Another Juneteenth, Another Trump Presidency

My employer first started treating Juneteenth as a company holiday back in 2020, back when we still believed we could “stop the spread” of the COVID-19 pandemic, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by police. Five years later, Juneteenth is a federal holiday, by virtue of the single term of Joe Biden’s presidential administration and Democratic control of Congress. But as was the case in 2020, Donald Trump is president again.

Especially today, it is a struggle to navigate the cognitive dissonance of observing as a holiday the news of emancipation finally reaching enslaved black folks in Texas when the country’s electorate willingly shackled itself to a demonstrably corrupt and incompetent felon in 2024. The year is not even half over and we’ve watched the re-segregation of our government, experienced and capable generals being fired because they are black, the return of the names of Confederate traitors to military bases, and many more indignities to combat “DEI”. Many corporations, universities, and municipalities are beating as hasty a retreat from the reckoning George Floyd’s murder was supposed to bring as they did rushing to place themselves on the right side of that moment. Even today’s Juneteenth celebrations have been much smaller than in past years because of that retreat.

A year from now, will Juneteenth even be recognized as a federal holiday anymore? What other anti-black backlash might we see in a country that so readily installed a criminal in the nation’s highest office and refuses to take any accountability for what they’ve done? Historians call the period from the end of Reconstruction through the early 20th century the nadir of racial relations in the United States. But where we find ourselves today feels like we may be well into a new nadir.

Thoughts on Being a Gray Dad on Father's Day

Jelani Cobb’s weekend essay, The Old Man, proved a timely and thoughtful read. I was 41 when my twins, Elliott and Emily, were born. I can’t imagine starting the fatherhood journey with twins at 50 as Cobb did, though he’d helped raise a stepdaughter previously. Raising twins has been, and continues to be the most challenging life experience I’ve ever had. One of my closest friends is also gray dad, helping raise two stepdaughters before having two more children (his eldest daughter is around the same age as my twins).

My dad was 26 when I was born, 30 when my younger sister was born. What they may not have given us when it came to material things was more than surpassed by the time, attention, and energy they gave us. Decades later I can trace my loves of reading, museums, music, travel, nature, and cycling to time I spent with my dad doing all of those things. I’ve gotten to revisit some of the same places with my twins that my dad took my sister and I when we were small, including Brookside Gardens and Wheaton Regional Park.

How we parent is inevitably influenced by how we were parented, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Whenever I talk with my dad these days, he worries about where he fell short as a dad. But considering that he was raised by his grandparents in Jamaica in the 1950s because his parents were teenagers, it’s remarkable that he didn’t allow his strict upbringing to translate into corporal punishment or strict religiosity in parenting my sister and I. We did not lack for discipline or structure at all though. When I reflect on how I parent, I must concede I’m overly strict with the twins at times. But I also hug my kids a lot more than my dad did us when we were growing up. It was interesting to read about Cobb’s fellow gray dads being more mature, having more insight, and being more patient, because I feel none of those things! Whether it’s my son having special needs or my daughter’s anxiety challenges, I feel over-matched as often as I feel like I know the right course of action to take.

Cobb’s last paragraph about “awkward life talks” brought back both memories of my dad giving me a book instead of a conversation about “the birds and the bees”. It was also a reminder that we gray dads have more life behind us than in front of us and we need to take teh best care of ourselves possible so we can give our best to our children with the time we have.

Yet Another Tribute to Andor

This is my tribute to Andor. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

As I write this, over a week has passed since the final three episodes of Andor aired. The praise for the show has been nearly universal—and well-deserved. A handful of monologues alone—from Karis Nemik, Luthen Rael, Saw Gerrera, and Mon Mothma—could be some of the best-written and best-delivered lines ever aired. But to figure out why this show worked so well across numerous dimensions—sci-fi, espionage, and politics—it took this brief video to find my answer.

youtu.be/8xY7cA_W7…

About a minute into this interview with Anton Lesser (who plays Lio Partagaz), he relates a piece of advice that Tony Gilroy gave him: “Don’t think Star Wars, think John Le Carre.” For me, that single phrase doesn’t just explain the brilliance of Andor, but Rogue One and the Bourne movies as well.

John Le Carré was only the best novelist working in the espionage genre of all time. As a child raised on public television (including Masterpiece Theater), their adaptation of A Perfect Spy was my first exposure to serious espionage fiction. Most of the best spy stories ever put on screen—Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Constant Gardner, The Night Manager, A Most Wanted Man—are adaptations of his work.

Even as someone who was confident that the Bourne movies would be good (having read some of Robert Ludlum’s novels many years before they were adapted for the screen), it wasn’t until seeing this little interview that Gilroy’s aspirations became clear. With his work on Andor, he aspired to create a Le Carré-level espionage story within the Star Wars universe. In retrospect, Gilroy writing all of the Bourne movies explains how much more grounded they seem when compared to most other spy movies and shows.

When it comes to my fandoms, espionage is the second-oldest behind science fiction. Before Andor, there was a similarly-brilliant show which ran for just two seasons called Counterpart. Created by Justin Marks (who would go on to create the brilliant adaptation of Shogun), it’s a story set in parallel Earths created by a Cold War experiment in East Germany during the Cold War. Counterpart sadly did not get the third season I felt it desired, and in retrospect Andor definitely scratched the particular itch of Cold War Berlin-based espionage story.

Growing up in the Maryland suburbs of DC, politics was and is a long-term preoccupation of mine. NPR was always on the radio whenever my dad took my sister and I anywhere in the car. My first real job was as a tech intern for The Washington Post during the 1992 presidential campaign. Political dramas—both domestic and foreign (especially British ones) have always been interesting TV to me. The original House of Cards was the first for me, followed by The West Wing, and the American remake of House of Cards, whose writing alum Beau Willimon would go on to play a prominent role in some of the best writing in Andor. One of my social media mutuals succinctly described the greatness of the political aspects of Andor this way:

“Yeah I love how it was presented as fully Arendt and didn’t insult us by pretending a tragic backstory can somehow justify monstrosity.”

Dr. Foust reminded me of a few key elements of Andor with this comment. First, Hannah Arendt, the historian and philosopher who coined the phrase “the banality of evil” in writing about Adolf Eichmann’s trial for his role in planning and executing the Holocaust. The Imperial Security Bureau (ISB) is fictional, but they seem deliberately reminiscent of the Stasi and the Gestapo which preceded it. The characters who work for the ISB under Partagaz (Blevin, Meero) are ordinary people playing their parts as gears in the machinery of fascism. Second, Syril Karn, who graduates from failed corporate cop in season 1 to ISB spy and Dedra Meero’s love interest in season 2, is the first of numerous ISB agents to be used up and discarded by the machine they’ve been serving. Karn’s end is tragic, but it doesn’t make what he did to enable the Ghorman Massacre any less evil.

An underrated part of what makes Andor more than just entertaining is just how generous Tony Gilroy and the actors & creators of the show have been in talking about what underlies the writing and their performances in interviews. What Gilroy says specifically about fascism in Andor is very enlightening. He’s also explicit about the 1942 Wannsee conference (where Third Reich high command plotted the so-called Final Solution) as a reference for Krennic’s meeting with select ISB officers plotting the pretext to crush Ghorman to take a mineral necessary to power the Death Star. Particularly now when our own government is using its power to crush dissent in higher education, and to violate the rights of both immigrants and
elected officials with impunity, Andor uses the galaxy far, far away to speak very loudly to the present moment. Beyond the actual makers of the show, YouTubers like MaceAhWindu and Generation Tech have produced very thoughtful commentary on Syril Karn, Tay Kolma, Saw Gerrrera, and Lonni Jung.

Disney has submitted the 2nd season of Andor for Emmy consideration in numerous categories. Regardless of whether they win or not, they have made a truly astonishing creation: a prestige drama in the Star Wars universe. Andor is without doubt the finest show that Disney+ has ever made, and the very best Star Wars that isn’t The Empire Strikes Back or the original Star Wars. It turns Rogue One from an interesting, stand-alone anthology entry into a fitting conclusion of Cassian Andor’s story.

Thoughts on the Press on World Press Freedom Day

Were it not for emails requesting donations from The Center for Investigative Reporting and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, I wouldn’t have known today was World Press Freedom Day. I’ve been donating money to these organizations for years because I value and admire their work. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of a great deal of the mainstream press.

Some will disagree but I believe it fair to argue that many in the mainstream press used their freedom to aid and abet the return of Donald Trump to the White House by consistently drawing false equivalences between him and Kamala Harris, and by normalizing and sane-washing his statements prior to the election when they were anything but. In many ways, the biggest organs of the mainstream press continue the work of normalizing the abnormal whether it comes to continuing flurry of executive orders from the White House or the work of DOGE to infiltrate government and non-government entities alike to gain access to everyone’s private data.

For in-depth reporting on what’s happening in the Nation’s Capital (effectively my backyard since I live in a Maryland suburb), I must depend on publications like Wired, ProPublica, and other independent media sources instead of The Washington Post. Independent journalists like Marcy Wheeler (of Emptywheel), collectives like Flaming Hydra, and others are doing the vital work of actually informing the public in this moment. So on this World Press Freedom Day, if you’re not already doing so, donate and/or subscribe to an independent media organization using their press freedom for good–and share their work.

I Am Weary of Dispatches from the "Heartland"

The latest one comes from John Dick (via excerpts from Mark Cuban), founder and CEO of a company called CivicScience who hails from Hyndman, PA. We read that small-town PA doesn’t care about the global economy. We read about population decline, closing of schools, the paucity of jobs, and the shorter life expectancy of its residents compared to residents of nearby Pittsburgh. We read about the people of Hyndman valuing their “way of life” more than money. We read “both sides” condemnation of left elite snobs and right elite pols grasping for power, and justification of their continued support for Trump because there’s a 1% chance he might bring back those high-paying manufacturing jobs. We’ve heard and seen and read many variations of this story. NYT Pitchbot has mocked them with increasingly impressive accuracy for years. But I am sick and tired of these stories.

Unspoken in seemingly every one of these dispatches from the so-called heartland is the overwhelming whiteness of the specific places they come from. The reported demographics of Hyndman as of 2000 are 98% white. But rural and exurban America does not consist solely of white folks. Nearly 25% of rural Americans were non-white, per the 2020 census. They’re living through all the same trends—if not worse, because of racism and xenophobia—as the people of Hyndman, and while Trump’s share of those voters increased, they fall far short of significant majority share of the white vote Trump has always had. These wannabe tribunes of the white working class never have an explanation for why non-white working class people subscribe to Trump’s worldview at such significantly lower rates.

“But the economy is rocking! Why don’t they just go to community college, move to the city, and learn to code?” How are you sneering at community college and accusing others of being morally superior? Community colleges educate and train the vast majority of people who work in hospitals that aren’t MDs? My mother and many of their friends came to the country and went to community college to earn their LPN and then RN. So do people who work as radiology techs, or phlebotomists. Those jobs helped them build middle class lives for their children so we could build better lives for ourselves and our children. One of my best friends has taught computer science at one of our local community colleges for a number of years. People need to know what they’re talking about before they open their mouths to trash-talk community colleges.

It isn’t moral or intellectual superiority to say that at least one reason that places like Hyndman are dying is because of their hostility to immigrants and other forms of change. Plenty of rural places in this country got a new lease on life because immigrants came and took the least attractive jobs, put money into housing and elsewhere in the local economy and helped revive otherwise flagging tax bases and dying main streets.

Resistance to change isn’t about education or culture, it’s about entitlement. You can believe all you want that you are entitled to live the life you want to live without having to make any adjustments or changes, but that’s not the actual world we live in. I was raised with a very clear understanding that the world doesn’t owe me a living, that success would require work, and that even hard work was not a guarantee of success.

Not caring about the way of life of other Americans isn’t a virtue—it’s selfishness. And voting for Trump because he tells the lies that comfort you and hates the same people you blame for how your life has turned out will not improve your life in the slightest. Continuing to support him even as he fails to deliver for Hyndman and every other majority white rural and exurban place in the United States in his second term exactly the way he failed to do in the first—while enriching himself and the same people he did the last time he was in office—makes you just the latest marks in his lifetime of fraud.

Vote No On Anti-DEI Shareholder Proposals

One small way I’m pushing back against the anti-DEI tide is voting no on every such shareholder proposal for companies held in my retirement accounts. A MAGA ETF called American Conservative Values ETF uses their holdings of common stocks to submit anti-DEI shareholder proposals. US Bancorp is the first of my holdings where I found such a proposal (on page 83), but I suspect it won’t be the last. I was heartened to see the board of directors recommend a no vote against this proposal and hope every public-traded company does so as well when such proposals are made.

The Cavalcade of Cowardice Grows

According to this Wall Street Journal story, Google is the latest company to join the bandwagon of anti-blackness sweeping the tech industry in the wake of Trump’s return to the White House. They emailed their staff and said Google “would no longer set hiring targets to improve representation in its workforce”.

What they’re really saying with that statement is that they’re no longer going to look everywhere for the best talent. Google’s claim that they will “continue opening and expanding offices in cities with diverse workforces” doesn’t seem sincere or trustworthy either. Entirely unaddressed by the story is the fate of the former Howard West (and current Tech Exchange), Google’s partnership with select HBCUs and HSIs to increase the number of black and Hispanic students in computer science. Even the retention of affinity groups for minority employees seems like a cynical move to prevent a mass exodus of employees that would be bad for PR somehow in a way that multiple rounds of arbitrary layoffs have failed to be.

What Google, Amazon, Meta, and so many other companies are doing in not just abandoning any prior goals to seek talent everywhere, but scrubbing any evidence that they ever did so from their websites and annual reports creates an opportunity. The opportunity is for those of us who are hiring managers at companies who still believe in looking everywhere for talent to make ourselves a destination for those folks. This isn’t diversity for its own sake. This is about winning in the marketplace by beating your competitors with talented people they choose to overlook. When our results—especially the financial ones—prove superior to our cowardly competition, we need to be clear that our commitment to finding and hiring overlooked talent is why we’re winning.

Blaming Joe Biden for a Government He No Longer Runs

This Franklin Foer piece is useful in a few ways:

  • it makes clear that the destruction of the administrative state currently in-progress is a longstanding GOP goal (not a new invention of Trump’s)
  • it correctly laments the human toll of the psychological warfare being waged on longtime civil servants
  • it makes clear that what we will lose is not just their knowledge, but the trust of the world when it comes to their investments

Foer’s piece ultimately fails in critical ways which mirror what I expect we’ll continue to see from mainstream commentators.

One of the abject failures of Joe Biden’s presidency was that he did not proselytize for his own faith in institutions, which he considered the essential bulwarks against autocracy.

To write this about a man who allowed his own son to be prosecuted by an appointee of his predecessor’s choosing is absurd. His entire political career—presidency included—is a testament to his faith in institutions, even to his own personal detriment. His resorting to the use of pardons only in the waning days of his presidency is the one acknowledgment that the institutions of government have actually failed.

Foer’s choice of target for blame is emblematic of what I expect we’ll continue to see from the chattering class: blame for what Biden supposedly did not do. Nevermind the fact that many elected Democrats are failing to meet this moment. Amy Klobuchar is still talking about finding common ground with a party that campaigned and won on mass deportation, racism, and anti-trans rhetoric. Other Senate Democrats are taking social media lessons from Cory Booker while cutting deals with the GOP on Trump’s cabinet choices to avoid staying in Washington, D.C. over the weekend.

When it comes to what I read about the continuation of the government coup that began on January 6, 2021, I will be searching for the words “Biden” and “Harris” in advance before I invest any additional time in a piece. If they aren’t writing in detail about the nature and scale of misrule by Trump/Musk and their minions, and those trying to stop them, the words aren’t worth it.

How My Plan to Blog About a Great Podcast Episode Landed Me on Micro.blog

I’d just finished listening to episode 981 of the Hanselminutes podcast on Blogging for Developers on my way home from work and felt inspired to write something. The episode reminded me that I’d started blogging way back in 2003, and that reading an old Scott Hanselman post years after he wrote it pushed me to revive my own blog after about 5 years of social media posting instead. But when I went to update my WordPress blog, something broke. A week later, I still haven’t figured out how to fix it.

Hanselman and his guest (Mark Downie) mentioned Micro.blog in the course of their conversation, its low hosting costs, and the “publish on your own site, syndicate everywhere” (POSSE) concept it’s built around. I had already been on the hunt for new tech to host and run my blog with because of the increasingly strange and hostile actions of WordPress co-founder Matthew Mullenweg toward WP Engine and other long-standing members of the WordPress community. I hadn’t made much progress yet with Eleventy, and when I learned that Micro.blog had a WordPress import feature I decided to give it a try.

So far, it looks like every post was pulled in successfully–even if certain images and embedded videos aren’t currently showing correctly. Those are things I can (and will) fix over time. The words and ideas were (and are) the most important thing about my blog. One thing I’ve noticed about how I use social media now is that the better tweets (or skeets) work like first drafts of ideas that I expand later with full blog posts. I never posted many threads when I was more active on Twitter.

One analogy Hanselman drew that resonated with me when it comes to these social media sites is sharecropping. His old post about owning your words quotes Tim Bray:

Own your space on the Web, and pay for it. Extra effort, but otherwise you’re a sharecropper.

This is the lesson I forgot when it came to social media. Downloading my Twitter archive regularly and thinking about ways to share pictures of my twins with my parents that don’t involve Facebook or Instagram are just a couple of steps I’m taking to own my words and my photos.

As for my WordPress blog? I think an SSL certification issue may be the last remaining obstacle to genxjamerican.com working properly again. But depending on how this experiment with Micro.blog works out, I may just redirect the domain here and bid WordPress farewell.

A Foolish Nation Repeats Its Folly

Like a dog that returns to its vomit Is a fool who repeats his folly.
--Proverbs 26:11

There may not be a better symbol just how thorough this nation's retreat from multi-racial democracy has been than inauguration of an insurrectionist on the holiday honoring the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr--a man this nation murdered. Alabama and Mississippi have also chosen this day to celebrate Robert E. Lee, the general who led the Confederate army in the very first insurrection against the federal government.

I did not bother to "bear witness" to the travesty of inaugurating a convicted felon and thief of classified information. Instead, I read Michael Harriot, who encouraged us "Do not die" in a nation which has made clear it wants us to. I read the eloquent words of Rod Serling about Dr. King after he was assassinated from a letter he wrote to the LA Times on April 8, 1968 (h/t to @lizzslockeroom.bsky.social). Here is an excerpt (also available on goodreads):

In his grave, we praise him for his decency - but when he walked amongst us, we responded with no decency of our own. When he suggested that all men should have a place in the sun - we put a special sanctity on the right of ownership and the privilege of prejudice by maintaining that to deny homes to Negroes was a democratic right.

Now we acknowledge his compassion - but we exercised no compassion of our own. When he asked us to understand that men take to the streets out of anguish and hopelessness and a vision of that dream dying, we bought guns and speculated about roving agitators and subversive conspiracies and demanded law and order. We felt anger at the effects, but did little to acknowledge the causes. We extol all the virtues of the man - but we chose not to call them virtues before his death.

And now, belatedly, we talk of this man's worth - but the judgement comes late in the day as part of a eulogy when it should have been made a matter of record while he existed as a living force. If we are to lend credence to our mourning, there are acknowledgements that must be made now, albeit belatedly. We must act on the altogether proper assumption that Martin Luther King asked for nothing but that which was his due ... He asked only for equality, and it is that which we denied him.

Today is just day one of a years-long parade of indignities this country--especially those in its marginalized communities--will suffer. Mass deportation is coming. Some in leadership of state National Guard troops, having already decided they will be Trump's Gestapo, are anonymously rationalizing future obedience of illegal orders in the press. A parole program which had temporarily allowed migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to come here has already been terminated. Assaults on birthright citizenship are coming. Further assaults on voting rights are coming. The erasure of trans people is coming. And that's before we get to the imminent pardons of a great many violent January 6th insurrectionists and their release back into society.

It is cold comfort in this moment, but remembering that black people in this country have survived worse--and following their example--may be the only realistic way forward.

Marcus Garvey, Posthumously Pardoned

Photo taken 21 July 2016 by Alan Stanton of a bust of Marcus Mosiah Garvey at the since-renamed Marcus Garvey Centre in South Tottenham. South Tottenham is an area of the London Borough of Haringey.

On this last full day before leaving the White House, President Joe Biden granted a posthumous pardon to Marcus Garvey. A letter written by Yvette D. Clarke (representative of the 9th congressional district of New York) and co-signed by 19 of her Democratic colleagues appears to have been the final plea which led to this result, but was by no means the first. When you dig into the facts of his 1923 conviction on mail fraud, numerous arguments that the conviction was unjust become apparent:

  • misconduct by the prosecution
  • lack of evidence
  • biased judge
  • all-white jury
  • J. Edgar Hoover's multi-year effort to deport Garvey

While the inauguration that will take place tomorrow will accelerate the retreat from multi-racial democracy that the United States has engaged in going back to Donald Trump's first election, the Supreme Court's decision in Shelby vs Holder, and earlier, at the very least will remove an unwarranted stain from the biography of a key shaper of Pan-African thought, and an inspiration to the parents of the man we know today as Malcolm X. It was also a small bit of good news to share with my parents and cousins.

Charitable Giving in 2024 (Part 2)

This will wrap up my annual charitable giving post that I began on Christmas Eve with a Part 1.

Other Charitable Giving (continued)

Additional charitable giving recipients not listed previously include the following:

Other Giving

In addition to giving for charitable purpose that are tax-deductible, I'll highlight a few tip jars, Patreon memberships, and other avenues I've taken to support people and causes that I find worthwhile.

  • The Contraband Wagon
    I initially met him through Twitter, and he's taken on the exceedingly difficult challenge of creating constructive conversations on the issue of race. I had the honor of being a panelist for one of the live conversations he moderated on the issue of race in the tech industry. You can find clips of his conversations on YouTube and join his Patreon to get the full-length conversations.
  • Mastodon
    I began supporting the Mastodon project through Patreon in November 2022 after Elon Musk took over Twitter. As we've watched Musk turn Twitter into a propaganda and disinformation platform to (unfortunately successfully) elect Donald Trump, those of us with the means putting money behind efforts to help decentralized social media networks succeed will only grow more important. They recently began selling merchandise which also helps support their operations, which gave me an excuse to buy a stuffed version of their mascot.
  • Hachyderm
    Hachyderm.io is the Mastodon server I moved to in 2023 after initially joining the much larger mastodon.cloud. I began sponsoring them this year with a small monthly contribution via GitHub.
  • emptywheel
    The blog of independent journalist Marcy Wheeler, she's effectively become the ombudsman of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other mainstream media outlets. She doesn't just call out shortcomings and failings in their coverage, she clarifies issues that might otherwise be confusing. She's one of just two journalists I value enough to support directly.
  • Blacksky
    Created and maintained by Rudy Fraser, it is effectively its own social media network for black folks on Bluesky that leverages the AT Protocol. I began contributing to his work this month via Open Source Collective, a fiscal host for numerous open source projects I used back when I was still writing software full time including webpack, vue, ESLint, and thousands of others.

Giving Plans for 2025

I don't anticipate any changes in my financial giving plans next year beyond possibly giving a bit more to charities I already donate to, and to my church. Once I've completed a leadership training program I'm currently taking (in June 2025), I will look for an opportunity to regularly donate my time and expertise to a cause that needs them.

Charitable Giving in 2024 (Part 1)

My final post of last year talked about charitable giving, but this I'm starting a bit earlier. This annual post is as much of a self-reminder to donate to worthy causes as it is to encourage those who read them to do the same.

Religiously-Motivated Charitable Giving

In addition to donating to my home church and my high school alma mater, I gave a bit to the Adventist Community Services of Greater Washington. If you're in the DC/Metro area and are looking for a cause that helps families in need, consider them as a recipient for your year-end giving.

Other Charitable Giving

Last year's merger between CIR/Reveal and Mother Jones didn't change how they accepted donations. Researching this post gave me the opportunity to restart monthly donations to them which had lapsed. 2024 turned out to be a year of mainstream media taking a step backward in quality and/or being acquired by right-wing ideologues. January brought the purchase of The Baltimore Sun by the owner of Sinclair Broadcasting. So the advice I gave last year to find and consider supporting a local non-profit newsroom was advice I had to follow quite quickly myself. The Baltimore Banner covers what happens at Maryland's state capitol quite well. It's now my only written local news source since I dropped my Washington Post subscription after they got scooped on Justice Alito's insurrectionist flag-flying despite having a multi-year head start.

HBO/Max opted to cancel their deal with Sesame Workshop for new episodes so they're seeking a new partner. Since then, Sesame Workshop has become very active online seeking donations, and I responded. Sesame Street was a substantial part of the TV programming I consumed as a kid (because it was on PBS), and my children have too.

Another new recipient of charitable giving this year was the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. I visited in-person during the week of Thanksgiving to see the Code Switch exhibit before it closed, and bought a bunch of books in their bookstore before I left (all purchase proceeds support the center itself). You can also give directly to the New York Public Library system.

Other charitable giving recipients so far this year included the following (in no particular order):

A follow-up post after Christmas will cover the rest of my charitable giving for the year and plans for 2025.

The Return of White Impunity for Black Death

Merriam-Webster defines impunity as exemption or freedom from punishment, harm, or loss. With their acquittal of Daniel Penny on the charge of criminally-negligent homicide in his killing of Jordan Neely, impunity is what the jury granted him. Jordan Neely was lynched for having a mental health crisis while black, poor, and homeless. A jury of Daniel Penny’s peers showed him the mercy that he didn’t show Jordan Neely. It didn’t matter that that Penny’s Marine instructor testified that he executed the hold incorrectly. It didn’t matter that at least one passenger is on video warning Penny that his chokehold was going to kill Neely. It didn’t matter that Neely had no weapon and didn’t harm anyone on the train before Penny literally choked the life out of him. The video of Neely being asphyxiated is a modern-day lynching postcard now.

I’m old enough to remember watching video footage of Rodney King being beaten within an inch of his life on video. I remember watching broadcasts of the destruction that resulted from people enraged by the verdict (and some opportunists too). Fast-forward almost 30 years and one of Ahmaud Arbery’s lynchers leaked the video of his crime thinking it would help him. He and his co-conspirators will likely spend the rest of their natural lives in prison. Video of George Floyd’s excruciating death under the knee of Derek Chauvin will keep the man in prison for nearly 2 decades from now. But just 4 year later, a vigilante can strangle a man to death with impunity.

My cynical mind wonders how the jurors who acquitted Daniel Penny responded to the broad daylight murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Perhaps the response to his murder (which has included very dark jokes and applause on social media) and the response to Neely’s lynching are two sides of the same coin.

Either way, we are (and have been for far too long) a nation too comfortable with violence, too numb to the suffering of those who are most often its victims. This puts everyone in a marginalized community at greater risk—not just from police (who will operate with even greater impunity than they already had once the second Trump administration begins), but now apparently from white vigilantes also.

A Nation Without Mercy, Revisited

Yesterday, a mutual on Bluesky shared this news:

How can you be deadlocked when HIS HAIR PROBABLY SPEAKS AFRIKAANS BY ITSELF?!!

[image or embed]

— Ash Higgins (@ashhiggins.bsky.social) December 6, 2024 at 3:48 PM

It reminded me a post I wrote last year about just how broken this allegedly Christian nation's understanding of the parable of the good Samaritan is. "He had to die, just in case" may yet spare Daniel Penny up to 15 years in prison that a manslaughter conviction could yield as a sentence. Like the trial of those who lynched Ahmaud Arbery, the only reason there was a trial at all was some public outcry that Penny was initially released without charges after he was first questioned by police. While Penny is also charged with criminally negligent homicide, the maximum sentence for a conviction on that charge is just 4 years. It's also possible (if not probably) that the jury will will show Penny the mercy he lacked for Jordan Neely and find him not guilty--despite video evidence of him slowly but surely squeezing that man's life out of him.

In the time since I first wrote A Nation Without Mercy, the "active and ongoing dehumanization and criminalization of the poor and mentally-ill" has continued. The conservative majority on the Supreme Court ruled that cities can ban people from sleeping and camping in public--even if the cities offer no alternative shelter. In a country where homelessness is rising, a housing shortage persists, and Trump is returning to the White House with a government unified under GOP control, the likelihood of homeless people ending up with fines, criminal records, and even prison terms seems uncomfortably high.

We Are Going Back

I hated the "zombie Palpatine" storyline for awhile on social media, but the United States of America willingly chose to reenact this in real-life by reelecting Donald Trump. But in a result even worse than 2016, he won the popular vote--a feat he failed to achieve in two previous runs for the White House. Votes are still being counted as I write this, so we don't have a full picture of the final outcome, but it seems likely that the GOP will control all three branches of the federal government again. Trump appears to not have grown his vote totals from 2020 much at all--but some 11 million fewer people voted for Kamala Harris this cycle than voted for Joe Biden four years ago. To the extent there is any silver lining in this election wipeout, my home state is sending its first black senator to Washington, along with keeping my House representative Jamie Raskin in his seat.

Every post-mortem of Kamala Harris' loss that I've read sucks--except Michael Harriot's. It seems that black people in this country are nearly alone in believing in the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr for racial equality in this country--and that is why we are going back. The only question which remains to be answered is "how far back?" The Trump rally in Madison Square Garden before the the election suggests a return to the 1930s, when the pro-Nazi German-American Bund met openly and freely in New York, New Jersey, and elsewhere before World War II began. Trump (and JD Vance's) blood libel of law-abiding Haitian migrants in Ohio and elsewhere and their campaigning on mass deportation and border camps sets this country's return destination to the 1950s, and Operation Wetback--the largest mass deportation in this country's history. We can be certain that the same administration which birthed the child separation policy at our southern border--a policy that years later has left hundreds of children growing up with strangers, separated from their real parents--will devise a sequel to Operation Wetback which makes the original look humane by comparison. The end of birthright citizenship--another part of Trump's xenophobic plans--along with the return of the Muslim ban of his first term intimates a return to an 1860s United States after the Civil War but before the ratification of the 14th Amendment. This is just a small sample of the threats which await in the future. We don't know if the Affordable Care Act will survive. We don't know if the Department of Education will survive--along with the oversight and mandates it provides which ensure that my son gets support in public school for his special needs. We don't know what will become of the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or any other federal agency responsible for protecting Americans from threats to their physical or financial health.

From January 20, 2025 onward, things will change. The coming days, weeks, and months will bring negative impacts that Trump's non-wealthy supporters did not anticipate. Tariffs are certainly returning, along with the inflation that comes from companies increasing their prices to maintain their profit margins. I'm good on the appliances front myself, but I might be upgrading more of my personal technology earlier than I planned to avoid the price increases that tariffs will bring. The mass deportation plans, possible Affordable Care Act repeal, and other aspects of Project 2025 may create infighting, backlash, and enough pain nationwide to create a small window to mitigate some of the damage in 2026--if elections remain a thing we still have in this country. That hope may be a dangerous thing, but I will nurture it nonetheless.

Despite these future threats, I have decided to focus more on the present. What can I do today to make sure I'm ok, that my wife and kids are ok, and that the people who matter to me are ok? Answering those questions and doing as many of those things as possible, and repeating that cycle the day after that is what I can do. In addition, I can figure out what I can do beyond voting to make the spaces I inhabit and have influence in a little better. It may not be much, but it feels like a more productive and sustainable alternative than despair.

My First YouTube Video

[youtu.be/fE71ttWBu...](https://youtu.be/fE71ttWBuwo?si=0uOoP_H8zP8KAJM-)
A hastily-made tutorial for sharing your screen and sound in Zoom by yours truly

I made the tutorial you see above entirely with the following tools:

  • QuickTime Player
  • iMovie
  • Zoom

The reason I made it was a recent struggle one of the presenters of our weekly Zoom Bible study had to get their sound shared along with their screen for the music and videos that were part of the presentation.

As long as I’ve owned Macs, it wasn’t until trying to figure out how to capture what I was doing in Zoom that I learned the QuickTime Player also has a screen recording feature. So with that new (to me) information, I wrote myself a little script and followed it to record my demo.

Once I captured the demo (and the Zoom recording of the brief solo meeting I used to demonstrate screen and sound sharing), then it was time to combine them into a single video. This is where iMovie comes in.

First I pulled in the two clips and trimmed them to the desired places. Next I threw in a cross-dissolve between them. I also tried adding a voiceover to clarify that the video after the cross-dissolve was the Zoom recording created during the first part of the video but I didn’t get that voiceover audio to come through.

Still, not bad for a first effort—and it helped the very small audience for which it was intended.

Past Tense

We are reaching and surpassing dates in real-life that were formerly part of our science fiction. The screenshot which leads off this post is from part 1 of Past Tense, a time travel episode from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Given what the episode is about, it is even sadder that barely two months before the date in the screenshot the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that bans against sleeping outside do not violate the Eighth Amendment.

Toxic Fandom Keeps Winning

Amandla Stenberg and Manny Jacinto, portraying Osha Aniseya and Qimir, staring into the sunset (and the unfortunate and untimely ending of their show)

The linked Rolling Stone commentary is correct about the toxic fans of Star Wars. People like the late Shafiqah Hudson have written about this in the past. The sci-fi and fantasy genres in particular retain a unique ability to attract some of the most toxic fans around. At just 25 years old, Amandla Stenberg has been acting long enough to be attacked by toxic fans of 2 different series. Fans who supposedly love The Hunger Games somehow missed that Rue, the character she played when she was 14(!) was written by the author of the books as black.

Regardless of what is said about The Acolyte and its budget being the "real" reason for its cancellation, the premature end of the show cannot be separated from the racism and review-bombing the show received--and Disney's previous capitulations to its worst fans.