Category Archives: morality

My Black Life Matters

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Your black lives don’t matter. Neither do your brown lives. Or your white lives. Or your oriental lives. Go suck an egg.

That’s the position of Congresswoman Cori Bush (D, MO).

I’m going to make sure I have security because I know I have had attempts on my life[.]

And

And defunding the police has to happen. We need to defund the police and put that money into social safety nets.

Bush bleats that she’s had a few death threats. She doesn’t care that folks in the inner city and in other crime-ridden neighborhoods—black, brown, white, oriental folks—exist with the daily threat of actual death from gang fight shootings, drive-by shootings, shootings in the bodega during a robbery, shootings from drug deals gone bad, bullets sprayed around from any of those gunfights.

No, those folks’ lives aren’t worth spit to Bush. She demands to defund the police forces that would, if backed by politicians in local governments, instead of being excoriated, disarmed, defenestrated by Bush and her ilk, protect those blacks, browns, whites, and orientals who without police actually will be killed, not just get the occasional angry emailed threat.

No. “Suck it up,” Bush says in her cynically manufactured righteous anger.

Dishonesty?

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Or Cowardice?

Recall The New York Times‘ reporter, Katie Benner, who tweeted out the following, regarding 10s of millions of Americans:

Her tweets read, in case the image proves unreadable,

Today’s #January6thSelectCommittee underscores the America’s current, essential natsec dilemma: Work to combat legitimate national security threats now entails calling a politician’s supporters enemies of the state. /1
As Americans, we believe that state power should not be used to work against a political figure or a political party. But what happens if a politician seems to threaten the state? If the politician continues to do so out of office and his entire party supports that threat? /2
This dilemma was unresolved by the Russia probe and 2 impeachments. With many Republicans denying the reality of the Jan. 6 attack, I doubt the #January6thCommittee will resolve it either. That leaves it up to voters, making even more essential free, fair access to the polls. /3

This time, I’m less interested in this…journalist’s…slur than I am in what she did about it. Amid the backsplash against her despicable smear of all of us average Americans so impudent as to disagree with her august self, Benner deleted those tweets. She claimed her tweets were unclearly worded.

Hogwash. If Benner truly were concerned about clarity, she would have left her tweets up, cited them in a quoting tweet or series of tweets, said they were “unclearly worded,” and then said in clear, concrete terms what she truly meant.

Benner chose not to. Instead, she chose to attempt to white wash her history—which is part of all our social history, part of the information database that all of us must use, for good or ill—to try to pretend her history didn’t actually exist.

Dishonesty or cowardice? You make the call. For me, it’s a tough call since there’s so much overlap: much of dishonesty is a form of cowardice.

“We stand for what is right across the world”

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In a virtual Congressional hearing last Tuesday—Corporate Sponsorship of the 2022 Beijing Olympics—there was this exchange between Senator Tom Cotton (R, AR) and Paul Lalli, Coca-Cola’s Global Vice President for Human Rights and corporate representative at the hearing:

SEN. TOM COTTON (R-AR): So your company said at the time that we will continue to stand up for what is right in Georgia and across the United States. So are we to take from your statement at the time that Coca Cola will not stand up for what is right outside the United States? Because that’s what it sounds like this morning in this testimony.
PAUL LALLI, COCA-COLA’S GLOBAL VICE PRESIDENT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS: No, Senator, we stand up for what is right across the world. We apply the same human rights principles in the United States that we do across the world.
COTTON: Do you believe that the Chinese Communist Party is committing genocide against the Uyghur people?
LALLI: We’re aware of the reports of the State Department on this issue as well. There are other departments of the US government. We respect those reports. They continue to inform our program, as do reports from other from civil society.

Think about that deliberately vapid non-response. Coca Cola stands for what’s right across the world, and Coca Cola doesn’t object to the People’s Republic of China’s abuse, much less genocide, of the Uyghurs in the PRC’s Xinjiang province.

Nor was it just Cotton that the Coca-Cola rep refused to answer. Progressive-Democrat Tom Malinowski (D, NJ) pressed Lalli specifically on whether Coca-Cola would condemn any Chinese government abuses against Uyghurs. Lalli’s carefully empty response:

We respect all human rights.

It seems pretty clear: Coca Cola considers that abuse, that genocide, to be part of what’s right across the world. Because Uighurs, in Coca-Cola’s august consideration, don’t count as human or otherwise worthy of human rights.

Systemic Racism

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As my wife and better half says, “The tote board tells the tale.”

The title of the Senate Amendment might be hard to read (even after a Right Click|Open in New Tab maneuver), so:

To prohibit Federal funding for any institution of higher education that discriminates against Asian Americans in recruitment, applicant review, or admissions.
Amendment Rejected (49-48, 60 votes required)

All 49 Yeas were, without exception, Republican. All 48 Nays, rejecting this anti-discrimination amendment and by extension overtly supporting discrimination by race, were, without exception, Progressive-Democrat.

The amendment was to S937, the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act. Even though this cloture vote was last April, it’s remains as a shocking example of the systemic racism that is in a significant part of our nation—the systemic racism that pervades the Progressive-Democratic Party.

The Progressive-Democrats’ unanimous decision to kill an actual anti-hate amendment to a Hate Crimes bill is…ironic.