Trees and Environmental Injustice in Massachusetts (Day 91)

My husband and I participated in a Zoom webinar called Why Trees Matter for Green Development. I want to say it was fantastic, but I'm outraged.

The scientific grounding--which should be accepted information at this point, but no--was thorough and thoughtful, and I've got a name to add to my list. But the three case studies were horrifying. Two of them were in Boston proper, and one of them practically right down the street from me. For all of Boston's posturing about working with neighborhoods to deliver smart reform--for all of Massachusetts' departments touting their environmental record--you still have the state shrugging about removing four acres of wood from a predominantly Black neighborhood and shrugging when that neighborhood appeals for a review. 

What really got me was seeing footage from the "cranberry" industry that were allegedly deforested to create bogs but were really valued for their sand. The pictures made me think of West Virginia after a mountain had been blasted.

I'm reeling, but it inspires me to action, not my bed.

Don't know how I'm going to get involved, only that I will.

Deb in the City 

We have a word for this (Day 31)

I had been working on the story that became my second novel for over two decades when I finally wrote it. Suffice to say, I knew the characters really well at that point, and it should have been a matter of setting the story to paper. But in the meantime I had introduced new characters, and they brought something different to the story, and helped answer a question that had been bothering me about my main characters. Thus, one day I came to have a breakthrough about what was really going on: I didn't change any of the action, but instead changed the perspective and orientation. Now the story and characters jumped off the page and told me very clearly what I needed to do for the rest of the series.

I think it's fair to say that my writing process was influenced by my years reading and studying history. There's a reason it can be better to study older periods: if nothing else, for the most part we are less invested in the propaganda. Which is part of why it's hard to study (or write) history as it happens, especially about our own country. One way or another, we have an opinion about national mythologies, and most of us are taught to bring those opinions with us into our reading of history; hell, most of us are taught mythologies, not actual history.

But what if we could bring that same detachment with us to more recent history? What if we could narrow our eyes, cock our heads, and look at things without the noise of the propaganda? How different would history look?

I have some thoughts, but I need to do a little more research first. But I'll leave readers with this. Please read, then look at the date, and see if you can figure out why more wasn't made about this at the time.

Deb in the City

On Loyalty (Day 27)

I finished Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame and the Fight For a New World, 1848-49; I not only finished it, I took notes on it. Now I'm reading Flowers of Fire: The Inside Story of South's Korea's Feminist Movement and What It Means For Women's Rights Worldwide. Not sure why I thought the latter was going to be lighter reading, other than it's length. It's surprising and disturbing; just a few reasons why it's important to read history written by the people who didn't win.

Current events are frightening right now. Trump's latest invitation to Russia to invade NATO allies if they don't pay up would be the worst of it if yesterday hadn't brought the news of Alexei Navalny's death in a Russian prison. And the bloodletting continues in Gaza, and don't forget Ukraine. And don't forget all of the other places the news media considers beneath their (and your) notice.

It's hard to pick the worst piece of news and information among all of that, but the story I keep coming back to is Trump's stated plan to purge the government of any professional, career employees with expertise who aren't explicitly loyal *to him* and replace them with people who are, however qualified. That is terrifying, and not just because it means our government will function based on the caprices of someone who doesn't necessarily care about how a government should run. It is terrifying because it is a first, big step in turning a country to a totalitarian state.

I loathe Trump, but that notwithstanding, it's a mistake to think that he invented the idea of loyalty to an American president as opposed to the constitution. The cronies who helped Nixon cover up Watergate weren't kidding themselves that they were somehow serving the Constitution: they were serving the "office" of the president. That was, of course, bs--they were serving Nixon--but couching it that way gave the corruption a glossy, quasi-Constitutional/separation of powers shine that people didn't look at Nixon and think "fascism".

It was an ignoble idea that wasn't picked up again until Cheney started making noises about the need to protect the office of the executive; everyone knew he meant the president, and everyone knew he meant the particular one he worked for. It may have been something that would have been dropped like nuclear waste had it not been for the attacks on September 11, 2001. Then, suddenly, people began to wonder if protecting the executive wasn't such a good idea after all.

It was a weird idea to me, a Democrat, because I had seen how much protection the executive wasn't allowed when that office was occupied by Bill Clinton. But what legitimately made my skin crawl was when you heard people start talking about how much they wanted to serve George W. Bush, including his Attorney General. People started being loyal to the president himself, not the office.

I say this all the time about Trump, and I suspect I'll need to say it more: Trump is not just Trump. Trump is an aspect of something more. We will not solve the problems presented by Trump by defeating him politically (although that will help); the legal system is VERY important to use, for two reasons: 1) He broke laws. Let me repeat that for those in the back of the room: HE BROKE LAWS. If we aren't willing to prosecute him or someone like him for breaking those laws, a) those laws aren't worth much and b) we can't say with a straight face that everyone is equal before the law (and getting "before the law" is fraught as it is for people who don't have means); and perhaps more importantly 2) Trump's crimes were not his alone. Yes, Trump sexually assaulted people all by himself, but the corruption around payments, hush money, money laundering, and other business improprieties were not committed solely by him. Trump had accomplices, and in some cases he was just the face of something larger. We can vote for his opponent every time he's on the ballot--and we should--but that does nothing to his collaborators and wallets. And we need to hold them accountable, because if we do not, it doesn't matter if we're dealing with Trump--we will be dealing with somebody.

I say this now because I think it's important to understand that Nixon wasn't just Nixon and GW Bush wasn't just GW Bush. Was Nixon unlikable? Probably--but he had also served in Congress for six years and as the vice president for eight. And it doesn't matter whether Eisenhower liked him--although the fact that their families were combined through marriage might shed some light on that--Nixon had built up the network he needed; perhaps it is better to say that he had built up the role he needed in an existing network. And was Bush II something of an outsider when he came to the presidency in 2001? Maybe, but the fact that his father Bush I had been a member of Congress, a UN ambassador, Liaison with China, CIA Director, Vice President, and then, oh yeah, President, meant that Bush II could call on a network as well.

Trump has his own networks, and as much as we want to snicker about casinos, failed hotels and golf courses, and reality television, his tutelage under Roy Cohn should give some pause, to say nothing of all of the politicians he was photographed with over the years, as well as his closeness with Rupert Murdoch before the 2016 election. (I'll let you draw your own conclusions about Jeffrey Epstein.) He may very well be a clown, but the circus he's headlining for sews its tents in Hell.

What, really, would loyalty to any of these men mean?

Deb in the City