Tag Archives: politics

Hope and Cynicism

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I’ve been reading a couple books lately that deal with activism, disaster, and people’s responses to both natural and non-natural disasters. When I read Paradise Built in Hell written by Rebecca Solnit, she defined disasters created by man from a couple different perspective. One is historical failures and corruption that lead to buildings collapsing at a rate much higher than they should have. This is something she describes happening after the 1985 Mexico City earthquake.

The other type of non-natural disasters is Elite Panic, which is the process through the elites of a country overreach and treat the people of the country or city as the enemy. This happened in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and post 9/11. 9/11 was leveraged to dramatically curtail civil liberties and launch multiple wars. In some ways, those wars haven’t ended, the war on terror is still ongoing in it’s own way and Trump is essentially using this to go after Venezuela.

Despite the set backs described through Elite panic, there is always hope that something can change. This is where the books on activism really ties into this book. I’ve read a few books focus specifically on activism, Let this Radicalize you, How to blow up a pipeline, and now Read this when things fall apart. All four of these books really highlight the hope for change that can come out of any sort of crisis.

The republicans often talk about never letting a crisis go to waste, which is something that the left and democrats needs to adhere to. However, many people on the left, myself included, are extremely cynical and roll their eyes when people talk about hope, healing, love, and all that stuff.

To be clear, I struggle with this on a regular basis. Reading some of the names given specific protest events I feel my eyes rolling despite my best effort. We can’t give into that though. We need to step back and give our selves space to hold that hope. To hold the authenticity of these protests, groups, or activists, can be a challenge, but it can also give way to a moment of freedom and release. I’ve been finding, through my own health issues and through reading books full of hope, despite the darkness of our days, I’ve been able to lean into it and have felt a sort of lightness as a result.

I truly find hope in the way everyone is protesting the actions of the Trump administration. I find hope that the world will finally push back on American imperialism starting with nominal military presence in Greenland. Trump seems bound to escalate, but I think there will be some breaking point where eventually enough Republicans will break with Trump, because they finally see the end of the road for themselves.

I truly believe the bulk of the American people will continue to push back on the horrors ICE is visiting on Minneapolis and other parts of the country. We’re seeing white people using their whiteness to protect black and brown people. They are putting life and limb at risk to push back on this crack down.

We really do need to step back from our cynicism.

We should embrace our hope.

Book Review: The Myth of American Idealism

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I just wrapped up the Myth of American Idealism: How US Foreign Policy Endangers the World, by Noam Chomsky and Nathan Robinson. It’s been a while since I read a book by Chomsky. I heard about this one through an interview with Sam Seder of the Majority Report and Nathan Robinson a few days ago (mid Feb 2025). This book is apparently hot off the presses. Despite that they weren’t able to adequately discuss the Israeli invasion of Gaza, only the history leading up to it. It seems they finished that section just days before the October 7th attack.

As always Chomsky offers an interesting counter view to the mainstream press and often the view American historians. I think these views are important, as they can provide clear eyed discussions on what the US is doing at home and abroad. I think as Americans we need that. We need someone to pick us up and put us in the position of the outsider. We need to look at what our country does with the same critical lens our Press analyzes our national enemies.

Much of this book was relatively new to me. Or rather, I was aware of the events happening or that they had happened, but not to the extend described. Chomsky and Robinson constrain their review of US history to, mostly, the past 50 years, so shortly after Vietnam. However, to understand the US post Vietnam, you need to understand the Vietnam war and to understand that you need to go back at least to World War II.

As I said in my short the other day, History didn’t start on October 7th. Decisions made by one President influence and constrain the available options for the next President. Regardless of party, there is more often a likelihood of the next President will continue existing US policies. There are a variety of reasons for this, which is outlined in the book, including that even if the specific action was illegal, it’s already been done, so it’s unlikely to lead to repercussions. If the action is stopped, it may lead to a constraint on Presidential power and that would be unacceptable for the US President.

One thing that I had always wondered, since I was a teenager, is why the US sphere of direct influence, the countries in the western hemisphere are in such horrible states. This book answers it. It is US policy for these countries to be in the states they are. We have overthrown or supported the overthrow of a majority of South American countries. We have supported militaries and far right groups that support US business interests. We do not support New Deal based politics in the global south. Because that may mean providing more for the people of that country and less to the United States.

Chomsky and Robinson highlight cases in Nicaragua, Chile, Guatemala, Brazil, Ecuador, Panama, El Salvador, Honduras, and more. They describe in specific details what intervention we did. What sort of regime we supported, which includes Pinochet, which made me nauseous to read. Hell, we supported the Khmer Rouge until it wasn’t politically convenient any longer. The Khmer Rouge. Just despicable.

We, Americans, mostly White Americans, need to look at these choices head on. We need to understand what our country is doing in our name. We need to say, “No. I do not want to bomb those countries. No I do not support demanding 50% of mineral rights from Ukraine.”

Many US leaders do not want us to feel shame in our history. They do not want us to feel shame, because that shame will lead to anger and anger will lead to action. I do not feel shame over what the US has done. I feel angry. I never supported these actions. I never wanted the state to do these things. I protested against them. We should be angry. The US is a destabilizing force in the world. We need to reckon with that and make a decision on what we should do about that. We should be angry. Be Angry. Do something.

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Trump will not give up power

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The Trump administration has only been in power for four days so far and it is clear he will not give up power after his term is over. Why do I think this?

First, he floated the idea of running for a third term during his campaign. He floated it more recently before his inauguration. Now, a member of the House of Representatives, Rep Ogles, has actually filed an amendment to the Constitution to amend the 22nd amendment to change the term limits from two terms to three terms. The US has had a norm for Presidents serving more than two terms since Washington. FDR broke this norm and was elected to four terms. After his death the Constitution was amended to ensure no other President held the office more than two terms. This amendment should not be changed. It should not be changed for Trump.

Regardless, the door is open for Trump to disregard the 22nd Amendment. With the Republicans onboard for Trump to run again and to stay in office another term, because of his “bold” “Leadership”, Trump will use this as pretext to stay in office.

I cannot stress enough, this would be simply inexcusable for a Democrat to do. They would be castigate about this unendingly in the press. However, this is treated as a serious proposition rather than an unadulterated power grab.

Trump has already start the process to disregard other Constitutional Amendments. He is attacking the Birthright Citizenship, which is the 14th Amendment. We implemented the 14th amendment because of Slavery. After the Civil War, we implemented this so all the previously enslaved people were considered full citizens, as they should have been. Trump is attacking this amendment in an effort to go after immigrants, but this will continue with other US citizens. He will have the power to decide who is and who is not a citizen. Trump will claim his political enemies are not citizens.

Trump has effectively ignored portions of the 14th Amendment already, which prevents traitors from holding office. He has already pardoned the 1,500 traitors who stormed the Capitol. These 1,500 traitors were loyal to Trump while they were in prison. These people are still loyal to Trump. These people will continue supporting Trump. They will support Trump in staying in office. We should expect another insurrection in four years, if Trump isn’t allowed to stay in office.

This is NOT a reason for allowing Trump to stay in office by abandoning the 22nd Amendment. This is not a reason to fold up shop and just let Trump stay in power. These are all warning signs that we should listen to, so we can plan to prevent Trump from staying in power. We need to assume there will not be a peaceful transition of power at the end of this Presidency. We should assume there will be an armed mob attacking our voting apparatus. We should assume there will be voting intimidation. We should assume, there will be more stop the steal attacks.

Trump has an openly declared Nazi in his administration. Elon Musk, literally gave a Sieg Heil salute, at least twice, during his speech at the inauguration. He is a Nazi. Trump must be assumed to like Musk’s political stances. Trump is a racist old man with a racist Nazi sympathizer Co-President. He will try to stay in power. Musk may try to assume power if Trump dies in office. Musk cannot be President, because he’s an immigrant, but if Trump has shredded the Constitution to the point that we’ve destroyed the 14th and 22nd Amendment.

In Cabinet Picking, Play Politics

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Here’s a thought on how Biden should go about picking his cabinet. In making my argument, let’s look at some facts. First, let’s look at the Merrick Garland fiasco. Obama decided to put forth a moderate candidate for Supreme Court Justice. The Republicans painted him as too far left to fill a right-wing seat. So the seat went unfilled for 8 months.

Trump has been ceaselessly calling Biden a socialist, which has really worked to rile up his base and create solidarity on the right against Biden. Furthermore, this paints the Republicans as a much more centrist party than they actually are, they are a far right party. In fact, the GOP has more QAnon Congressional members than Black Congressional members.

Biden is center right, or centrist at best with his politics. To highlight this, Biden should work with a few potential cabinet members that are very far to his left. Like maybe even include Bernie Sanders or AOC as potential picks. However, work with them and plan for them to actually withdraw their candidacy for that office before the Republicans ever actually vote them down. Before they have to do anything like, resign from their seat. Put the boogeyman out there as a real candidate.

What this will do is create an anchoring point that the media can latch on to. That Republicans and Democrats can latch on it. A clear comparison between the first candidate(s) and whoever Biden would actually want in the role. This will work even better, if the next person they offer as a candidate CLEARLY has votes that are to the center of the original candidate. This will make it significantly harder (but of course not impossible) for the Republicans to paint them as Socialist. Democrats can point to their records and say, “No, this person is a center candidate and the republicans are simply upset that we aren’t installing republicans in these posts.”

If Biden offers moderate or even center right candidates for the office, the Republicans will try to pull Biden even farther right. The anchor that everyone will latch onto will be in the actual center, not the center between Republicans and Democrats.

There is a strong possibility that McConnell will do everything in his power to reject every candidate offered by Biden. He will do this unless Biden offers up someone far enough to the right to make McConnell happy. So we need to lay down the groundwork to show that Democrats are trying to meet McConnell closer to where he wants. We need to make him look ridiculous. We need to make it obvious to other Senators that these candidates are viable. They are not socialists and they are, in fact, centrists.

Biden is going to face an uphill battle to getting the people we want confirmed for the roles in government. Using anchors and decoys is smart politics.

Book Review: Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code by Ruha Benjamin

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Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code by Ruha Benjamin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book builds on the research in Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism and Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness, so I definitely recommend reading those two books first. I’m not alone in that, in one of the talks I’ve watched Benjamin give, she explicitly mentions those books as influencing her. I really enjoyed this book, it brought together ideas from my own master’s degree, including the complexity of how technology is used. In one class we specifically discussed the Moses’s bridges in New York (despite this being taught in the Netherlands), which were designed to exclude the poor by preventing buses from crossing the bridge. In this book she discusses this bridge and how it can pull in the very people that were expected to benefit the bridge design (basically a bus full of rich white kids went across after they came back from a trip to Europe, the driver hit the top of the bridge which resulted in 6 people getting seriously injured).

She modernizes these examples by describing how algorithms are created to approximate details about people, such as determining their ethnicity to provide “targeted services.” Due to historical redlining, the practice of creating white people only enclaves in suburbs and portions of the city (a Jim Crow era set of laws), the zip code has become a reliable indicator of ethnicity and race. She gives the example of Diversity, Inc., which creates ethnicity or racial classifications for potentially hiring companies. They will look at the names of people and assess their ethnicity, however due to the history of slavery, many African Americans have white sounding surnames, like Sarah Johnson, to “correctly” identify the ethnicity of Sarah, the company uses her zipcode to assign her race.

Overall, I found a lot of examples in this book very illuminating. Benjamin finds the approach to Design favored in Silicon Valley wanting and excluding, primarily focused on empathizing for making money, which in many cases is empathizing with whiteness. Furthermore, Benjamin argues that empathy can lead skewed results, such as body camera video providing empathy for police officers even when they are killing Black people for crimes which aren’t capital offenses or no crime at all.

As an engineer, I took this book as a warning. That we need to understand how data is impacting those around us. That we need to understand how data that might seem harmless to me, could cause serious harm to someone else. That algorithms that seem to be doing good, could instead be quickly turned into something bad. Facial recognition is a great example. Facebook tags people in photos without consent and this can be exploited by law enforcement. Furthermore, since facial recognition software is so inaccurate, it can misclassify a person as the wrong sex, the wrong person, or in extremely bad past cases, as an animal.

Furthermore, engineers have the responsibility to ensure our work is used to create more equity in the world. Benjamin offers a few different organizations that are working to ensure justice and equity for everyone. Maybe it’s time that software engineers/developers have a responsibility for this the same way a civil engineer must ensure a bridge is safe.

I recommend that anyone that works at a social media company read this. Anyone doing work for algorithms in banks, insurance, hiring, and housing really understand the fact that algorithms aren’t objective. They are as objective as our history. Our history hasn’t been objective nor equitable. We must change that.



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