Politics

Politically, I’m very liberal — about as far left as one can go without sliding into Libertarianism.

My local indigenous history

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A followup to yesterday’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day:

According to this map, I (along with many of my Seattle-area friends) live on Duwamish tribal land, part of the Puget Sound Coast Salish tribal group (is that the right term to use?). The closest village was “sawh-WAHWH-weh-wad (‘place of whistling’). Duwamish. On Cedar River about 2 miles above present-day town of Renton. This village was occupied by the riverine Duwamish or doo-AHBSH, after doo (‘inside’) referring to (present-day) Duwamish River, Black River and Cedar River, along all of which this group resided.”

Lushootseed (which has several dialects) was the language spoken in the area.

The land was part of Cession 347, taken by the United States in the Point Elliott Treaty in 1855, ratified and proclaimed in 1859 (19KB .pdf). The signatory for the Duwamish was Chief Si’ahl, namesake of the city of Seattle. For all the land taken by this treaty, the tribes were “paid” $150k (roughly $4.3 million in today’s dollars — or roughly 1.3% of the cost of Avengers: Infinity War), distributed over nineteen years not as direct funds, but “to be applied to the use and benefit” of the tribes as directed by the government.

Despite being the first signatory tribe of the Point Elliott Treaty and having cultural history and stories dating back to the last ice age, the Duwamish Tribe is still not recognized as an indigenous nation by the United States Government.

The Why of Silence

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“But why don’t women just say something when it happens? Why not speak up? Why stay silent?”

This is why, you self-centered, short-sighted, unempathetic, thundering idiots.

Christine Blasey Ford was hesitant to come forward with allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh because she feared facing public attacks. “Why suffer through the annihilation if it’s not going to matter?” she said in an interview with the Washington Post.

Her fears were not unfounded. Within hours of revealing her identity, personal attacks were launched against Ford. Some Senators expressed their doubts about the truthfulness of Ford’s statements. Sen. Orrin Hatch asserted that Ford was “mixed up.”

Now, the New York Times is reporting that Ford is being sent death threats.

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“If you actually care about reducing or eliminating the number of abortions in our country, simply HOLD MEN RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS. ALL unwanted pregnancies are caused by the irresponsible ejaculations of men. Period. Don’t believe me? Let me walk you through it.”

The Propaganda of Resistance

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The NYT “Part of the Resistance ” piece is strategic conservative propaganda, not self-promotion.

This strikes me as an astute analysis of the letter (thinking about tone and intended audience). So much about this letter has been bothering me, and this is a chunk of it.

(Another chunk is that the letter author is describing a shadow/puppet government, which further abandons the in-built checks and balances in a dangerous undermining of our system, putting the underlying health of our country even more at risk than it already was.)

This is NOT the administration falling apart. It’s A+, live action storytelling with a controlled demolition, and it’s actually really dangerous. Behind the structure of the NYT piece lies the strategy for how the republican party plans to catch the pieces as they start falling.

Now is the time we need to get ahead of this. Instead of sitting back and watching the pieces fall, or flipping out and calling for the writer to resign, in the next few days we need to pre-empt this new narrative and have conversations with the significant voters in our lives now.