The Daily Parker

I'll be in tonight's Ear Taxi Festival performance at Harris Theater in Millennium Park, singing Damien Geter's African American Requiem. I'm really enjoying the piece. Even though our call time (1:30pm) makes it impossible to participate in the No Kings demonstration happening just 400 meters away from the concert venue, I think the chorus are doing their parts as Geter's message is relevant to the day.

If you're in Chicago, come for the demonstration and stay for the concert!

If you're not in Chicago, find a No Kings demonstration near your house and help break the Earth Day 1970 record for largest demonstration in US history.

(Update: I've chased down some of Layne's sources and I am not convinced that they entirely support her conclusions about what has caused the degradation of Americans' reading skills. The Daily Parker is ever-evolving.)

ProPublica reported this morning that the OAFPOTUS has stocked the Department of Education with Christian nationalists who want to end public schooling and redirect our taxes to private interests. OK, maybe they're not all Christian nationalists; maybe some of them are just grifters hoping to steal some of the $878 billion in annual US education spending.

Author Hilary Layne argues that the idealogues on the far left have done at least as much damage to US education in the past 30 years as the idealogues on the far right. In her most recent (52-minute!) video essay, Layne takes us through the scholarship on one side and the writings of the critical literacy (cf. critical thinking) theorists on the other to explain why a recent study found only 5% of a group of English Literature majors at two prestigious state universities "had a detailed, literal understanding of the first paragraphs of Dickens' Bleak House:"

As Layne points out, these kids will go on to teach English to other kids, in a cycle that has already produced a generation of writers who can't write.

I've had my own dealings with children unable to read, including one extremely negative interaction with a 26-year-old holding degrees—including a JD—from two of the most prestigious (and left-leaning) public universities in the US. This person admitted at one point that she doesn't read books, which she clarified to mean she literally doesn't read books. In one particular conversation she could not comprehend that her feelings about a point I was making were exactly the same as mine, even as I was making a rhetorical point that she agreed with. This young lawyer got so flummoxed by the nuance of it that, even when written down, it was incomprehensible to her. She's a lawyer, FFS, with what should be an impressive pedigree, and yet has the level of analytical skills that we Gen-X folks were expected to move beyond in 10th grade.

I singled this example out because I found this combination of facts especially egregious. Sadly, I have met too many under-30s with similar deficiencies that I was really looking for any hypothesis that could tie it all together. Layne's video suggests one hypothesis, which I hope to discuss with a couple of teachers I know (including a contemporary of mine who teaches high school English) to see if Layne's on point or not.

I also recognize that older generations have bemoaned falling standards of education for millennia. It might take 30 seconds of Googling to find a quote from Aristotle that no doubt supports the universality of this phenomenon. I really have come to think that the late 1970s and early 1980s were a high point in American education, though: reading through phonics, math through the metric system, physical fitness through daily gym class. Since the Reagan Administration elevated business and Christian nationalism over classical liberalism, though, things seem to have slipped a bit.

The Christianists in Florida, clearly getting bribes from Big Microbe, have ended the requirement that students get vaccinated in order to attend public schools:

Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general, made the announcement on Wednesday alongside Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican. Mr. DeSantis rose to national prominence during the coronavirus pandemic, and over time he has espoused increasingly anti-vaccine views.

“Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body?” Dr. Ladapo, a vocal denigrator of vaccines, said to applause during an event on Wednesday in Valrico, Fla., near Tampa. “Your body is a gift from God.”

I mean, if it quacks like a duck...

Honestly, I have no idea why Republicans who should know better still play at being so hostile to science and reason. Ron DeSantis is a gigantic asshole, but he's not stupid. So why this religious nuttery?

I just read the Rev. Rob Schenck's essay in Mother Jones explaining, from his perspective as an evangelical minister who only recently came out of his stupor in the Christianist right wing, how Christianists could follow a man like the OAFPOTUS. The tl;dr is that evangelical Christians tend to believe the craziest shit because, at root, they believe the craziest shit.

The essay reminded me of two things: this joke, and Robert Heinlein's observation that "a religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge those propositions by evidence."

Schenck's essay is worth a read:

One of the maddening—and seemingly unanswerable—questions for many concerned Americans is how deeply religious Christian voters have remained so loyal to President Donald Trump despite his many divorces, relentless vulgarity, flagrant dishonesty, and conviction for sexual assault. And now with the recent controversies around the Epstein files, Trump’s friendship with the convicted child trafficker, and the vast conspiracy theories surrounding it all, this question seems even more urgent and baffling. How is it possible for godly men and women, whose Bibles are frequently read, who consider the teachings of Jesus Christ as their guide for living, how can these men and women devote themselves to a man who appears to be a living contradiction of all that they believe?

To understand this frustrating phenomenon, one must appreciate that for white American evangelicals, Trump’s MAGA movement is, at its core, religious, which is how deeply religious voters experience it. Religious commitments don’t die or even change quickly or easily.  What drives the MAGA-religious is passion, identity, and even something so transcendent that it elevates a believer’s consciousness to unshakable sublimation to the leader—there are no unforgivable transgressions, and that includes pedophilia and sexual violence. For them, the Epstein affair is a ruse ginned up by God-haters who want to bring down the man who embodies their hopes and dreams for themselves, their families, and their country.

The reason goes to the heart of how Trump and his enablers have marketed MAGA to religious voters, how those voters now experience the movement, and the role that conspiracy theories circulating among evangelicals play in the drama. Most born-again types don’t embrace the wildest QAnon plots like elites kidnapping children to harvest youth serum from their bodies, or that JFK Jr. is still alive. But our culture club does harbor its own tall tales, including one about a secret Satanic government run by Freemasons. Anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of evangelicals knows that we’ve always been susceptible to the sensational, spectacular, and, frankly, the simply unbelievable.

Trump knows how to use our collective gullibility for his benefit.

The fusion [between Christianism and MAGA] is inseparable once the transition from God and church to Trump and MAGA is complete—and the 2024 election sanctioned that completeness. For these Christians, MAGA is their new denominational home. Like baptized Catholics, cradle Methodists, and multi-generational Pentecostals, what I now call MAGA-anity (as distinct from Christi-anity) forms a follower’s deepest, most meaningful, and resilient identity. And because it’s transcendent, the bond cannot be loosened by outside forces—not by reports of a souring economy, not by videos of shrieking moms being separated from their children by masked ICE agents, not even by the call of Christianity Today magazine to release the full Epstein files.

For right-wing Catholics, politicized evangelicals, and socially frightened Pentecostal-Charismatics, MAGA is the new American religion. The experience believers have in their relationship to it is anything but rational. I have struggled to find a parallel phenomenon in American history. The closest I can get is the early days of Mormonism, a uniquely American religio-political-cultural movement.

In the end, Schenck's prediction of how this ends mirrors my own:

Defeating MAGA will only happen over time. It will require the passing of its charismatic, deified leader, either by term limit, dementia, or death, but only if that epochal event is preceded by a vigorous and unrelenting challenge to MAGA ideas, operations, and personalities using religious concepts, language, and biblical texts. Even with all of that, it will be at least a generation before MAGA is either socially domesticated or tamed into a marginal and largely inconsequential fringe group. Until then, we can mitigate MAGA’s damage to human lives, the social fabric, and public and private institutions by tirelessly exposing its nefarious intentions and actions to the light of day. As another favorite Bible verse of evangelicals reminds us, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

Remember, the German Evangelical Church was instrumental in Hitler's ascent, for similar reasons. And as happened in Germany, we will get through this. At what cost, though? For some thoughts on that question, start with Yascha Mounk's observations on China. The MAGAs are hastening the end of American relevance, and China is there to pick up the slack.

With my PTO cap continuing to force me into Friday afternoons off this summer (the horror!), and the sunny but (smoky 23°C) weather, Cassie and I will head to the Horner Park DFA just as soon as I release a new version of Weather Now in just a few minutes.

When Cassie and I come back, I'll spend some time reading all these nuggets of existential dread:

• The Bureau of Labor Statistics revised last 3 months of US jobs data down to basically nil (which Krugman blames on tariffs), prompting the OAFPOTUS to fire BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer.
• Not only is the State Department's HR director a "RIF-happy, Christian evangelizing MAGA warrior with an axe to grind," he's also apparently kind of creepy.
• Former intelligence officials John Brennan and James Clapper "set the record straight on Russian and 2016."
• James Fallows once again calls on everyone to help protect our institutions.
• Yascha Mounk sees the rise of AI as akin to the Industrial Revolution.
• After more than a century of slow traffic through Wrigleyville, the CTA finally straightened out a section of the Red Line to cut travel times for everyone, which unfortunately means more noise.
• The impending merger between the Southern Pacific and Norfolk Southern railroads will have a huge impact on Chicago rail traffic—but no one yet knows whether it will be up or down.
• Molly White suggests using RSS readers instead of email lists to reduce the enshittification of news publications.
• Jeff Maurer, who spent several years writing for John Oliver as you may recall, wants to have a serious autopsy of late night television that includes all the uncomfortable topics.

By the way, the new Weather Now build allows users to create their own weather lists and share them with the world or keep them private. I've wanted to build this feature for a long time, finally starting work on it two weekends ago. Try it out and let me know what you think!

On this day 100 years ago, John Scopes went on trial for the crime of teaching a “theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals:”

On July 10, the Monkey Trial got underway, and within a few days hordes of spectators and reporters had descended on Dayton as preachers set up revival tents along the city’s main street to keep the faithful stirred up. Inside the Rhea County Courthouse, the defense suffered early setbacks when Judge John Raulston ruled against their attempt to prove the law unconstitutional and then refused to end his practice of opening each day’s proceeding with prayer.

In the courtroom, Judge Raulston destroyed the defense’s strategy by ruling that expert scientific testimony on evolution was inadmissible–on the grounds that it was Scopes who was on trial, not the law he had violated.

[Scopes' attorney Clarence] Darrow changed his tactics and as his sole witness called [former presidential candidate William Jennings] Bryan in an attempt to discredit his literal interpretation of the Bible. In a searching examination, Bryan was subjected to severe ridicule and forced to make ignorant and contradictory statements to the amusement of the crowd. On July 21, in his closing speech, Darrow asked the jury to return a verdict of guilty in order that the case might be appealed. Under Tennessee law, Bryan was thereby denied the opportunity to deliver the closing speech he had been preparing for weeks. After nine minutes of deliberation, the jury returned with a guilty verdict, and Raulston ordered Scopes to pay a fine of $100, the minimum the law allowed. Although Bryan had won the case, he had been publicly humiliated and his fundamentalist beliefs had been disgraced. Five days later, on July 26, he lay down for a Sunday afternoon nap and never woke up.

In 1927, the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the Monkey Trial verdict on a technicality but left the constitutional issues unresolved until 1968, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a similar Arkansas law on the grounds that it violated the First Amendment.

Boy, we've sure moved past all that ignorant anti-science fundamentalist religious hokum, haven't we?

What a day for right-wing Republicans! Early this morning they managed to pass the OAFPOTUS's "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" through the Senate, with every Democrat and three Republicans (Rand Paul, KY; Thom Tillis, NC; Susan Collins, ME) voting against it, forcing Vice President Vance to get out of bed before 6am:

Vice President JD Vance cast the tiebreaking vote for the measure, which would extend trillions of dollars in tax cuts from Trump’s first term and implement new campaign promises — such as eliminating income taxes on tips and overtime wages — while spending hundreds of billions of dollars on immigration enforcement and defense.

To offset the cost, the legislation would cut about $1 trillion from Medicaid, the federal health insurance program for low-income individuals and people with disabilities, and other health care programs. It would also cut SNAP, the anti-hunger Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. Nearly 12 million people will lose health care coverage if the bill becomes law, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

[T]he measure is starkly regressive. The 10 percent of households with the lowest incomes would stand to be worse off by $1,600 on average because of benefits cuts, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the House version of the bill. The 10 percent of households with the highest incomes would be better off by $12,000 on average.

Combined with the impact of Trump’s tariffs — which the White House has argued will help pay for the bill’s tax cuts and new spending — the bottom 80 percent of households would see their take-home incomes fall, according to the Yale Budget Lab.

I'll have more reactions later, all of which I expect will use some variation on the phrase "most regressive Federal budget ever." The bill has to go back to the House of Representatives again because the Senate changed a few things, but it does look like it will pass—narrowly.

I'm sure it was a coincidence that televangelist con-man Jimmy Swaggart died almost immediately afterward:

Mr. Swaggart’s voice and passion carried him to fame and riches that he could scarcely have dreamed of in his small-town boyhood. At its peak in the mid-1980s, Jimmy Swaggart Worldwide Ministries had a television presence in more than 140 countries and, along with its Bible college, took in up to half a million dollars a day from donations and sales of Bible courses, gospel music and merchandise.

In October 1987, Mr. Swaggart was photographed entering a hot-sheet New Orleans motel with a woman. In a later television interview, the woman said that she and Mr. Swaggart had several encounters, describing them as “pornographic” but as not involving intercourse.

Mr. Swaggart responded in February 1988 with an extraordinary, tear-gushing mea culpa to some 7,000 followers at his World Faith Center in Baton Rouge. Turning first to his wife, Frances, he said, “Oh, I have sinned against you, and I beg your forgiveness.”

Some in the audience were so moved by the confession that they fell to their knees, praying in tongues, an indication to Pentecostals of possession by the Holy Spirit.

...or an indication to Psychologists of possession by intense cognitive dissonance, of the type that people experience when they realize they've wrapped their identity and worldview around a charlatan.

I guess the Lord giveth and He taketh away, right? Though if I were a religious person, I would see less of the Lord's work in both of these stories and more of the Adversary's.

Too bad Christopher Hitchens has left us. Given his obituary of Jerry Falwell, I can only imagine what he'd have to say about Swaggart.

First, there is no update on Cassie. She had a quick consult today, but they didn't schedule the actual diagnostics that she needs, so we'll go back first thing Tuesday. She does have a small mast cell tumor on her head, but the location makes her oncologist optimistic for treatment. I'll post again next week after the results come back from her spleen and lymph node aspirations.

Meanwhile, in the real world, things lurch forward and backward as the OAFPOTUS's political trajectory slides by millimeters towards Buchanan levels of popularity and effectiveness:

• Jen Rubin sounds yet another alarm, pointing out that charging your political opponents with bullshit crimes makes you a fascist.
• In a fragile but important win for the First Amendment, Justice Amy Coney Barrett (R) recused herself from two Oklahoma cases, which allowed the Oklahoma Supreme Court's decision barring publicly-funded religious schools to stand. (Because the per curiam order was unsigned, it's not clear who cast the 4th vote to affirm; my money's on Chief Justice Roberts (R).)
• Nicholas Kristof suggests three ways that we can undermine the OAFPOTUS's autocratic project.
• The Chicago City Council agreed to $87.9 million more in settlements stemming from police brutality over the years, while the police union does nothing to prevent it.
• A bill working its way through the Illinois legislature would require companies to provide an itemized list of fees before a purchase in an attempt to curb "junk fees."

I took half a day off of work because I didn't know how long Cassie's appointment would take, so after my 4pm meeting I will sod off for the rest of the day. There will be much walkies and much patting of the dog starting around 4:30.

We've had a run of dreary, unseasonably cold weather that more closely resembles the end of March than the middle of May. I've been looking at this gloom all day:

We may have some sun tomorrow afternoon through the weekend, but the forecast calls for continuous north winds and highs around 16°C—the normal high for April 23rd, not May 23rd. Summer officially starts in 10 days. It sure doesn't feel like it.

Speaking of the gloomy and the retrograde:

• Former US judge and George HW Bush appointee J. Michael Luttig argues that the OAFPOTUS "is destroying the American presidency, though I would not say that is intentional and deliberate."
• In a case of "careful what you wish for," FBI Director Dan Bongino can't escape his past conspiracy theorizing but also can't really escape the realities of (or his lack of qualifications for) his new position.
• Writer Louis Pisano excoriates Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez for their "idea that billionaires can buy their way into virtue with just enough gala invitations, foundation launches, and pocket-change donations" in Cannes this week.
• Adam Kinzinger shakes his fist at the OAFPOTUS-murdered Voice of America, now "subsidized by taxpayer dollars [to broadcast] Trump-aligned propaganda in 49 languages worldwide."
• Jen Rubin, vacationing in Spain, explains how the country's centuries-long Catholic purges of Jews and Muslims drove their globe-spanning empire into irrelevance. "The notion that national defense required ethnic and religious homogeneity not only resulted in mass atrocities, it also deprived Spain of many of the people and ideas that had helped it become a world power," she concludes. (Not that we need to worry here in the US, right?)
• Chuck Marohn shakes his head at the Brainerd, Minn., city council for ignoring his advice and building massive infrastructure they can't afford to maintain.
• Metra has formally taken control of the commuter trains running on Union Pacific track, including the one that goes right past Inner Drive Technology WHQ.
• The village of Dolton, Ill., has informed potential buyers of Pope Leo XVI's childhood home that it intends to invoke eminent domain and work with the Archdiocese of Chicago on preserving the building. Said the village attorney, "We don't want it to become a nickel-and-dime, 'buy a little pope' place."

Speaking of cashing in on the Chicago Pope, Burning Bush Brewery has just released a new mild ale called "Da Pope." Next time Cassie and I go to Horner Park, we'll stop by Burning Bush and one of us will try it. (Un?)Fortunately, we won't have time to get there by 11pm Friday, so we'll miss the $8 Chicago Pope Handshake special (a pint of Da Pope and a shot of Malört). Dang.

Sure, Brian De Palma had a great insight into what he called "the Chicago way," but not being from Chicago, he didn't grasp our true city motto: "Where's Mine?" The owners of 212 E. 141st Place in Dalton, a small house less than 2 kilometers from the Chicago city limits, are living up to the Chicago ideal.

It turns out, the house just happens to be where Robert Prevost grew up. Prevost, who recently took the name Episcopus Romanus, Vicarius Iesu Christi, Successor principis apostolorum, Summus Pontifex Ecclesiea Universalis, etc. Leo XIV, lived in the house until he moved to Saugatuck, Mich., for high school.

So, naturally, the current owners of the house have decided to cash in and cash out:

Pope Leo XIV’s childhood home in south suburban Dolton will be sold to the highest bidder in an online auction next month.

On May 5, the house ... was listed at $219,000 but was quickly taken down after Robert Prevost was elected pope. The Realtor and owner had weighed what to do with Pope Leo’s former home, including restoring it to how the pope may have remembered it in his childhood or turning it into a viewing home or a museum.

Now the Cape Cod-style home has been put up for auction, according to brokers iCandy Realty. The house is a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house that has been recently renovated.

The pope’s parents bought the 1,200-square-foot brick house on East 141st Place new in 1949, paying a $42 monthly mortgage.

Ubi est mea indeed. But really, if I discovered that a Very Famous Person had lived in the house I currently own, would I not try to capitalize on that? I mean, hey, I'm from Chicago too!

Update: I forgot to note this other morsel of greed today. Chicago Parking Meters LLC, which has already made back double their investment in their theft lease of Chicago streets, settled for $15.5 million to end their suit over the city taking parking spaces out of circulation during the pandemic. While I begrudgingly admit that they got the right result by the wrong method as far as correctly pricing parking goes, I also think that paying back the entire $1.2 billion from the initial deal will save us money within three years, because math.