Our Supreme Court needlessly vacated an injunction against the Idaho legislature’s strict abortion ban, which in effect halted emergency abortions in that state to protect the life, health or safety of the mother. The “vacating” –– that is, a stay of the lower court’s injunction on the application of the Idaho law –– lasted almost six months. In a decision announced June 27, the Court’s majority said that it had “improvidently” granted certiorari (the Latin name for that old “writ” that called up the case for review by the Court). But even after hearing arguments and receiving numerous briefs from friends of the court, they did not reach the merits of the case, which involved whether a federal statute, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) would pre-empt the Idaho statute, which had left doctors in Idaho in a quandary when women might need an abortion to preserve their health.
As the Center for American Progress wrote after the decision,
“This stay completely changed the lives of pregnant patients and medical providers in Idaho because it allowed Idaho’s near-total abortion ban to go into effect for the first time. Previously, the case was guided by a preliminary injunction —or temporary legal pause—issued by the U.S. District Court of Idaho (Southern Division) on August 24, 2022, that prevented specific sections of Idaho’s abortion ban criminalizing medical providers from becoming law. The injunction provided a degree of legal certainty for EMTALA-certified hospitals, medical providers, and pregnant patients that emergency abortion care was still permissible under EMTALA.”
“However, the Supreme Court’s January 2024 stay suspended EMTALA’s protections and upended legal and medical norms in Idaho. After the stay went into effect, St. Luke’s hospital in Boise airlifted six patients experiencing pregnancy complications from January 2024 to April 2024. By comparison, for the entirety of 2023—when EMTALA’s protections were in effect in Idaho and the provision of necessary care was still permitted—only one pregnant patient was airlifted.”
“It is beyond reproach that, if not for the Supreme Court’s arbitrary legal stay upending the legal and medical norms in Idaho, these patients would not have been flown out of their home state for federally guaranteed medical care.”
Not only was the stay decision arbitrary, but the Court failed to resolve the question they had determined to decide: whether pregnant women in Idaho have the right to an abortion when it is the only treatment that will stabilize a medical emergency. This ‘non-decision’ totally avoids deciding how to resolve conflicts between state and federal law over abortion.
“Today’s decision is not a victory for pregnant patients in Idaho,” Jackson wrote in the released document, concurring with the decision to reallow emergency abortions in Idaho but dissenting with the decision not to decide the merits of the case. “While this court dawdles and the country waits, pregnant people experiencing emergency medical conditions remain in a precarious position.”
The Idaho law, passed Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) overturned Roe v. Wade, barred abortions unless one was needed to save the life of the mother. The Biden administration sued, arguing the state’s law conflicted with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). That federal law requires hospitals to provide stabilizing treatment to anyone who needs it, or risk losing Medicare funding. In some cases, an abortion is the only treatment that will stabilize a pregnant patient facing dire health consequences—if not yet death.
There are times when a fetus cannot survive and the end of the pregnancy is imminent. For example, the mother’s water breaks before the fetus can survive outside the womb, and an abortion is required to prevent serious, even life-threatening, consequences for the mother. Yet hospitals in states with strict abortion bans have begun to turn these women away until they become very sick, leading to near-death experiences that can have serious consequences for the mothers’ health and future fertility.
Losing access to emergency abortions can prove fatal in some cases. As the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists warned in its friend of the court brief, “four in five pregnancy-related deaths nationwide are preventable. Deterring and delaying care to Idaho patients facing obstetrical emergencies will inevitably worsen those outcomes.”
A friend of the court brief filed by Amanda Zurkowski and sixteen other women illustrated the experiences women who were “denied or delayed in receiving lifesaving or health-preserving abortion care.”
When the Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision, the majority seemed to think it had rid itself of thorny questions on the rights of women and the rights of unborn children. “This Court will no longer decide the fundamental question of whether abortion must be allowed throughout the United States through 6 weeks, or 12 weeks, or 15 weeks, or 24 weeks, or some other line,” declared Justice Brett Kavanaugh in a concurring opinion in Dobbs. “Instead, those difficult moral and policy questions will be decided, as the Constitution dictates, by the people and their elected representatives through the constitutional processes of democratic self-government.”
Justice Alito, writing for the majority, was just as optimistic that the Court had left thorny issues of abortion behind:
“The authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the majority. You could almost hear Sam Alito sniffing with righteous indignation: it was “egregiously wrong” for the federal government to interfere with state law and the elected representatives of “the people.” But Alito looks past the influence of gerrymandering and campaign money from donors outside of Idaho; so “the will of the people” has already been manipulated by GOP legislators there, and much of their agenda is driven by outside money rather than popular policy sentiment of “the people.” Idaho, it seems, is awash in the corrupting sludge of political money.
Other states are awash, as well. So why does the Dobbs majority suggest that the federal government has no possible role in abortion, and say we should “let the people’s will be done?” They clearly underestimated the kinds of problems that a patchwork of state abortion laws would create all kinds of problems. In keeping with the invitation from the Court to deal with abortion as they saw fit, Idaho’s elected representatives passed a strict ban on abortion that clearly seems to conflict with federal law;
What a shame. But it’s all very legal; they are, after all, Justices of the Highest Court in the Land!
The above quote – “to hell with democracy” –– comes from a clip in a new movie, Bad Faith: Christian Nationalism’s Unholy War on Democracy. (A link is provided near the end of this blog.) The words are spoken passionately, from a deep conviction that U.S. has taken a spiritual turn for the worse, and that God must be in charge of family, religion, education, media, the arts, business, and government. For God to be in charge, the values and beliefs of the enemies of this God’s kingdom on Earth must be totally vanquished, because (and this is believed fervently) God wants America to be a White and Christian nation.
Let’s look back a bit. The “freedoms” that animated the tumultuous 1960s in the U.S. – feminism, the civil rights movement, the freedoms proclaimed by anti-war “peaceniks,” and the “free love” of the sexual revolution (“free love” meaning uncommitted sexual relations), were seen as antithetical to the freedom and true humanity that comes full flower only by following God’s commands. But those commands now seem to require a far more militant Christianity, because to so many, the U.S. has “gone to hell.”
So let’s start with freedom, and religious freedom in particular.
“It’s a free country.” I heard this so many times growing up. We are free to believe what we want, and say what we want. Few other countries can claim that diversity of thought and belief. But that same freedom will be deliberately jettisoned by an evangelical-led movement that wants government to serve God. That movement sees the current administration (and Democrats) as spiritually corrupt, if not downright demonic. This explains why rumors on Q Anon claim that Hilary Clinton eats babies. When Donald Trump falsely claimed on June 27 in the CNN “debate” that Democrats want to kill babies, he was tossing “red meat” to the religious right. All of which can easily justify violence against such demonic forces.
The movement to make the U.S. a White, Christian nation has been growing for quite some time. A trio of decisions from the Warren Court (1953-1969) inflamed religious conservatives: ending segregation in public schools (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS, 1954), ending compulsory prayer in public schools (Engel v. Vitale, 1962) and Roe v. Wade, 1973), allowing a woman to choose to end a pregnancy in the first trimester (roughly 15 weeks). In that era, some new freedoms were established by those decisions: a black student’s “freedom” to attend integrated public schools, a woman’s freedom to decide in the first trimester whether to have an abortion, or a student’s freedom not to be compelled to say or listen to a prayer (or a set of Commandments) that does not align with their religious beliefs. We now have the Court sympathetic to compulsory prayer, Roe v. Wade is gone, and even integrated public education is on the ropes with charter schools and the “school choice” movement.
(Studies have demonstrated that charter schools can worsen existing disparities and draw resources away from public schools. A study by the Network for Public Education found that charter schools cost school districts over $400 million in funding each year, resulting in reduced resources for public schools.)
Since the 1950s, opposition to a “secular America” without “Godly values” has animated an increasingly large movement, mostly led by some Evangelical Christians, and Christian nationalism now has the support a majority of GOP voters.
Support is not confined to the GOP; 30% of Americans look favorably on the concept.
Today, 30% of Americans support tenets of Christian nationalism, according to a study released earlier this week from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). Researchers asked more than 22,000 Americans how much they agreed with statements such as: “The US government should declare America a Christian nation”; “Being Christian is an important part of being truly American”’; and “God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.” Ultimately, about 10% of Americans qualify as “adherents” to Christian nationalism, and another 20% are “sympathizers.”
The Speaker of the House, third in line for the Presidency, is an avowed Christian nationalist. As Thomas Edsall wrote in fall, 2023, when Johnson became speaker:
“Mike Johnson is the first person to become speaker of the House who can be fairly described as a Christian nationalist, a major development in American history in and of itself. Equally important, however, his ascension reflects the strength of white evangelical voters’ influence in the House Republican caucus, voters who are determined to use the power of government to roll back the civil rights, women’s rights and sexual revolutions.”
Johnson also may have been instrumental in gathering support for Trump’s false claims of election fraud in 2020, and his position in the GOP owes a great deal to his complete loyalty to Trump, as well as his “big lie” about the “stolen election in 2020.”
In terms of public policy, the Christian Right has worked to end abortion, euthanasia, contraception, pornography, gambling, and have managed to influence many states and legislatures to place strict restrictions on abortion after the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
In consistent efforts to undo the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s, even contraception is on the line.
As Lauren Weber reports in The Washington Post, Republicans in both Missouri and Louisiana recently blocked pro-contraception bills by lying that they cause abortions. A right-wing Idaho think tank is urging the state to ban the morning-after pill and IUDs by claiming, falsely, that they are ‘abortifacients.’”
According to evangelical Christian doctrine, God’s plan is for sexual relations to take place only in the context of marriage between a man and a woman – and preferably for the purpose of procreating. (So, who needs contraceptives, right?) And now, many state governors and legislatures have outlawed any form of gender altering therapies; gender fluidity, and the use of pronouns like “they” look like a definite rejection of traditional values.
The long war on Roe v. Wade ended with the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), explicitly tearing down at least one of the three hated Supreme Court decisions from the Warren and Burger courts. Washing their hands of first trimester abortion as a woman’s right to exercise without government interference, the Court effectively (and explicitly) hands abortion and related issues back to the states. And predictably, since Dobbs, some states have been active in asserting the rights of unborn children –– even zygotes not yet implanted in a womb –– seeing them as God’s creatures that must be saved.
For example, in Alabama, the court allowed a wrongful death claim to proceed against a fertility clinic in a hospital; the clinic had an unauthorized visitor who found some fertilized eggs in a freezer, but dropped them. The would be parent “owners” of the fertilized eggs sued, and certainly it was an expensive loss; in-vitro-fertilization can be a costly, time-consuming process. In February of 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children under state law. In LePage v. Mobile Infirmary Clinic, Inc., the Court highlighted that “the Wrongful Death of A Minor Act applies on its face to all unborn children, without limitation.
Pro-life Christians were divided: if we need more children from loving, Christian marriages, isn’t in-vitro-fertilization one of God’s gift to us? Yet after considerable debate, in the June meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention –– the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. –– delegates voted to condemn the use of in vitro fertilization, “signaling the campaign by evangelicals against abortion is widening to include the popular fertility treatment.” With enough political clout, evangelicals may even convince some lawmakers to ban IVF in some states.
But such controversies only reveal how myopic the majority in Dobbs was in believing it had “settled” the question of abortion in the U.S. by leaving it to states. Meanwhile, the current Court has consistently upheld claims of “religious freedom,” even where the “free exercise of religion” impacts the freedom of others to worship (or not worship) as they may freely choose.
The Justia Supreme Court site on the internet lists a number of cases where SCOTUS has upheld the exercise of religion, but none of these cases involve the free exercise of religion by Muslims, Jews, or other religious denominations or sects.
Listed first is the Kennedy v. Bremerton School District case (2022). The thumbnail description on the Justia site is fairly bland, and actually misleading in its description of the “holding” of the Court:
The Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses protect an individual engaging in a personal religious observance from government reprisal. The Constitution neither mandates nor permits the government to suppress such religious expression.
But the facts of the case reveal that football players on Kennedy’s team, wanting to be in good graces with the coach, joined him (mostly voluntarily, supposedly) in Christian prayer after games on the 50-yard line. Justice Gorsuch and the 6-3 conservative majority discarded a 1971 precedent in doing so. The school district, after considerable time and internal debate, had determined that it should not be promoting a particular religious viewpoint, and eventually fired Coach Kennedy when he insisted on his “free exercise” of religion.
But Christian Nationalism is now closely aligned with White Christian Nationalism, although many Christian nationalists are not white and would reject explicitly white Christian Nationalism.
“In a recent book with sociologist Samuel L. Perry of the University of Oklahoma, Gorski traces white Christian nationalism in the United States to the late 1600s. Adherents believe in the idea that America was founded by Christians who modeled its laws and institutions after Protestant ideals with a mission to spread the religion and those ideals in the face of threats from non-whites, non-Christians, and immigrants.”
Also, House Speaker Mike Johnson has deep ties to a movement called the New Apostolic Reformation—a network of politically ambitious church leaders, pulled largely from a kind of Christianity called Neo-Charismatic Pentecostalism. NAR leaders (typically known as “apostles”) have been credited with stoking the large and influential Christian nationalist contingent at the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The Seven Mountains:
Backed by a network of nondenominational, charismatic Christians known as the New Apostolic Reformation, this mandate calls on its adherents to establish what they believe to be God’s kingdom over the seven core areas of society, It holds that there are seven aspects of society that believers seek to influence: family, religion, education, media, arts & entertainment, business, and government.
The “Appeal to Heaven” flag
Notably noticed at Justice Samuel Alito’s second home in New Jersey, the Appeal to Heaven flag has clear political meaning. Andre Gagne is a professor and chair of the theological studies department at Concordia University in Montreal. Interviewed by Slate Magazine, in January 2024, he commented:
“This flag was very much popularized in NAR circles. The flag initially was used during the Revolutionary War. The idea of an Appeal to Heaven comes from John Locke, who wrote about this idea of an appeal to heaven against the political idea of the divine right of kings. You can appeal to heaven: There’s someone greater than the king. This concept was against tyranny. It’s interesting how this flag has completely turned. The way that they understand Trump is like a king. You’re using this flag to support the idea that Trump should be president, that he’s chosen by God. So I think all of this speaks very loudly about their profound fascination with power, and ultimate power.”
In short, it’s about power to install a Godly kingdom, even by violent means; it is not so much about the freedom to exercise and express your values (religious or otherwise) in a pluralistic society. The very idea that we could have different religious views and practices seems to offend Christian Nationalists.
Finally, it must be mentioned that in the past, organized hate groups in the U.S. were willing to use violence to maintain their economic, social, and cultural dominance. The Ku Klux Klan comes to mind.
The KKK conflated the United States with the Kingdom of God. It positioned the U.S. as “an organization whose code of conduct was Christianity.” It referred to the Constitution as an almost divinely inspired document on a level near the Bible. The Klan also spoke of the “restoration” of a bygone era of Christian morality to which the nation must return if it would be great again.
Most glaringly, the narrow racial ideology of Klan is exposed. The “true American” in the view of the KKK is a “native born, white, Gentile, Protestant.” That eliminates immigrants from any non-European nations, Black people, indigenous people, Jewish people, and Catholics among others.
The white nationalist movement has grown considerably since the election of Barack Obama to the U.S. presidency. In 2023, the Southern Poverty Law Center, “documented 1,430 hate and antigovernment extremist groups that comprise the organizational infrastructure upholding white supremacy in the U.S. The years since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection have been a time for the hard right to prepare. In 2023, those opposing inclusive democracy worked to legitimize insurrection, paint hate as virtuous and transform false conspiracy theories into truth. . .”
Several great books on the rise of Christian Nationalism are worth reading. Here I point to just two, plus two recent films. You must look at these, at the risk of not understanding that, as Q (of Q Anon has proclaimed), “the Storm is Coming.”
The first of these two books is by Kristin Kobes Du Mez, of Calvin College in Michigan, herself raised as an evangelical Christian. She traces the roots of Christian nationalism and its rising influence in “conservative” circles to the post World War II period in the U.S. The majority of white American evangelicals support Trump, Du Mez says, because he embodies the kind of militant masculinity they have learned to love.
“Since the 1960s,” Du Mez notes, “male blue-collar work such as construction, manufacturing and agriculture had been in decline” while sectors open to educated women “such as health care, retail, education, finance and food service” were rapidly expanding. At the same time, “American culture still associated masculinity with working-class jobs.” By the 1970s, American men were in the throes of an identity crisis. But in the 1960s, the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement and second-wave feminism shattered American confidence. If the country was as imperialist, racist and misogynistic as her critics were claiming, the “goodness” of America was cast in doubt.
Today, we see enormous pushback against anything that would change the status quo of the 1950s: proud militancy for the American Way (the Cold War), continued segregation, a woman’s place in the home, back-alley abortions, and an economy energized by fossil fuels.
Scott Coley’s book, Ministers of Propaganda, digs into the rhetoric and Biblical cherry-picking of scripture that supports “Christo-authoritarianism” and an ideology that presses Christian theology into the service of authoritarian politics.
Finally, two relatively new films discuss the rising threat of Christian Nationalism to pluralism and peace in the U.S. The first is “God and Country.”
By all means, watch this trailer. In it, you will hear evangelical leaders saying that “democracy can go to hell” and that anyone is who doesn’t agree with its agenda is a “God hating communist.” That includes all Democrats, and especially Joe Biden, who is evidently Satan’s agent on Earth. (Maybe they should call them “Demoncrats.”)
Religious militancy is a very old story in the history of humankind. In the following link, we can find persecution of all sorts of religions, and of sects within Christianity.
I’ve heard and read plenty of scripture, including both Old and New Testaments. I’ve been a regular churchgoer since my baptism at age 4. The Gospel message from Jesus of inclusion, love, and brotherhood is not embraced by Christian Nationalists, who are able to find passages in the Bible that suggest violence as a proper means to a Godly end. In fact, they reject the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus spoke the now oft-repeated Lord’s Prayer. Statements from the Beatitudes such as “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”) are dismissed as “liberal talking points.”
It’s time to put religious militancy to rest, and to again embrace the notion that the U.S is a place of refuge for all beliefs and all religions, not just one. Believing otherwise – that there is one true religion to which we must all bow –– is legal, but deadly wrong, especially when “restoring the U.S. to its Godly mission” is an old and misguided trope, one that invites endless conflict and slaughter. We should be clear to see Christian nationalism for what it is: a threat to a pluralistic, secular society. Its passionate adherents understand this fully; most of us do not.
At age 81, most Americans –– even many Democrats –– have understood that the challenges of our time demand what President Kennedy once called “vigah.” Energy, force, passion, drive: in the CNN debate on June 27, 2024, Donald Trump offered a fire-hose of lies and perpetually attacked, but the contrast with Joe Biden on energy and passion was obvious from the start.
As to Trump’s many lies including that Democrats like Biden favor “killing babies,” here’s a good run down, a fact check on both candidates from PolitiFact (the Poynter Institute)
But so many have been conditioned to Trump’s extreme lies, it’s no longer news somehow, no matter how outrageous; and being an old moderate is clearly not the voter’s current preference. So now the Democratic Party is in a very tough position; changing horses in the middle of the stream has all kinds of complexities and uncertainties. Some observers doubt that it can be done, and it certainly can’t be done unless Biden voluntarily gives up the convention delegates committed to him.
But why in the world, at age 80 –– a year ago –– did President Biden not say, “This is my only term as President of the U.S. The party and the country need new leadership from someone much younger.”
Most likely, the answer is “ego.” Our friend Bob Vanourek (author of Triple Crown Leadership) had plenty of experience leading companies; one of his mantras for leaders is, “Your ego is not your amigo.” Egos so often get in the way of clear-headed decisions that work for ourselves and those around us.
Hanging on to a job past your prime is human, understandable, and (of course) perfectly legal. So is a stubborn refusal to face reality. But the wrong here has immense consequences, not only for Joe Biden and his family, but for the entire nation, or even the world.
Under the brutal heat dome that hovered over the eastern seaboard in mid-June of 2024, my family and I were in Washington D.C. to do the typical tourist things: the Air and Space museum, Arlington Cemetery, the Holocaust Museum, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the U.S. Capitol tour, and more. My wife found an ideal location near Eastern Market and Capitol Hill. The space was cool and comfortable, and very well equipped –– other than just one dish towel, a notable absence of spoons and forks, and an air conditioning system that whined loudly and made for a sleepless first night until the second night, when we turned it off just before bedtime.
The afternoon before our last day, the fire alarm went off, although there was no smell of smoke; some water was dripping into our downstairs unit from above, and the noise from the alarm was loud and obnoxious; but I guess no one would ever sleep through it!
Some kind of corporate fire alert system had been installed near the entrance to property, which had six rental units in it. The alert system panel included a large number of buttons, including one to push to stop the alarm and one to immediately notify the company operating the system; but this turned out to be hopelessly useless. Even calling the number on the panel yielded nothing but the advice to call the fire department. So, after urgently texting our host and getting no response, we called the DC Fire Department, and they showed up right away, with a lot of interesting tools: special axes, hooks, and a unique looking crowbar.
We let them know that water was dripping through the ceiling in a couple of places, and they decided to check the upstairs apartments. When no one answered at the first one, we watched them break down the door, but they discovered nothing; above that apartment, they had to break down another door, and found a sink which had been left running by one of the tenants. (Later, a comment from the Captain in charge of the DC FD crew: “You’d be surprised how often that happens; stupid people keep us very busy.” Somehow, the property manager learned what was going on, and after the sink was shut off by the guys from the DCFD, we were told by a representative from the property management company that the property had to be vacated immediately for repairs.
So we called our “host,” someone purportedly named Paul, to let him know the situation. Here’s where it gets weird: we repeatedly asked “Paul” to call us by phone but he refused to do anything but text on the Airbnb app. Some of the responses were a bit stiff and non-responsive, but he eventually made an offer for us to stay in a different place in D.C. that he owned for our last night; but the location was not at all convenient. He refused to give us any other options or any sort of refund to find our own more convenient place, and refused to call. Our daughter in law, well experienced in corporate ways, looked at all of the texting between us and Paul, and quickly concluded that we were dealing with . . . a bot.
Bots don’t call, but they do text as though they were human.
WTF? Back when Airbnb was getting started, we used it a lot, and there was always a real person who was the host. A bit of investigation reveals that more and more Airbnb “hosts” are actually LLCs or other corporate entities. As noted in Vox, in November of 2023:
“Airbnb began as a more flexible, more social experience than hotels, but that sense of peer-to-peer exchange has all but disappeared. Airbnb hosts today are often professionals who intend for hosting to be their main job and source of income, and new hosts often list entire homes rather than home-sharing their primary residence. Many form LLCs, hire employees, or engage the services of professional property management companies to manage their listings. The majority of Airbnbs are run by hosts with multiple listings. That’s contributing to the persistent shadow now looming over Airbnb: the perception that it’s a social ill worsening the housing crisis.” (from What happened to Airbnb? Financially, the sharing economy darling is thriving, but guests, hosts, and cities have had enough.)
Notably, absentee owners generally are driving up affordability in many markets. Your commentator believe that Airbnb now has a lot of absentee owners.
Back in the heat dome, we spent most of the afternoon outside on the sidewalk, dealing with the “fire” at the Airbnb, and did find other lodging for the night; our daughter in law had plenty of “points” with Marriott, so we got a great location in City Center near the White House. Eventually, through my wife’s persistence, we were able to get a credit for the night’s stay we didn’t use, but we had to call Airbnb’s help line, not the host, and eventually, too, secured $250 for our inconvenience –– from Airbnb corporate.
So, what’s going on here? Wealthy individuals, or business entities, have transformed what was initially a room sharing service with hosts into a money maker for owners of Airbnb properties. The proper remedy is to do what both Asheville N.C. and Boulder Colorado have done: require Airbnb properties to always have a host in residence. To some, this may seem like bureaucratic “red tape,” impinging on the freedom of those who want to make more money. To us, it seems like good manners, good ethics, and plain old common sense to have a responsive host on hand for people visiting from other places. The “bottification” of Airbnb is really a story of how many corporate absentee owners will be content to count their dollars more than care about their customers.
Want to know if your Airbnb host is actually a “bot”? See how much personal information is provided about your host, and see if the same issues keep cropping up in customers’ reviews: for example, we noticed that the “host” had been notified about the absence of forks and spoons, as well as the noisy AC system, many times, with no resolution. That’s a solid sign that there is no “someone” who actually cares about your vacation. Again, as noted by Vox, that sense of “peer to peer” has all but disappeared. It’s a sad sign of our corporate-driven times. All “perfectly legal,” of course.
I’ve long admired Norm Ornstein, a public intellectual who leans conservative and has written several books that illuminate the current political dysfunctions in the United States. See, for example, It’s Even Worse than it Looks, reviewed here by Robert Kaiser for the Washington Post in 2012.
In 2017, Ornstein wrote this in The Atlantic, starting to see U.S. government as becoming a “kakistocracy” ––
“Kakistocracy is a term that was first used in the 17th century; derived from a Greek word, it means, literally, government by the worst and most unscrupulous people among us. More broadly, it can mean the most inept and cringeworthy kind of government. The term fell into disuse over the past century or more, and most highly informed people have never heard it before (but to kids familiar with the word “kaka” it might resonate).”
Kakistocracy is, of course, perfectly legal. The Constitution has no intelligence tests for people seeking public office in the U.S., and certainly has no requirements that a public office holder must have either morals or common sense. The recently expelled George Santos is a case in point, whose lies and corruption were so epic that even GOP members of the House could no longer stomach his presence in Congress.
Rep. Dan Kildee of Michigan is quoted in the NY Times article linked above as saying that the current Congressional session has been the “most unsatisfying period in my time in Congress because of the absolute chaos and the lack of any serious commitment to effective governance.”
This surge of departers is due at least in part because the government cannot seem to get basic things done, such as (1) funding the government and (2) keeping people safe from mass shootings. Commentator Jack Beatty, on his podcast for WBUR in Boston, reminds us that in the Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes posited that the most important function of government is to provide security for its citizens.
It doesn’t have to be this way. But bringing back good government will require a number of steps, including a more honest mainstream and social media, a citizenry re-educated on the benefits of democratic capitalism, and business leaders who refuse to support liars and cheats with campaign donations or to support those who refused to certify Joe Biden’s victory in 2020. Many large corporations issued statements condemning the Jan. 6 attack on democracy, but then kept giving substantial sums of money to Republican lawmakers who refused to certify the results of the 2020 election.
Two centuries ago, Alexis De Tocqueville’s observations about American life and values became a classic; today, we have the observations of Martin Wolf of the Financial Times to tell us how we might restore democratic capitalism in the United States.
It’s a bit dense, but well worth the reading time. Our collective tolerance for our kakistocracy in the U.S. cannot continue if we expect to preserve democratic capitalism.
Elon Musk might just be one of the most interesting people on the planet: head of Space X, Tesla, and the Boring Company, he seems to be everywhere all at once. Without his Starlink system (part of Space X), Ukraine would lack the ability to track Russian drone attacks. Walter Isaacson, who has written epic biographies of Steve Jobs, made Elon Musk the subject of his latest biography, which has been well received, and pays tribute not only to Musk’s genius, but his “dark side” (or demon mode) as well. Listen to this wonderful interview of Isaacson by David Axelrod on “the Axe Files.”
Doubtless, Musk really is a genius, especially when it comes to technology. But, as Isaacson notes, Musk has difficulty looking people in the eye, and lacks “emotional receptors,” so instead of buying Twitter, should have “stuck to batteries and rocket ships.”
Speaking of Twitter, and the lack of EI (emotional intelligence), why is he so tone deaf that he is still “tweeting” (or “Xing”) that tired and fully discredited Q Anon claim about Comet Ping Pong Pizza harboring sex trafficking Democrats?
(Readers of this blog will recognize an earlier post on the Comet Ping Pong Pizza, a delightful establishment in Northwest D.C. that your faithful chronicler visited in June of 2022.)
Recently, NBC News has reported that Musk has referenced “Pizzagate” five times in the past two weeks.
Here’s a gentle reminder to our readers: matters of “right” and “wrong” begin with the truth.
I had a first grade teacher, Mrs. Marts, who was frustrated with one of my classmates’ acting out, and she pretty much lost it, saying in a loud voice, “Don’t you know the difference between right and wrong?” (“I guess not,” said the boy.)
It occurs to me now that if you can’t tell truth from fiction, as Musk evidently does not, or does not care to, you can’t tell what’s right or wrong, either. What’s most concerning about “the world’s richest man” [1] is that on something as basic as truth vs. fiction, he knoweth not. A mighty tech titan, for sure, but morally? Lacking EI (ethical intelligence) makes Musk a bit of a moral midget, don’t you think?
[1] BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55578403
