Doom Report (Week 29: The Flame in which there Lives the Gerrymander of the Human Soul)

Of course the big story this week is: gerrymandering!  You can see the original gerrymander up above; it was named after Elbridge Gerry, who happened to be the governor of Massachusetts in 1812, when that slice of Boston that was deemed, at the time, to look like a (mythological) salamander but was actually a state Senate district first began to attract some negative attention.  If you need more information on gerrymandering in general, there’s a great Hank Green explainer video on the topic which he titled “The Massive Fraud that’s Tearing America Apart.”  It reminds me of a quote from Earl Warren that I believe I heard in Deadlocked that, despite presiding over Brown v Board of Education, he always felt his most important case was the lesser-known Reynolds v Sims, which promulgated the “one person, one vote” philosophy.  Although that had to do with creating unequal districts with regard to population size rather than gerrymandering, it’s still telling that this bastion of liberal justice felt that the most important issue facing us was fair representation.  Also note that this first instance of gerrymandering—or at least the first to be called that—was done by Democrats.  But, like many things invented by Democrats, the Republicans have taken it to a whole new level.

And, so, the Democrats in the Texas state legislature have left the state to avoid having to vote in a special session called by their governor after he got a call from Trump asking him to redraw the state districts in order to get him 5 more Republican seats in next year’s mid-terms.  (And, if you need more information on this bit of gerrymandering in particular, Zeteo has you covered.)  It amuses me that Republicans can call for these Democrats to be arrested for “not doing their jobs” while at the same time desperately fleeing from Washington DC in order to avoid having to vote to release the Epstein files.  But I shouldn’t be surprised: at this point, all shame has been genetically bred out of the Republican party.  What’s really keeping me shoving the popcorn in my mouth is the current showdown between director of the FBI Kash Patel, who has said he will help round up the Democrats, who are hiding out mostly in Chicago, and Illinois governor JB Pritzker, who is standing firm in his stance to protect those same Democrats from arrest.  I mean, if you pitched a TV series where state troopers arrest FBI agents for kidnapping, sparking a second American civil war, I think you’d have a bidding war on your hands.  Gripping television, for sure.  Let’s see how it goes.

Other things you need to know this week:

• Adam Kinzinger has another “week in review”; I don’t think this week is quite as good as the previous two, but he’s still a good resource.

• This week’s Some More News is an exhaustive indictment of the mendacious tactics of ICE.  Turns out that, while we already knew that ICE was lying, some of the things they’re doing are downright despicable.  Long, but worth it.

• In another of those “crossing the streams” moments, Brian Tyler Cohen interviews Zeteo founder Mehdi Hasan.  BTC is smart, but he does have his blind spots, and his insistence that the Democrats’ problems will all be over if they just build a media ecosystem to compete with the Fox “News” empire is one of them.  Here Mehdi makes an excellent counterpoint: “We often say—you and I will rightly say, ‘oh, New York Times isn’t covering the story; it’s not on its front page’.  But to be fair to New York Times, the New York Times needs, kind of, quote/unquote permission to do that.  And the way they get permission to do that, in our system, is they need a senior Democratic politician to hold a press conference and ask questions or hold a hearing in Congress.  ... liberal Democratic parties will say, ‘oh, the media is just ignoring the story’.  And I’m not defending the media: I’m the last person to defend mainstream media.  But you also have to ask questions about the Democratic party.  If the leadership of the party is not pushing this at the same time, it allows the media to move on.”

Sometimes we find our messages of hope in the unlikeliest of places.  This week, the Judge John Hodgman podcast released the live show that they recorded in Burlington Vermont the day after Election Day.  His “obscure cultural verdict” was a the first paragraph of a post by feminist author Rebecca Solnit (this was a Twitter post, but, weirdly, you can no longer see the original post, which I’m sure is just a coincidence and not Elon Musk desperately trying to erase all trace of opinions that disagree with him).  I’ll repeat it for you here:

They want you to feel powerless and to surrender and to let them trample everything and you are not going to let them.  You are not giving up, and neither am I.  The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving.  You may need to grieve or scream or take time off, but you have a role no matter what, and right now good friends and good principles are worth gathering in.  Remember what you love.  Remember what loves you.  Remember in this tide of hate what love is.  The pain you feel is because of what you love.

It certainly has felt like a tide of hate lately.  But, as Solnit reminds us, everything we can save is worth saving.