Equal Protection... Maybe Not

               Fighting for the right to vote                   Desegregating the University of Mississippi

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Salient excerpt from Section 1 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. 

Section 1 of the 15th Amendment.

The Supreme Court has struggled mightily over the meaning and application of the three constitutional amendments resulting from the Union victory in the Civil War: the 13th (emancipation), 14th (equal protection) and 15th (setting voting rights for former slaves and persons of color). From rulings that “separate but equal” did not render segregation unlawful (Plessy vs Ferguson – 1896) to rejecting the notion that separate could ever be equal and mandating school integration (Brown vs Board of Education – 1954), the Court faced clear discriminatory practices that permeated society – often with different motivations – with a decidedly mixed mind.

Limiting African American participation in society, for example, was a practice that kept WWII military units and public schools segregated, Jim Crow laws legally enforceable, redlining and other profoundly negative restrictions on Blacks intact. Brown began a series of decisions that began to purge laws permitting those discriminatory practices from as much of public life as they could. It was followed by Civil Rights and Voting Rights legislation from Congress, aimed at eliminating racial discrimination, often requiring federal force to implement. The remedy of centuries of slavery and racial discrimination against Blacks was often affirmative action, literally taking race into consideration to ensure more African Americans were given the opportunity to attend college and graduate school.

In 2003, a narrow 5-4 decision in Grutter vs Bollinger, the Court sustained (at least for 25 years) the notion of preferential college admission standards to help Black applicants. It was a retroactive fix to adjust for the long period of discrimination. It’s been 19 years since that case was decided, but the issue is very much before the Supreme Court this term in two challenges to minority admission preferences at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. The rise of White anger and MAGA domination of the GOP, reinforced by a radical Supreme Court evidencing open hostility to prior Supreme Court rulings (as with Dobbs vs Jackson Woman’s Health Organization which reversed Roe vs Wade earlier this year), has given hope to White Christian nationalists that their ”cause” just might find support in the Trump-reconfigured Court.

In her OpEd for the October 28th NY Times, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Linda Greenhouse, delves into the Court’s willingness hear cases where lower courts have upheld affirmative action in college admissions and found voting district gerrymandering resulting in clear racial marginalization unlawful. While these are two separate considerations of differing judicial precedents and legislative action, they are united by racial discrimination.

Starting with the two university admissions standards, Greenhouse writes: “There are more than 100 briefs, representing the views of hundreds of individual and organizational ‘friends of the court,’ in addition to those filed by the parties themselves… Both cases were developed by a made-to-order organization called Students for Fair Admissions Inc. The group asks the court in both cases to overturn Grutter v. Bollinger, its 2003 decision upholding affirmative action in student admissions to the University of Michigan’s law school [which followed the 1978 ruling in University of California vs Bakke]….

“‘Just as Brown overruled Plessy’s deviation from our ‘colorblind’ Constitution [John Marshall Harlan’s dissent in Plessy arguing that the Constitution is ‘colorblind’], this court should overrule Grutter’s,’ the group asserts in its brief. ‘That decision has no more support in constitutional text or precedent than Plessy.’

“Briefs on the universities’ side take vigorous issue with what the University of North Carolina’s brief calls ‘equal protection revisionism.’ Noting that Justice Harlan’s objection to enforced separation of the races was that it imposed a ‘badge of servitude’ on Black citizens, the brief observes that ‘policies that bring students together bear no such badge.’” MAGA Republicans believe that the Court will end affirmative action.

But then there is the other prong of equal protection matters under the Court’s consideration: legislative actions which do not in their wording set forth racially based voting districts but create that effect. Lower courts found that, despite the fact that Black people comprise 27% percent of Alabama’s population, such voters control just 14% — one of seven — of the state’s congressional districts. In February, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked that lower court order, one that would have forced Alabama to draw a new congressional map by creating an additional “Black” district. That block clearly impacted our mid-terms, but the full case is being heard more formally this term. Alabama is appealing that lower court decision.

Alabama’s solicitor general, Edmund LaCour, slammed the lower court decision as imposing a what he believed was a racial gerrymander that placed the Voting Rights Act ‘at war with itself and with the Constitution… The Fourteenth Amendment is a prohibition on discriminatory state action,’ he told the justices. ‘It is not an obligation to engage in affirmative discrimination in favor of some groups vis-à-vis others.’” In short, legislatures can discriminate to favor incumbents, as long as their wording does not directly exclude a constitutionally protected class.

Greenhouse explains that “The newest member of the court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, pushed back strongly with an opposite account of the 14th Amendment’s origins. ‘I don’t think that the historical record establishes that the founders believed that race neutrality or race blindness was required,’ she said. ‘The entire point of the amendment was to secure the rights of the freed former slaves.’” Added to the controversy surrounding the Fall Term is Harper vs. Moore, which will determine if state legislatures can override voter choices… one more threat to the viability of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Will a rogue Court overrule our democracy’ most vital equal protection mandate?

I’m Peter Dekom, we face a radical and overwhelmingly right-wing Supreme Court with no seeming trepidation at repealing clear sections of the Constitution and reversing earlier Supreme Court rulings fostering human dignity and personal choice.

Is the United States Supreme Court a Legitimate Tribunal?

“It goes without saying that everyone is free to express disagreement with our decisions and to criticize our reasoning as they see fit… But saying or implying that the court is becoming an illegitimate institution or questioning our integrity crosses an important line.” 

Conservative Associate Justice Samuel Alito

“Simply because people disagree with an opinion is not a basis for questioning the legitimacy of the court.” 

Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts.

“Overall the way the court retains its legitimacy and fosters public confidence is by acting like a court, is by doing the kinds of things that do not seem to people political or partisan, by not behaving as though we are just people with individual political or policy or social preferences that we're, you know, making everybody live with.” 

Liberal Associate Justice Elena Kagan

“Supreme Court justices tend to wipe the slate clean at the start of a new term, the bruised feelings occasioned by tough cases eased by a summer break… But this year, some justices are engaging in an extended and unusual public disagreement over the court's legitimacy following the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

“The latest comments (see above) came Tuesday night [10/25] from conservative Justice Samuel Alito, the author of the June decision that took away women’s constitutional protections for abortion. But the dust-up began months earlier with liberal Justice Elena Kagan, who has made a series of comments about the court's legitimacy. On Friday [10/21], she had said she was hopeful but reserving judgment on whether a court dominated 6-3 by conservatives can again find ‘common ground.’” Jessica Gresko, writing for the October 26th Associated Press.

Gallup has been tracking public approval of the Supreme Court for half a century. Until recent poll results, the lowest American approval level ever received by the court was 53%. The current Court, before the addition of Ketanji Brown Jackson, managed to fall below even that horrible confidence level in that poll released by Gallup on September 29th. The summary is worth noting: “Forty-seven percent of U.S. adults say they have ‘a great deal’ or ‘a fair amount’ of trust in the judicial branch of the federal government that is headed by the Supreme Court. This represents a 20-percentage-point drop from two years ago, including seven points since last year, and is now the lowest in Gallup's trend by six points. The judicial branch's current tarnished image contrasts with trust levels exceeding two-thirds in most years in Gallup's trend that began in 1972.”

I have to stress that “legitimacy” is not the same thing as “lawful” or “constitutional.” Indeed, judicial systems in Russia, China, North Korea and Iran are lawful under their systems of laws, but their results are generally not considered “legitimate” by most of the rest of the world… or even their own people. Further, legitimacy does not negate every ruling made, usually just those general rulings over personal, religious and political matters. How did the Court get here, and when did it begin to move from pure judicial/constitutional issues to “reinterpreting” the Constitution along partisan political lines? Even as some members of the Court (like the late Antonin Scalia) claimed to be “originalists” – applying the constitutional provisions as of the time they were passed without reference to social or technological change – it is remarkable how wide of that mark their opinions actually became.

In recent memory, appointments to the Supreme Court have increasingly been subjected to partisan “litmus tests” or, since the Reagan era, the recommendations of ultra-right-wing Federalist Society, a political non-profit that introduced partisan bias to counter the neutral qualification recommendations from the American Bar Association. Republican Presidents have, for the most part, followed the recommendations from that society since. Where Republicans have controlled the Senate, as they did in 2016, they have also been willing to block liberal appointments to the Court. As President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland in March of 2016, the GOP would not allow his confirmation to reach the Senate floor, claiming it was a lame duck appointment. But somehow when Donald Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett in September of 2020, that vastly clearer lame duck reality slipped by without GOP objection.

The cases that flowed from an increasingly partisan, right-wing “originalist” court, slowly unraveled precedents and long-standing legislation. In effect this conservative bench was implying that those earlier Supreme Court panels lacked legitimacy, and that their newly configured court was the only legitimate Supreme Court on those matters. Seriously. Let’s go back to 2008.

Beginning with District of Columbia v. Heller, decided in 2008, the court’s conservative justices helped reinforce the loyalty of single-issue gun-rights voters for the Republican Party, by simply skipping over the “well regulated militia” phrase in the Second Amendment, completely misciting British law at the time and failing to recognize the difference between modern weapons and the flintlocks and muskets that existed when the amendment was passed. The 2010 Citizens United v. FEC case effectively gave rich, and not so coincidentally mostly GOP political contributors, a virtually unchecked and uncapped right to buy elections by treating corporations and business entities (including political action committees) as individuals… even though none of those business structures existed in 1789 when the First Amendment was passed.

In two cases, the 2013 ruling in Shelby Country v. Holder and the 2021 holding in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the increasingly partisan and radicalized Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (as amended in 2008), after which red states began serially amending their election laws, introducing new voting restrictions and gerrymandering, to shut down voters likely to oppose incumbent GOP candidates and issues.

Skipping over several other partisan rulings, the pièce de résistance, was the June 2022 reversal of a 49-year-old Roe v. Wade precedent (by Dobbs v. Women’s Health Organization). With the Court now facing cases challenges to the legality of partisan gerrymandering and whether state legislatures have a constitutional right to supersede voter choices, both highly charged GOP efforts to overturn or prevent election results that go against them, the very question of democracy is at issue. The Court could have let lower court rulings stand, protecting individual rights and requiring balance in redistricting. They did not. Regardless of the ultimate rulings, that willingness to entertain the issue alone brings this 6-3 Supreme Court panel’s legitimacy into question.

Add the exemption of the Supreme Court from any standard of ethics, where conflicts and obvious bias simply undermine public confidence in the Court’s perceived neutrality, and you have another strong argument against according this Court with a mantle of legitimacy. How else can you justify Associate Justice Clarence Thomas’ failure to recuse himself – even being the lone pro-Trump vote on the entire panel on whether Mr. Trump was required to provide documents to the January 6th congressional committee – when his wife Ginni was heavily involved in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election? On any Trump matter?! Simply, to claim legitimacy, the Court needs to act legitimately. The public seems to agree. This Court, so far, has not!

I’m Peter Dekom, and on the question of the legitimacy of the current partisan configuration of the John Roberts Supreme Court, my strong opinion that they lack the very legitimacy of the Supreme Court panels they have reversed.

Democracy versus Social Media?

“Deepfakes or misuse of information . . . cannot really influence people or change outcomes

of elections without propagating on social networks… My biggest fear is the social networks

and how they actually handle disinformation and/or misinformation on their platforms.”

Wael AbdAlmageed, professor at the University of Southern California.

“[I]t remains painfully clear that social media companies are still failing to protect candidates, voters,

and elected officials from disinformation, misogyny, racism, transphobia, and violence.”

From an open letter to Axios from 60 activist groups.

“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher

or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Almost immediately after Elon Musk took over Twitter, he issued a tweet that reinforced a completely unfounded, thoroughly debunked and obviously false conspiracy theory that 82-year-old Paul Pelosi, Nancy’s husband, was attacked in his house after a late-night clubbing rendezvous with a gay partner. Much to the delight of conspiracy theory-driven Republicans, Musk’s pledge, to allow a more open forum for legitimate debate on Twitter under his ownership… with some required responsibility for posts… died instantly. Clearly, on Musk’s Twitter, anything goes. That fake Pelosi message also found support on Trump Social, where indeed, anything right-wing already goes.

The above cited federal statute – a legal liability “safe harbor” for purportedly passive Web platforms that post third party content – is at the heart of a controversy on how that law might be amended, a goal of both major American parties. While virtually all major social media sites have systems to remove toxic images and incendiary falsehoods, they are all woefully unsuccessful in this effort. Republicans want less filtering (claiming an anti-conservative bias); Democrats want more means to remove obvious falsehoods, mendacity often aimed at tilting public opinion over candidates and issues. Needless to say, Musk’s view would only propagate major lies and enable foreign players interested in influencing American elections to their benefit.

Mark Sullivan, writing for the October 28th FastCompany.com, asked various experts what they believed the scope of the misuse of social media problem is and what, if anything, social media giants should or could do to stop this tsunami of toxic conspiracy theories, deep fake imaging and egregious political lying that seem to define that universe today. “Social networks, which enjoy protections from lawsuits stemming from user-generated content [see above statutory excerpt], are the go-to media channel for spreading political misinformation and disinformation (the former: falsehoods unwittingly, or half-wittingly, spread; the latter meaning falsehoods knowingly spread to affect a political outcome).

“Since the 2016 election, when Russian operatives successfully seeded Facebook with ads and posts designed to sow division among U.S. voters, threats to U.S. elections have evolved. In 2022, experts say, malign actors spend more time and resources operating within the information space to mislead and disrupt, rather than on executing cyberattacks on election systems or communications systems. Another shift from 2016 is that most misinformation originates from domestic groups rather than foreign, although some researchers point out that domestic and foreign state-sponsored groups with aligned political interests often work together. The common thread in all of this is social networks, which continue to be weaponized to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt among the electorate.

“In 2020 and 2021, right-wing operatives used Facebook and other platforms to spread The Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent and its winner illegitimate. More recently, researchers at New York University found it easy to run ads on both Facebook and TikTok containing blatantly false information about the logistics (voting times and places) and credibility of the upcoming midterm…

“USC’s AbdAlmageed believes that of all the possible forms of misinformation we may see before the midterms, bad actors will most likely try an old trick: grabbing an old image and mislabeling it to harm some candidate or call the integrity of the election into question. The usual approach is taking a legitimate photograph from a news story from the past and adding text saying the photo is from a current event.”

The underlying problem is that controversy and the spread of falsehoods generates more Web traffic, which generates more viewership and hence more advertising dollars. Given the economic downturn we are facing, major corporate sponsors are cutting their advertising budgets, making social media platforms even more covetous of those ad dollars. Last year, in testimony before Congress, Facebook (Meta) whistleblower Frances Haugen spoke about how her former employer worked to present a good public face of policing toxic content, when in fact most of that effort was minimal and aimed only to show they were trying. Nothing really has changed.

But democracy needs truth to survive. Using artificial intelligence and other established spotting techniques, Sullivan’s experts opined that social media should focus on detecting and fact-checking repurposed images, targeting messages from election deniers, focus heavily on robotic messaging from foreign sources, purge posts of obvious flat false claims and generate multiparty (private and governmental) efforts against defamatory content. Americans seem so gullible.

It strikes me that teaching young minds, at least at a high school level, to learn to review and identify “fake news,” to do their own fact-checking and to report posts that they learn are obviously false are skillsets all high school students should have. Time to upgrade normal educational curricula into the 21st century… unless biased school boards need to crush truth. And yes, there are lesson plans that can help educators do precisely that: materials are available from a nonprofit called the News Literacy Project, for example. We can protect democracy and battle for truth to prevail over manipulative falsehood. Or we can watch democracy, very much under attack from so many sources, just fritter away.

I’m Peter Dekom, and evidence of the fragility of democracy has never been clearer than it is in the era of virtually unbridled social media.

Liars Running the Show

It should be unnerving that we are electing government officials, from governors and secretaries of state – directly responsible for election integrity – as well as members of state legislatures and Congress, who have campaigned to ensure that “liberal Democrats” cannot “hijack” elections under their watch. These new age White Christian conservatives believe (or at least say they believe) that Joe Biden is not the legitimate President of the United States and that massive election fraud – which to date lacks any meaningful proof anywhere – deprived Donald Trump of his rightful victory. That these candidates are telling their constituents that they will do “whatever it takes,” to preserve their conservative edge over the opponents, should trouble us all… but it doesn’t. Repealing democracy seems to be acceptable… as long as “our side wins.”

Most of these new GOP candidates are also proselytizing that the First Amendment does not require a separation between church and state. They favor of an NRA view that the Second Amendment was designed to arm Americans to overthrow a government with which they disagree. Their driving belief is that the United States must declare itself to be a Christian Nationalist nation, dominated by White traditional leaders, with necessary limitations on those who might object to that form of government.

They support the richest people seeking to avoid expensive regulations and generate the lowest tax rate possible – under the failed “trickle down” economic theory that tanked Liz Truss’ tenure as UK Prime Minister after 44 days in office – and tell us that we cannot afford programs aimed at containing climate change, which is (at least to them) a temporary natural cycle that will return to “normal” soon.

Under the guise of shoring up the financial stability of Social Security and Medicare, this rising GOP faction also openly states that it wishes to repeal recent enhancements in Medicare, capping medical costs and providing hearing/vision benefits to seniors; they want to rein in escalations in annual Social Security benefits and eligibility. Families struggling with student loans are watching Republican governors sue to stop the loan forgiveness programs for low- and middle-income taxpayers (even as mega-millionaires had no issue taking huge COVID era federal money). And they want to impeach against Joe Biden, although they have not come up with a reason yet.

In short, except for passionate believers in extreme religious views and debunkable conspiracy theories, unless you are really rich, there is virtually nothing in the current Republican agenda that would benefit you. They aren’t going to increase grants and loans to those slammed by climate change-driven natural disasters, events like Hurricane Ian which decimated Republican-run Florida. Seniors’ Medicare and Social Security benefits are targets for GOP downsizing. Very little new money will go into stemming the trillions of dollars of expected climate change damage, and our infrastructure is unlikely to get the very necessary upgrade money beyond the bills Biden got through Congress by avoiding a filibuster from lockstep GOP opposition; the legislation passed as filibuster-exempt “budget reconciliation” bills.

But for the privilege of getting this Republican effort into immutable law, likely to be sustained by a Trump-reconfigured rogue Supreme Court that is busy trashing earlier Supreme Court precedents, that GOP constituency must repeal representative democracy. That more than half the electorate does not favor these GOP policies or recent Supreme Court mandates/reversals does not matter, because our voting system – from the Electoral College to the equal representation of states in the Senate regardless of population to giving power to local election officials and legislatures even if minorities lose their proportionate political voice – cedes actual voting control to a conservative minority. Not to the middle. And definitely not to the left.

Writing for the November 1st Los Angeles Times prior to the election, Mark Barabak looked at this anti-democratic movement, particularly at what seems to be the poster-state for election deniers and advocates of limiting access to voting: Arizona. “[Arizona political independent, Steven Arechiga, campaigning in Tuscon told Barabak:] It’s bad enough… that candidates like gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake and Senate hopeful Blake Masters refuse to acknowledge President Trump’s defeat. Worse, Arechiga suggested, is what might come in 2024 if Lake and the [other election denying] GOP candidates for secretary of state, Mark Finchem, and attorney general, Abraham Hamadeh, seize hold of the state’s election machinery.

“‘Then you’ve got liars running the show. People who are in charge making decisions that suit themselves,’ said Arechiga, 69, who taught English as a second language before retiring. As he spoke, a steady stream of voters trickled in to drop off or cast early ballots at the public library, its slanted rooftop emulating the soaring peaks of the nearby Santa Catalina Mountains… ‘I just think that’s the road to authoritarianism,’ Arechiga went on. ‘People saying, ‘We’re going to do it our way, and everyone else gets pushed aside that doesn’t agree with us.’ That’s the fear I have.’

“After the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and Trump’s relentless peddling of his stolen-election fable, it seemed that the fate of democracy itself would be central to the debate this ragged campaign season… With a few exceptions — Senate races in Nevada and Utah, the gubernatorial election in Pennsylvania, a handful of other contests where culprits in the insurrection are running — that hasn’t been the case.

“But nowhere is there an election-denier slate like in Arizona… The state is not immune to soaring inflation, rising interest rates and the dour economic forecasts that have tanked Biden’s approval ratings and pushed Democrats back on their heels, imperiling the party’s control of the House and Senate. By some accounts, prices have risen faster here than anywhere in the country and, not surprisingly, inflation was generally the first thing voters spoke of when asked what they had on their minds.

“But in more than two dozen conversations in Tucson, the Phoenix suburbs and points between, many brought up Trump and the election deniers who have parroted his lies and baseless conspiracy theories… [Political independent, 52-year-old Travis Brady who teaches culinary arts to high schoolers in Casa Grande] insisted, in a voice dripping with disdain, that the 2020 balloting ‘was fine, there was nothing wrong with it,’ and Lake and others who suggest the contrary have served only to embarrass Arizona.

“‘The fact that these politicians, the ones that are Trump-endorsed, are already saying the elections this year are rigged, they’re the ones that are undermining election confidence more than anybody else ever could,’ said Brady… (Lake, who is well known as a longtime Phoenix television news anchor, won’t promise to accept the result if she loses.)... ‘I just can’t support that,’ Brady said… In many ways, Arizona lies at the heart of the still-roiling fight over 2020.”

Immigrants at the border are not coming to “replace” White voters. Many are fleeing corruption and violence in their home countries, fueled primarily from demand from US drug users and enforced by Latin American cartels with an endless supply of easily purchased American guns (including assault weapons). Crime is not on the increase except where guns are involved – now more easily obtained and concealed under GOP-mandated lax gun control. Per capita crime rates in New York are less than those in ultra-red Oklahoma. Fuel and food prices are soaring because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Other than taking away benefits for most of us, there are no GOP proposals to solve inflation. At least there are not hordes of brown shirts marching… Ugh, I forgot about the GOP militia, groups like the Proud Boys, 3 Percenters, Oath Keepers, etc… many of whom are law enforcement officers or in our military.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as any student of 20th century history knows, events that parallel these right-wing GOP movements led to genocide, territorial invasion, civil war and even world wars.

US Politics, Brazilian Style

 

Donald Trump vs Joe Biden in the US translates to Jair Bolsonaro vs Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) in Brazil. Lula may be a little farther to the left than Biden, but Bolsonaro and Trump are cut from the same cloth. However, Lula, former union leader and a very popular left-wing president, was convicted in 2017 on charges of money laundering and corruption in a controversial trial and sentenced to nine and a half years in prison. His conviction was tossed by Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court after he spent a year and a half in prison. Current President Bolsonaro, who marginalized the COVID pandemic and fought efforts to stem climate change, is a right-wing former military officer.

Bolsonaro and Lula squared off in a run-off election on Sunday, October 30th. The aftermath promises to be particularly ugly. Lula prevailed by a razor-thin edge, with an immediate challenge from Bolsonaro supporters even as Bolsonaro’s chief of staff allowed the transition to begin. On the day after the election, however, Brazil's federal highway police reported 342 roadblocks across the country from a bevy of pro-Bolsonaro truck drivers. Another “stolen election”?! Stand back and stand by. Could this transition with a razor margin be peaceful? Hmm…

Writing for the October 29th Los Angeles Times, Ana Ionova and Kate Linthicum present the basics in that roiling run-off presidential election in this largest country in South America: “[In September], a man with a knife walked into a bar in northeastern Brazil and asked whether anybody planned to vote for Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the country’s upcoming presidential election… ‘I will,’ a patron responded…. The man with the knife stabbed him to death…

“In the run-up to Sunday’s bitterly fought vote, in which Lula, a leftist who served as president from 2003 through 2010, faces right-wing incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, acts of politically motivated violence have become routine, with nearly every day bringing news of another election-related attack… For many Brazilians, it’s evidence of how this year’s campaign has divided the nation in profound new ways — and an ominous sign of what could come next… Many here are bracing for turmoil because Bolsonaro has repeatedly suggested that if he loses, he may not accept the results.

“Echoing former President Trump, whom he has described as his ‘idol,’ Bolsonaro has time and again questioned the integrity of Brazil’s voting system, sowing doubts among millions of his supporters about a pillar of Brazil’s democracy.

“The tough-talking president has said that if needed, he and his supporters ‘will go to war.’… Polls show that 3 out of 4 Bolsonaro supporters, after hearing their leader question the trustworthiness of the nation’s voting machines, have little or no trust in them… ‘The people won’t accept a loss,’ said Maria da Penha Fernandes, 65-year-old seamstress in Rio de Janeiro. ‘There will be a revolt.’

“Polls had predicted that Bolsonaro would draw as little 33% in the first round of voting on Oct. 2. But he ended up with 43% to Lula’s 48%, with other candidates splitting the rest… That has fueled his supporters’ doubts about current polls, which show Lula likely to win Sunday’s runoff election. [He did as noted above.] Insisting polling operations are part of a broader conspiracy to rig the vote, Bolsonaro’s allies in Congress recently introduced legislation that would make it a crime to produce a poll that fails to accurately predict results.

“Among Brazil’s left, there are growing fears that Bolsonaro is paving the way for a coup or an insurrection modeled on the storming of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters last year… A former army officer who has praised Brazil’s two-decade military dictatorship that ended in 1985, Bolsonaro has expanded the power of the armed forces during his four years in office, with an estimated 6,000 soldiers now serving in his administration… Private weapon ownership has proliferated since Bolsonaro delivered on a key campaign promise to loosen gun control laws.”

What now? Sound familiar? Civil war in Brazil? How about here? Political violence in the United States has exploded since 2016, when for example, our Capitol Police investigated 902 threats against members of Congress. But in the first year of the Trump administration, those threats increased to 3,939. The rhetoric of finding racial or ethnic groups to blame and demean, essential ingredients in most such political threats and accompanying violence, became increasingly normalized here. By 2021, those congressional threats rose to 9,600 – targeting congress-people on both sides of the aisle.

But as Republican members Congress, once huddled in the Capitol chambers fearing the raging 1/6/21 Capital attackers, the Republican National Committee has since hailed the January 6th insurrectionists as “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” The violence was now officially sanctified. Not that Republicans are free from violent attacks. In June of 2017, for example, GOP House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and three other people were wounded when a gunman opened fire on members of the Republican congressional baseball team as they were practicing on a field in Alexandria, Virginia.

But the majority of the attacks and threats are coming from MAGA supporters, with seeming encouragement from the former President himself. The rise of Republican Christian nationalism, arguing against an interpretation of the First Amendment as separating church and state, coupled with the mistaken belief that our Founding Fathers created the Second Amendment so that outraged citizens could overthrow elected officials with whom they disagreed on basic principles, seems to have escalated political beliefs increasingly to mirror religious fervor. A proliferation of AR-15-like assault weapons (estimated at 20 million in civilian hands) and mostly right-wing militia are adding gasoline for a pending fire. Political violence is the new normal.

Even without such guns, attacks on politicians and election officials… and their families… can be brutal. Take for example the attempted murder (by hammer) of a Trump supporter seeking to kill Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in her San Francisco home… but finding only her husband, Paul, smashed his skull instead.

The alleged perpetrator, 42-year-old David DePape, was an avid anti-Semitic right-wing, conspiracy theory blogger. “An Aug. 24 entry titled ‘Q,’ displayed a scatological collection of memes that included photos of the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and made reference to QAnon, the baseless pro-Trump conspiracy theory that espouses the belief that the country is run by a deep state cabal of child sex traffickers, satanic pedophiles and baby-eating cannibals. In other posts, the writer said Jews helped finance Hitler's political rise in Germany and suggested an antisemitic plot was involved in Russia's recent invasion of Ukraine.

“‘The more Ukrainians die NEEDLESSLY the cheaper the land will be for Jews to buy up,’ the post said… In a Sept. 27 post, the writer said any journalists who denied Trump's false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election ‘should be dragged straight out into the street and shot.’” Associated Press, October 28th.

Political violence requires that the perpetrators demonize their opponents such that there is no wrong committed in killing or harming them. The attackers must believe that committing violent acts against ‘political others” is a necessary contribution to “higher values and the greater good.” Personal risks of being arrested or even shot by their victims or “corrupt law enforcement” that protects them are seen as noble sacrifices. But this is where civil wars start… and they just might not look like the blue and grey formal armies of our own Civil War. Instead: Scattered and increasing violence, lines being drawn with assassination and insurrection getting formal political support. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and as violent perpetrators call themselves “patriots” and “revolutionary war heroes,” whether it’s in Brazil or the United States, we all need to understand what is really at stake… democracy itself.

The Unofficial Remote Police of Repression

The word “asylum” has joined “creeping socialism,” “woke” and “critical race theory” in the pejorative vocabulary of the MAGA Republican Party… or should I simply say, these days, the Republican Party. Given their vast constituency of evangelical Christians, this open hostility to tolerance, kindness, helping our fellow man (the “love thy neighbor” mandate) seems to contradict the most basic tenets of the New Testament, turning the Bible into a “pick and choose” menu.

Yet, whether by treaty or statute, the United States recognizes the right of asylum of individuals as specified by international and federal law. In accordance with international law, the United States considers asylum candidates on the basis of persecution or fear they will be persecuted on account of race, religion, nationality, and/or membership in a particular social group or political opinion. Looks good on paper, but that’s not our reality.

Indeed, as the campaign for the midterm elections illustrates, practicing those moral and legal precepts, following those biblical proscriptions, is a fast way for a conservative candidate to lose an election, primary or general. Kindness, tolerance and repairing social inequities – protecting those who have been persecuted, fear for their lives or who face serious racial/ethnic/gender discrimination – is increasingly described as un-American and unpatriotic.

Instead, we face unjustified cries embodying “replacement theory,” White Christian nationalism (yes, the same underlying principle that justified the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany) and voter exclusion or marginalization. A highly polarized and well-armed America faces its own mutual distrust and hatred. Qualities that once defined who and what are, have been replaced with hateful conspiracy theories, often punctuated with AR-15s and violent protests.

When we see people pounding at our southern border, seeking asylum for very real issues, many see “brown people seeking to replace us.” These human beings are victims of violence and corruption born of America’s inability to stem the northward narco path to feed its addictions or the southward path of “easy-to-buy” assault weapons made and sold in US… but we conveniently overlook those sordid details. Corruption south of the border is a direct product of massive drug money from the United States reinforced by rich and exceptionally well-armed cartels (with US guns). Simply, we are the cause, but we offer no real solutions and take no real responsibility. Not altogether different from our lack of responsibility for those who supported us in our Afghan war… and were left behind.

Yet even those who have fled their home countries for asylum overseas often find themselves followed by assassins or threatening government operatives from their nation of origin. Well before the war in Ukraine, Russian hit squads have targeted Russian dissidents, even those living in Western nations. Names include Vladmir Kara-Murza, Boris Nemtsov, Boris Berezovsky, Stanislav Markelov, Anastasia Baburova, Sergei Magnitsky, Natalia Estemirova, Anna Politkovskaya, Alexander Litvinenko and Alexei Navalny. The 2018 assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a US resident executed in the Saudi Consulate in Turkey, which our intelligence services tell us was almost certainly ordered by Saudi Arabia’s ruling Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, is another example of such extraterritorial executions.

A recent escalation in foreign countries’ operating to intimate their citizens or former citizens, viewed as enemies of the state to the home country, seems to be on an upward tilt from the People’s Republic of China. Indeed, as “President” for life Xi Jinping has turned his leadership into a de facto absolute monarchy, monitoring PRC field offices around the world are multiplying, particularly in the Western world. Effectively, these are offshore, remote illegal police stations that China uses to keep overseas dissidents in line, often with threats against relatives still living in the PRC.

As the October 26th BBC.com has observed, “The Chinese government has been accused of establishing at least two undeclared ‘police stations’ in the Netherlands… Dutch media found evidence that the ‘overseas service stations,’ which promise to provide diplomatic services, are being used to try to silence Chinese dissidents in Europe… A spokeswoman for the Dutch foreign ministry said the existence of the unofficial police outposts was illegal… The Chinese foreign ministry has rejected the Dutch allegations.

“The investigation was sparked by a report entitled Chinese Transnational Policing Gone Wild, by the Spain-based NGO Safeguard Defenders… According to the organisation, the public security bureaus from two Chinese provinces had established 54 ‘overseas police service centres’ across five continents and 21 countries. Most of them are in Europe, including nine in Spain and four in Italy. In the UK, it found two in London and one in Glasgow.

“The units were ostensibly created to tackle transnational crime and conduct administrative duties, such as the renewal of Chinese drivers' licences. But, according to Safeguard Defenders, in reality they carry out ‘persuasion operations,’ aimed at coercing those suspected of speaking out against the Chinese regime to return home.’” Fox News (September 29th) describes some of those PRC operations in North America: “China has opened dozens of "overseas police service stations" around the globe to monitor its citizens living abroad, including one location in New York City and three in Toronto.

“‘These operations eschew official bilateral police and judicial cooperation and violate the international rule of law and may violate the territorial integrity in third countries involved in setting up a parallel policing mechanism using illegal methods,’ reads a report by Safeguard Defenders, a human rights watchdog, released [in early September].” But even here, we seem to have a parallel movement, mirroring Iran’s “morality police,” operating with virtual official sanction against our own citizens. There are increasing bodies of self-appointed American “citizen monitors” – often invited by high-ranking elected (or recent) officials, usually from the Republican Party – instructed to monitor election polling stations (often with clear intimidating malevolence), election offices and liberal protests. Did I say “monitor;” I meant “intimidate.”

I’m Peter Dekom, and if we turn a blind eye to officially sanctioned intimidation within our own borders, we shall feel the cold chill of rising autocracy breathing down our necks in scorn of our own Constitution.

Officially Condoned Violence and Election Police with Real Badges

Meaningless “thoughts and prayers” follow every American incident of mass killing or political violence. It’s almost an embarrassment when those words are spouted, when those who enable the violence take no responsibility for what they have caused, directly or indirectly. When military assault rifles are used in mass shootings, where we are the only nation not at war where such weapons are even permitted, that there are political factions arguing that the Second Amendment, passed in an era of flintlocks and muskets carried by “well regulated militia,” creates a basic right for all Americans to have such semiautomatic weapons, is beyond absurd.

While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul attack by a rabid Trump supporter with a skull-crushing hammer in Pelosi’s own home has drawn condemnation from senior Republicans, they are the same GOP politicians who have elevated the violent attackers at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 to patriots simply engaging in “legitimate political discourse.” What’s worse is the rising Republican faction – White Christian nationalists – that rejects the notion that the First Amendment mandates a separation of church and state and tells us that the Second Amendment was specially passed to enable citizen unhappy with political leadership to use guns to overthrow them. The policies represented are racist, anti-Semitic and profoundly un-American.

“Illustrating that Christian nationalist ideas are moving further and further into the mainstream, a September poll by Politico found that 61% of Republicans and 17% of Democrats believe the U.S. should declare itself a Christian nation. The poll also found that ‘white grievance is highly correlated with support for a Christian nation.’ Indeed, as the Christians Against Christian Nationalism website explains, Christian nationalism ‘often overlaps with and provides cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation.’

“The even more dangerous aspect of Christian nationalism is its acceptance of the inevitability of violence. Christian nationalism argues that Americans are an exceptional, chosen people who will eventually face an apocalyptic end-times battle. This us-versus-them thinking positions the ‘other’ as a dire threat that has to be defeated out of a moral duty to defend Christian values and prevent the nation from falling into darkness…

“In April, Doug Mastriano, Pennsylvania’s Republican nominee for governor, called the separation of church and state a ‘myth. ’ That same month, Maryland’s Republican nominee for governor, Dan Cox, told a crowd that his platform ‘recognizes the creator’ and said ‘we have rights that supersede government.’

“It’s not just Mastriano and Cox. A growing number of Republicans now espouse Christian nationalism. Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado argued in June that ‘the church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church.’ Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia put it more bluntly in July. ‘I’m a Christian and I say it proudly,” she said. “We should be Christian nationalists.’” MSNBC.com, October 23rd. Yet the attack on Speaker Pelosi’s husband was apparently the direct result of conspiracy theorist, a White Christian nationalist, strike out for his increasingly prevalent belief system. “They shall not replace us!” has become their rallying cry.

“But for many Americans, shock [at this attack on Paul Pelosi] was tinged with a weary sense of inevitability. Far from a freak occurrence, the attack felt of a piece with the other threats and warnings publicized that day — the latest additions to the country’s growing sense of political menace, especially from the far right… ‘Unfortunately, this is a continuation of at least a 2½-year-long established pattern of violence against elected officials and local officials, including poll workers, that has been steadily ramping up,’ said Erica Chenoweth, a Harvard Kennedy School professor who studies political violence.

“Politically motivated violence has ebbed and flowed throughout U.S. history. Currently, America is going through an upsurge in right-wing violence, according to researchers who track attacks and other incidents. They say today’s climate is comparable to that in the mid-1990s, when a similar wave of right-wing violence culminated in the 1995 bombing of the federal office building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people.” Los Angeles Times, October 30th. Except today, that violence is both vastly more widespread and carries with it the supportive rhetoric from GOP leaders, ranging from Donald Trump to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

Not only have congressional districts been gerrymandered to exclude proportionate representation for minority voters, voter restrictions target the same restrictions, but just in case those efforts fall short, genuinely empowered law enforcement officers in many counties are using their badges to intimidate voters who do not support the rising radical right. “Amid reports of harassment outside ballot drop boxes and threats to election workers, experts are sounding the alarm about another potential source of election interference ahead of the 2022 midterms: a growing coalition of far-right ‘constitutional sheriffs’ who are gearing up to insert themselves into upcoming elections.

“The ‘constitutional sheriffs’ movement, which has ties to the Oath Keepers and other antigovernment fringe movements, is based on the legally dubious belief that sheriffs are the ultimate law enforcement authority within their counties, superseding state and federal officials, including the U.S. president. In recent years, self-appointed constitutional sheriffs have refused to enforce various laws that they deem unconstitutional, from state and federal gun laws to pandemic-era mask mandates.

“But now, experts warn, key figures in the movement have teamed up with prominent election deniers as part of a new campaign that seeks to lend law enforcement credibility to the false notion, promoted by former President Donald Trump and his supporters, that voter fraud is rampant in U.S. elections.

“Leading this charge are two major constitutional sheriffs groups — the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association and Protect America Now — which have aligned themselves with True the Vote, a conservative vote-monitoring group whose widely discredited claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election were the basis for the film ‘2000 Mules.’” Yahoo!News, October 29th. I fear both election intimidation and post-election interference with properly generated election results. We live in hellish times with the nation teetering on the brink of transitioning from democracy to right-wing autocracy.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the words of Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate, election denier Kari Lake, echo in my mind: “I’m going to win the election, and I will accept that result.”

Can’t Win Without a Lie, But Judicial Rulings Trump Actual Votes

The] Constitution contains no explicit right to vote. Rather, the Supreme Court has recognized an implicit right to vote via the 14th Amendment, enacted in 1868 after the Civil War, which aimed to protect the civil rights of people who had been enslaved and guarantees “the equal protection of the laws.” 

NY Times, 10/26/22

Former President Donald Trump knows that “lies about the 2020 election are instrumentally useful in motivating GOP base voters… Trump raised this in a call with Blake Masters, the Republican nominee in the Arizona Senate race, that was captured in a new Fox News documentary. Trump faulted Masters for saying at a debate that he didn’t see evidence of a rigged 2020 election, and urged Masters to be ‘stronger’ on that point.

“‘You’re going to lose that base,’ Trump told Masters, citing Kari Lake, the GOP candidate who might win the state’s governor’s race: ‘Kari’s winning with very little money. And if they say, ‘How is your family?’ she says the election was rigged and stolen.’…

“In Trump’s own telling, GOP base voters must be told that when they lose, they’ve been robbed — the outcome is illegitimate by definition. Scores of other GOP candidates are running for positions of control over elections — while essentially vowing to treat future elections as subject to nullification — which makes Trump’s point harder to deny.

“Similarly, we recently learned that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) believed the mob assaulting the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, might kill him. Yet even though McCarthy blamed Trump for inciting the riot, McCarthy publicly patched things up with Trump, then spent the next year helping cover up his insurrection.

“Why? Trump has supplied a plausible answer: Planting yourself squarely on the wrong side of Trump’s lies about 2020 might risk demobilizing or alienating the base, which could have imperiled McCarthy’s hopes of winning the House. What’s required instead is treating Jan. 6’s underlying cause as in some sense just.” Greg Sargent in the Washington Post, October 26th.

But a lie can only take you so far if you aren’t able to use the legal system to overturn elections and keep opposition voters away. So, part two of this strategy is tailored voter restrictions and never accepting an election result that goes against you. Even if that requires tying up the courts for years to reverse such results. As Kari Lake stated twice in mid-October, when CNN’s Dana Bash asked her: “Will you accept the results of your election in November?” Replied Lake: “I'm going to win the election, and I will accept that result.” Lawyers are on standby!

With red and swing state election deniers in responsible election positions pledging not to allow a repetition of the 2020 “stolen election” and as the US Supreme Court addresses whether the Constitution has so empowered state legislatures with control over elections that they can overrule popular votes, we may no longer be living in a democracy where voting results are determinative. The Post’s Patrick Marley notes: “In the United States, election season has turned into lawsuit season.

“One legal challenge in Michigan seeks to remove thousands from the voter rolls. Two lawsuits in Wisconsin seek to have more absentee ballots counted, even if they are missing some information. In Arizona, a judge is reviewing a new law requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote. And in Pennsylvania, lawsuits challenge the state’s no-excuse absentee voting law, as well as the policy to count undated mail-in ballots… Disputes over redistricting, voter IDs, voting hours, recounts and other election-related policies have long run parallel to political campaigns, but the numbers are rising.

“The increase began after the Supreme Court decided the 2000 presidential election, and the trend reached a high in 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic prompted a host of new voting rules. The pace quickened after that election, when Donald Trump and his allies brought a slew of lawsuits that unsuccessfully sought to deliver him a second term as president.” Even as Trump lost virtually every judicial challenge he mounted against the 2020 election, over 60 such suits even before his own appointees, his persistence has paid off.

As Republican legislators were forced to accept the underlying notion of a stolen election or lose their elective offices, a tsunami of voter restrictive state laws redefined elections and promised decades in the courts. Trump effectively eliminated a significant number of probable anti-GOP voters from casting ballots. All in the name of a dramatically unnecessary move to protect “election integrity.” In some jurisdictions, he even enabled intimidating Republican “poll watchers” and “election counting observers” to filter out GOP opponents even more. See above photographs.

False issues, culture wars and even blaming a hardworking medical doctor trying to stem COVID as a criminal worthy of a special congressional investigation, reinforce that America is not nation built on facts and what’s best for most of us. Conspiracy theories and an unwillingness to challenge them seem to be our new “truth.” When medical facts become polarizing political statements, we are all in trouble.

Yes, Americans know that the MAGA GOP is misusing skewed judicial appointments to sustain its radical views and the recent spate of legislative voter restrictions. “A Gallup Poll released in late September found the level of trust and confidence in the judicial branch was at 47%, the lowest since the organization began surveying the public on the topic in the 1970s. It was 67% in 2020.” Associated Press, October 26th. The Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative and widely unpopular June 24th reversal of Roe v Wade began a severe drop in public trust.

American voters are justifiably nervous. A new Reuters/Ipsos poll has also found that two in five US voters are worried about threats of violence or voter intimidation at polling stations during the Nov. 8 midterm elections, with 51% of Democrat voters and 38% of Republicans sharing these concerns. The poll also indicates that around two-thirds of voters fear extremists will carry out acts of violence after the election and that 17% believe that their ballot won't be counted accurately, including roughly one-in-ten Democrats and one-in-four Republicans. But evidence suggests that GOP operatives are the mostly likely to disrupt those midterms and the results.

Do we expect the midterms to roil our judicial system? Even before the election, “More than 100 lawsuits have been filed this year around the Nov. 8 elections. The legal challenges, largely by Republicans, target rules for mail-in voting, early voting, voter access, voting machines, voting registration, the counting of mismarked absentee ballots and access for partisan poll watchers.” Colleen Long writing for the October 27th Associated Press. So YES!

That there are scores of Americans, increasingly aware of these election and judicial manipulations, who simply do not care enough to do anything about it, is staggering. The ends justify the means, even if that means the end of American representative democracy. They will do anything to make sure that White Christian nationalism prevails and that “they” will “not replace us.” If this pressure cannot be halted, the American “experiment with democracy” is over. Autocracy is waiting in the wings… with a great big smile.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am ashamed of the political legacy that we are leaving for our rising generations.

Emission Impossible – Private Jets as Mega-Polluters

“Just 1% of people cause 50% of global aviation emissions…. Private jets have a disproportionate

impact on the environment. In just one hour, a single private jet can emit two tonnes of CO2.

The average person in the EU emits the equivalent over the course of an entire year.”

May 2021 Study by Brussels-based Transport and Environment

Anyone unfortunate enough to live by a high-traffic airport faces serious noise and even the risk of an aircraft crash, however rare those incidents might be. Risk fades with distance, and noise can be moderated with well-insulated windows and buildings. Still, folks really do not like living near those big airports, and property values reflect that reality. Hong Kong moved its center-city airport to a nearby, man-enhanced island, Japan closed its center-city facility for a distant venue often hours away, and Denver shifted its main operations to a more distant ultra-modern facility. Congestion – in the air and in vehicular traffic – is just one price we pay for those large airports (including a growing number of commercial satellite airports) in major urban areas.

But even as commercial air traffic puts pressure on our transportation infrastructure, the rise of private jets (individual and corporate) has exploded in lockstep with the widening income inequality gap. For the mega-wealthy, the inconvenience of flying commercial – quite declassee among so many jetsetters – is not hindered by the high costs of leasing or owning a jet, parking and landing fees, maintenance, insurance, salaries of flight staff or even the exorbitant price of jet fuel. You just have to look at the fleet of private jets at McCarran Airport in Vegas every weekend or at regional airports where mega-rich gather for elite conferences.

Or you can visit general aviation airports in or near upscale communities. In Los Angeles, for example, so many of those expensive private jets are housed at Santa Monica Airport (look, there’s Tom Cruise landing one of his aircraft!) or Van Nuys Airport in the San Fernando Valley (is that Kylie Jenner getting into her jet?). But as real estate values have skyrocketed in chi chi Santa Monica, the local upscale residents protested for years about having that high-traffic, general aviation facility in their midst. After years of such stormy moments, lengthy negotiations with the FAA and lots of litigation, a settlement was reached with the FAA to shut down that Santa Monica Airport and replace it with a big park… on December 31, 2028, shortening the main runway in the interim. Obviously, that will push these mega-rich jetsetters to crowd other regional airports. Especially Van Nuys.

But there is more than noise and safety risks that we have to factor into our approach to private jet travel. As the above quote illustrates, there is one cost that these private jet owners are not paying: the price on climate change that their inefficient travel habits wreak on the rest of us. Or just plain nasty air pollution.

Columnist Carolina Miranda, writing for the October 20th Los Angeles Times, starts with a harsh example: “‘You wanna take mine or yours?’ That was Kylie Jenner’s caption for a July Instagram post that showed her and boyfriend Travis Scott in the middle of a make-out sesh between a pair of private jets… It was a simple question. The response was withering.

“Jenner’s post was greeted by an avalanche of criticism about the ways the 1% are incinerating the environment. Time magazine included her in a roundup of the most egregious celebrity overconsumption. An article in the Washington Post described celebrity jet usage as ‘a climate nightmare,’ adding to the pillory other jet owners such as Taylor Swift and Drake. The best response, however, was a TikTok from user @unabella3 that shows a squadron of military jets blasting through the sky along with the deadpan caption: ‘The Kardashians on their way to Starbucks.’

“These reactions aren’t simply haters hating… For most of us, the story of Jenner’s jet flaunting might elicit a flash of outrage, followed by the helplessness that comes with thinking about our ongoing climate catastrophe, a problem so vast and so systemic that it can feel practically abstract.

“For people who live in the environs of the Van Nuys Airport, however, it is not abstract. In preparation for a flight, a single jet might run its engines for more than an hour on airplane ramps separated from residential streets by little more than a low wall and chain-link fence. While the Jenners of the world selfie on the tarmac, residents who live yards away are eating their dust — or, more accurately, their ultrafine particles (a pollutant emitted during jet operations that has been linked to various cardiovascular and respiratory conditions). Eliminating a few private jet takeoffs isn’t going to change the fate of the planet. It would, however, improve life on the ground for communities in the vicinity of VNY (as the airport is known by its call letters).”

What’s worse for this inland airport, it lacks even the ocean breezes that at least mitigate pollution at Santa Monica’s facility. But richer Santa Monica residents found a way to rid themselves of even that irritant. Yet Van Nuys is seeing a rapid increase in private aircraft, even before Santa Monica closes for good. “‘I’ve lived here since 1986 — never had a problem,’ says Sue Steinberg, who lives just off Hayvenhurst [the street adjacent to Van Nuys Airport]. But over the last several years, she says, it has become intolerable. ‘The fumes are unbelievably bad’… One area resident, who declined to give me her name because she was planning to move out of the neighborhood, says jets have upended daily life. ‘I can’t let my son out,’ she says. ‘When the fumes come out, I have to bring him inside.’” LA Times.

The income inequality issue is usually viewed from a different lens, often the movement of the ratio of CEOs to the earnings of their average workers (from around 50 to 1 in the 1960s to close to 400 to 1 today). But conspicuous consumption hurts us all in so many ways that perhaps it is time to address the most harmful aspects of the mega-wealthy – from a willingness to pay huge fines to water their lawns in a drought to the environmental slam of private jet use. Time is not on our side. Stop the toxic habits!

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am tired of the misuse of the words “creeping socialism” to allow the most horrific impacts on our world by people who just plain do not care, because their money buys them an exemption from responsibility for their actions.