardon.

But when Mike Flynn took a similar step over a year ago, it didn’t work out the way he hoped.

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Congratulations, America! Welcome President-Elect and VP-Elect Biden and Harris!

[Rayne and Marcy tag-teaming here: around 4:25 AM ET, Clayton County, GA, home of John Lewis, put Biden in the lead in the New Deep South of Georgia and with it the likely winner of GA and the race.]

~ ~ ~

The wait is finally over. We have a new president-elect.

Congratulations, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris!

Share your sentiments in comments.

~ ~ ~

UPDATE-1: Just before 9:00 AM, Biden went up over 5,000 in PA, with the expectation that he will get a disproportionate number of what’s left. It’s done. He won, and still may match Trump’s 306 EVs from 2016.

~ ~ ~

UPDATE-2 — 2:45 PM ET —

— Signs and portents

— The FAA established a No-Fly Zone above Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware as of mid-afternoon on November 4; this appears to be normal procedure for presidential candidates for a limited period of time. Today the Secret Service ramped up its level of protective detail around Biden, though Biden does not yet have the same level as president-elect or the president.

— People are dancing in the streets in Philadelphia; they’ve been at it since very early this morning.

— A lot of the punditry are complaining about the media’s restraint, refusing to call Pennsylvania for Biden. The threshold appears to be 35,000 votes or 0.05% of  the vote, though, when an automatic recount would be triggered. If the vote count for Biden clears that benchmark then the media will move to call PA and the entire race. (I am not certain about the threshold number or percentage — if you see confirmation somewhere, please share in comments. Thanks.)

— Rick Santorum pleaded for liberals to go easy on the right-wing…


Yeah, no.

— Lindsey Graham is already back on his shit as is McConnell. They must have passed around a memo inside the GOP Senate caucus that austerity is where its at now that they’ve wrecked the future with their goddamned massive tax cut.

— Georgia’s secretary of state (yes, he’s a Republican) has already said a recount will be launched. Except there’s no automatic recount; the candidate has to request one. And the deadline for curing ballots isn’t until this evening. What a partisan crock of shit. This is exactly the crap Stacey Abrams had to face.

— Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania:

Biden 3,311,673 49.5%
Trump 3,298,011 49.3

~drumming fingers~

The wait goes on.

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Braced for Impact

My maple flooring is taking a beating today as I pace from end to end of the house, waiting for one of the remaining states to drop the hammer on Trump’s dwindling Electoral College hopes.

I can’t even concentrate long enough to cook something, had to work my way up to typing out this post. I just can’t sit still for long.

My kid isn’t helping much. Whenever a state reports a new vote count, they yell downstairs, regurgitating everything I’ve just read online. But they’re just as anxious as I am, and at 23 they haven’t yet lived through much election weirdness.

“Did you hear about the riot in Detroit, the Trump supporters harassing the vote counters?”

Yes, dear, I did, and it’s like the Brooks Brothers riot all over again, with fewer hanging chads and pinpoint oxford button-down shirts, with more camouflage and Confederate flags.

“What’s a hanging chad?”

~sigh~

We know it’s inevitable. The writing is on the wall. It’s even on Fox News but Trump refuses to yield to reality, just as he’s never yielded to the truth for his entire term in office.

The worst part: the anger is turning dangerously nasty, and it’s not just Trump but his family, minions, and his hardcore whackdoodle base who are going past acceptable expressions of frustration and grief.

Some of what we are seeing is intended to create chaos while disrupting the normal election process.

In a word, it’s seditious.

Now bmaz may jump on me for using a legal term here though I’m not a lawyer.

I do mean seditious, referring to seditious conspiracy.

Here’s the Wikipedia definition of sedition:

Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organisation, that tends toward rebellion against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent toward, or rebellion against, established authority. Sedition may include any commotion, though not aimed at direct and open violence against the laws. Seditious words in writing are seditious libel. A seditionist is one who engages in or promotes the interest of sedition.

Here’s the U.S. Code for seditious conspiracy:

18 U.S. Code § 2384.Seditious conspiracy

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

Emphasis mine.

Our country is a democratic republic. Voting and counting those votes to elect officials is foundational to our system of government. It’s embedded in our Constitution including several amendments.

Advocating any interruption of normal voting and vote counting, especially the increasing calls for violence including militarized language, could be construed as incitement. Two or more people working to this end could be construed as seditious conspiracy against the United States.

All votes must be counted. The counting process will weed out those ballots which are not valid. This is how democracies work. It’s outlined in our Constitution and laws and undermining these laws is seditious.

It’s horribly embarrassing that our country’s president has attempted to claim a victory before all the votes are counted, but that so many attempts have been made to obstruct the normal electoral process. The world sees this very clearly for what it is, sees Trump for what he is.

We can see that Trump knows better as well; he has all the appearance of a narcissist in meltdown because he isn’t getting what he wants to feed his ego.

This has to end. It will end, as soon as the next state — likely Pennsylvania — finalizes their vote count, pushing Joe Biden to or past the necessary 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

The really sad part is that we don’t know what will happen when it does end.

Will the real tantrum begin? Will Team Trump engage in a smash-and-grab on the way out? Will they obstruct what should be a peaceful transition of power?

We can’t tell. We can only brace ourselves for impact.

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Election Day Countdown: There’s Got to be An Afternoon After [UPDATE-1]

The American left — or at least those comfortable voting for and identifying with members of the Democratic Party — is in the throes of their predictable mortification, self-flagellating atop their hair shirts.

Why wasn’t the massive turnout an obvious and immediate repudiation of the deeply racist and misogynist Trump? Why weren’t the numbers evidence of a blue tsunami in spite of the massive push for increased voter participation?

~eye roll~

We do this. It’s a standing joke. I don’t how many variations of this I’ve seen in Twitter today. Here’s a couple examples:

We need to snap the fuck out of it. We didn’t get our heads on straight going into the count last night, and we weren’t ready for Trump’s fascist bullshit lie claiming victory.

We are winning the White House. We are going to take back the entire executive branch, including new cabinet members who aren’t wholly corrupt motherfuckers (Jesus, Wilbur Ross is still serving on the board of a Chinese bank even though he’s been called out in the media about it).

We’re going to have a new attorney general and a civil rights division which will do more than sit on its thumbs and spin.

Investigations which have been corruptly shuttered or squelched before they could launch will begin.

We might stand a chance at making traction against climate change; we might even rejoin the Paris Agreement from which the U.S. formally withdrew yesterday.

We won’t immediately regain the trust of allies and trading partners, let alone the rest of the world, but a new competent and ethical secretary of state will make letters like this one sent out yesterday look less like a fucking joke.

We know we are about to win once the votes have been counted. We’re just waiting for the pretty red bow on top.

Act like it.

~ ~ ~

The Senate doesn’t look good. This I have to admit. It will make the next two years hell especially while trying to stem a pandemic.

But there are some very bright spots, achievements worth celebrating.

Justice Democrats kept all their incumbents including The Squad. They also picked up three more seats for their organization:

Raúl Grijalva AZ-03
Ro Khanna CA-17
Ayanna Pressley MA-07
Rashida Tlaib MI-13
Ilhan Omar MN-05
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez NY-14
Pramila Jayapal WA-07

Cori Bush MO-01 (replaces Democrat William Lacy Clay Jr.)
Jamaal Bowman NY-16 (replaces Democrat Elliot Engel)
Marie Newman IL-03 (replaces Democrat Dan Lipinski)

Bush is the first woman of color to serve in Congress from her state.

Except for Newman, these Justice Democrats are all persons of color from a broad range of ethnic backgrounds. This is the future of the Democratic Party.

They are literally the future as they phased out more traditional, centrist Democrats.

Celebrate the arrival of more fresh faces, more new blood to the House of Representatives, bringing a more progressive perspective.

Also worth celebrating:

— Six indigenous Americans are now representatives elect;

— New Mexico’s congressional caucus is entirely women of color;

— 115 women of color ran for Congress this election, 82 of which were Democrats;

— Four Indian Americans won seats in Congress.

Change is coming. It’s not as fast as we’d like but some of that’s on us.

We should still celebrate it loudly, joyously. We should make it clear the changes are exactly what our government of, by, and for the people needs — it should represent us, it should look like us.

~ ~ ~

Lastly, drugs. All the drugs. Drugs won big last night.

I’ll admit I’m a bit hesitant to embrace decriminalizing every drug, but I haven’t read Oregon’s ballot initiative which does so. I’m good with the rest; we need to end the carceral state which in a large part is built upon drug-related convictions. We need to end the War on Drugs which has cost us a fortune we could spend on other public services while it both creates conflict in other nations and bolsters militarization of law enforcement.

Once again, change is coming.

~ ~ ~

What other good news do you have? Feel free to share it in comments.

~ ~ ~

UPDATE-1 — 8:30 PM ET —

NBC and several other outlets called the Michigan Senate race for incumbent Democrat Gary Peters. The margin of votes flipped back and forth through the day and ended somewhere around 47,000 votes. In no small part was this a win for Black Michiganders who cast votes for Peters and then worked diligently to count the mail-in ballots yielding Peters’ win.

Change is coming.

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Election Day Countdown: Zero Day (Or Is It ‘0-day’?) [UPDATE-2]

Polls will be closing soon, which means it’s time to start looking at the day’s problem spots.

This will be a rolling post with updates at the bottom of the post as the end of the voting day approaches.

I am making a pointed effort to follow different voices about the project outcome — by which I mean I am following mostly women and not mostly men who are struggling to break the horse race format of reporting elections.

You can check my coverage list here: Link to Rayne’s Election 2020 Coverage List

Some of these folks aren’t usually on the White House or the political beat; some are polling experts; others are voting rights attorneys or activists. I may add a couple experts on disinformation and influence operations depending on what pops up in my regular Twitter feed.

I’m also watching a scorecard prepared by Daniel Nichanian, a.k.a. @Taniel on Twitter. He’s tracking key down ballot races to see if they turn blue as well as critical ballot initiatives.

Do feel free to share your experience at the polls in comments.

~ ~ ~

6:10 PM ET — Updates will accumulate below this point. More to come.

In the meantime, this seems like a serious problem:

Contempt of court-type problem?

UPDATE-1 — 9:25 PM ET —

Took my kid and went to the polls to cast our vote minutes before the polls closed in downstate Michigan. Polling location racked up about 60% of the vote volume cast in 2008, which I suspect means that mail-in early voting was used heavily in my precinct. Polls have just now closed in western Upper Peninsula which is on Central Time; very annoying to see outlets making any claims about Michigan when polls were still open. We were only two of three people in the polling location, which is very different from 2008 when it was still very busy at the end of the day.

Some bad news so far: Mitch McConnell (KY), Liz Cheney (WY-at-large) and fucking morons Jim Jordan (OH-4) and Matt Gaetz (FL-1) have won re-election. Trump’s former doctor, goofy Ronny Jackson won TX-13, and Qanon nutter Marjorie Taylor Greene won GA-14. Trump has won Indiana (thank you, stupid internally oppressed white women), Tennessee, Oklahoma, North and South Dakota, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Wyoming (not much of a surprise for these fairly red states).

Some good news: Mark Warner won re-election as did Cory Booker; Biden has won New Mexico, Vermont, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut, and New York.

I am far behind now trying to sort out the bigger stuff from the smaller stuff. There are some squirrelly polling outfits I don’t recall every seeing which are projecting wins/losses — can’t trust them as they may be part of “perception hacking.”

The big story right now is Florida. Something looks really hinky there, and it may have a lot to do with the mail which has yet to be processed. We won’t see hanging chads this time but undelivered mail-in ballots.

UPDATE-2 — 5:10 AM ET 04-NOV-2020 —

I made the mistake of shutting my eyes after 10:00 pm only to wonder if I woke up in the wrong timeline again.

Where we’re at as of 3:34 am:

Biden 238 electoral votes to Trump’s 213, with

The really grim fact: more Americans voted for Trump in 2020 than in 2016, even after his murder of more than 230,000 Americans. We haven’t even finished counting all the votes yet this is true.

Kudos to the Washington Post for this headline which accurately describes Trump’s speech: Presidential election hangs in balance as Trump falsely asserts fraud and makes a claim of victory

Counting of votes has yet to be completed, in no small thanks to all the impediments placed on democratic process by the GOP at state level. But vote counting typically isn’t finished by dawn the morning after a presidential election; what’s different this time is the perceived narrow margin before the vote counting is completed.

The incomplete status of counting is NOT fraud. The incomplete status of counting also means a claim of victory is fallacious, a lie.

Fortunately there are Republicans who have rejected Trump’s fascistic claim, noted GOP attorney Ben Ginsberg the most important among them.

Biden’s campaign issued a rebuttal statement:

Status of the Senate is still open since some races have yet to be called. Susan Collins (R-ME) fell below 50% of the vote last I looked, which means the race may move to a runoff since Maine uses ranked-choice voting.

Counting is still underway in Wisconsin and yet to resume in Michigan.

Expect more fireworks at noon ET when Judge Emmett Sullivan addresses U.S. Postal Service’s failure to comply with his court’s order regarding a sweep of post offices including Miami for mailed-in ballots.

As for the moaning that our Constitution is a failure: it’s not the Constitution, it’s Americans, it’s states.

Like Mississippi which continues to suppress Black voters, refusing to allow mail-in or early voting especially during a pandemic, causing hours-long waits to vote.

Keep your pitchforks and torches on standby — we’re not yet western Belarus, though close. I’m going back to bed for a couple hours, hoping when I wake I’m back in a better timeline.

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We’re So Not Through Here

This is emptywheel, where we have frequently posted work contrary to conventional wisdom, or dissented from political leadership with indifference to party.

Each contributor here has their own voice though we’re sometimes confused for each other.

Today is one of those days when you will see a wide gap between emptywheel contributors.

Specifically, I do not personally subscribe at all to Quinn Norton’s belief that the Union is done.

I have written before, however, on numerous occasions, that the United States has not lived up to its ideals.

The concept of this union was flawed from the beginning, having launched as it did with a concession to slaveowners. That original sin dogs this nation to this day; slavery still exists in the form of a carceral state which is heavily weighted against minorities.

The concept of this union was also predicated upon the occupation of lands belonging to pre-existing nations. I’m a product of one of those occupied nations, whose people were nearly wiped out by disease and greed white American occupiers brought to their land.

But I am also an example of what happens when disparate people come together under a singular proposition: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness.”

I am the product of people from Nordic and middle European countries, the product of trips around the Pacific and East Asia. All my forebears came here because they perceived a freedom to pursue lives and opportunity they did not have in their home nation-states.

They found an appeal in this premise worth risking their persons as well as their fortune, meager as it was: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

My forebears stayed in spite of being erased in a number of ways — like the records of my French-Canadian family members’ existence in Michigan being repeatedly obscured or deleted by majority English- and German-speaking occupants, or my Asian family losing its true name when recorded by customs, and then stranded by the Chinese Exclusion Act. Or my Hawaiian family losing the right to its own land because whites deposed its monarchy and seized the islands, in addition to spreading deadly disease.

In spite of being marginalized then and now, my forebears and family made a comfortable life and felt it was their honor, privilege, and duty to contribute to these United States. Among my family members is a Medal of Honor winner — a second generation American who served in the Navy until he retired. My father and brother both served in the armed forces as well.

This isn’t an easy country. If you don’t speak English and especially if you’re not white, it can really demand a steep price. Try taking the citizenship test.

Witness the harassment Ilhan Omar has faced for her race, ethnic heritage, and religion, in spite of the First and Fourteenth Amendments, yet she continues to serve her constituents as their representatives in our democratic republic system of government.

It’s because of the price many Americans have faced to become and remain Americans that I’m put out at Norton’s “the Union is done” essay.

I don’t think she truly has a clue what it’s taken for a sizable percentage of this country to hold this union together, such as it is. She may have faced misogyny but really, in which countries does misogyny not exist?

She can play with sentiment and co-opt others’ pain in her argument that the Union is done, but she hasn’t faced the existential threat one’s skin can pose in a land founded by slaveowners and their sympathizers.

She has the unacknowledged privilege of associating with people who’d rather see people like my family dead, and yet she thinks she can declare “the Union is done.”

Take a hard look at what the Black Americans of this country have been doing since voting began last month as a commitment to form a more perfect Union. Ask them if the Union is done.

Take a hard look at what Native Americans have had to do — forced to change their lifestyle, assigning addresses to places which to them are simply Home — in order to vote, otherwise invalidated and erased if they don’t. Ask them, too, if the Union is done.

And take note of the naturalized immigrants who are worried they and their kin will be harassed by ICE and potentially incarcerated or deported while trying to vote simply because they aren’t white and have come to this country too recently. Ask them if the Union to which they emigrated, many as refugees, is done.

My Chinese family members weren’t permitted to emigrate here or own land until 1943, when it suddenly became convenient to have China side with the U.S. against Japan. I tell you this Union is not done, from the house I own under a hyphenated Chinese name.

I’ve pointed to the words of former escaped slave Frederick Douglass before, with regard to the shortcomings of this nation:

… Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. …

The work is slow, so often grinding. It is like farming on a’a and pahoehoe lava, which my family knows well. The biases which are foundational to the problems this country faces are older than this country. We are kidding ourselves if they won’t take at least a half-life to fully end, during which time the demographics of this country will force change. Look at what has transpired, the push and pull in the dozen-plus years this site has tackled the nature of security in an open society.

But this union is by no means done and over. It’s there in the lines we have seen in the streets for weeks, snaking out the doors of polling places across this country. It’s in the cars lined up in a drive-through campaign rally, queued hopefully, trustingly in a drive-through foodbank.

It was there in the streets after George Floyd was murdered.

From goose quill pen’s first ink on parchment 244 years ago, this union has always been aspirational, a nation in a state of becoming, a people who must occasionally check themselves and listen to their better angels.

From the speech before a battlefield of nearly 50,000 American dead 157 years ago, we re-consecrated ourselves,

that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The union is not over. The dream still lives, its work goes on; we will not yield.

It’s simply time once again to rededicate ourselves to forming a more perfect union.

We can begin this day of all days by exercising and protecting our right to vote.

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