Trump, Biden and COVID-19

 A letter to the editor I wrote. 

UPDATE 8/23/24 Was never published.

Editor,

From what I’ve read a big part of the fall in President Biden’s popularity has been the resurgence of Covid-19. Although it made sense in many ways to partly blame former President Trump for how bad the COVID-19 crisis was in 2020, it doesn’t make any sense to blame Biden for how bad it is now.

At the beginning of the pandemic Trump tried to ignore it and at the end of Feb. 2020 he  said it was a “hoax” He didn’t use the Defense Production Act right away to make sure there were enough masks, other PPE, ventilators and testing supplies. To be fair we never ran out of ventilators, but the failure to make enough masks at the beginning I believe contributed to the Trump administration initially DISCOURAGING the use of masks by the general population, there were always shortages of PPE for health care professionals and we didn’t test anywhere near as much as we should have (I believe) because there weren’t enough supplies. He largely discouraged mask-wearing and when he did sort of encourage it it was half-hearted. He kept saying it was almost over which contributed to his supporters not taking it seriously.

Biden has always taken COVID-19 seriously and promoted masks when Trump was making fun of people for wearing them. If it wasn’t for a massive chunk of the population that overlaps heavily with Trump supporters, the vaccine effort in this country would be incredibly successful. Biden’s vaccine mandate policies will help (and they’re ethical- we have for decades mandated vaccines for school kids). His administration is helping Florida school districts defying a Republican ban on mask mandates. The Delta variant isn’t his fault. It’s likely it would have gone nowhere if more Americans had gotten vaccinated earlier, and once again, Trump can be blamed for that.

Don’t blame President Biden for COVID-19. If anyone deserves blame for it here in America, it’s Trump.

Tom Shelley
Boulder

Law and Order: SVU Reviews Z

This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

(Now that I’m watching the episodes that involve the character John Munch, I’m going to ignore most of his political statements)

“PTSD” Season 10. Wikipedia summary is: “Benson and Tutuola get a first-hand look at how women in the military are treated when they respond to the murder of a pregnant marine who was raped by one of her fellow marines in Iraq. The two find a suspect (Ryan Kwanten) and become convinced of his guilt, but Greylek faces difficulties when the Navy Commander (Frank Whaley) threatens to shut down their investigation. Benson discovers new evidence and the real rapist (Dominic Fumusa) is identified along with his wife (Amy Spanger) who committed the murder. During the proceedings, Benson's prior sexual assault stirs up painful memories.”

First, there’s one brief anti-death penalty statement by the ADA.

It’s generally about sexual assault in the US military. About 5-15 years ago I read 1-2 articles about that and got the impression that the military doesn’t handle the issue very well. In this episode a military officer says that the national average rate of conviction for rape is 13% and it’s 10% in the military. This episode also highlights the fact that a service member who accuses a superior officer without evidence will be court-martialed. With that in mind I can only imagine how often a woman in the military is raped by a superior officer who gets away with it.

At one point a military officer asks detective Benson if she likes the military and she says she doesn’t because of the problem of rape in the military.  I’m going to keep this fairly brief but I have mixed and mostly negative thoughts about the military. I feel pretty good about what they did during the Civil War and during WWII and I used to be sort of positive about what they did in Somalia in the early 1990s. I imagine a small majority of people in the US military are good people. I believe it’s possible that they can do something good in the future. More of my thoughts about the US military are scattered throughout posts here.                               

“Hothouse” Season 10. Wikipedia summary is: “When the body of a fourteen-year-old girl (Juliet Brett) is found floating in the Hudson River, Benson and Stabler think she was smuggled into the country by sex traffickers. Tutuola discovers her exceptional academic success and suspects that this had something to do with her murder. The detectives find out that the girl's father (George Tasudis) uses violence to coerce their other daughter (Aya Cash) into non-stop studying, and their mother (Funda Duval) is afraid to stop him. The killer turns out to be a high school student (Sarah Hyland) who obsesses over impressing her mother (Enid Graham). Mitigating circumstances come into play when the SVU discovers that she suffered from sleep deprivation and overdosed on drugs used to treat ADD.”

The Medical Examiner, who is a main character in some seasons and recurring in other seasons, says that sleep deprivation is a form of torture.

“Transitions” Season 10. Wikipedia summary is: “When a man (Frank Grillo) is found badly beaten in a strip club parking lot, a fake fingernail leads the detectives to believe that the attacker is female. The victim awakes in the hospital with no memory of what happened, but brings the attention to his ex-wife (Wendy Makkena) and their thirteen-year-old transgender daughter (Bridger Zadina). She makes it no secret that she hated her father for not accepting her as a girl, causing the detectives to suspect her as well as her transgender boyfriend (Daniela Sea). The perpetrator is eventually revealed to be a guidance counsellor (Aisha Hinds) who has her own painful memories regarding gender identity.”

This is an episode about transphobia. It’s about a teenage transgendered girl named 
Hailey transitioning to being female. I get the impression that there are often state laws in this country that prevent minors from going through that transition. At one point the viewer thinks Hailey has tried to kill herself and that reminded me of something. In the Republic of Ireland, if a female is diagnosed as suicidal by two psychiatrists, she can have an abortion (abortion law sucks there). The LGBTQ+ community and their allies might demand something similar if there’s no way that a state will allow minors to transition- allow them to transition if the state’s refusal makes them suicidal. If it’s either that or nothing, I think what I’m suggesting as a compromise is better than nothing.

Two other notes:
1) The transgender teacher who supports Hailey is Black.
2) The bouncer at a strip bar seems to be a gay woman.

“Selfish” Season 10. Wikipedia summary is: “When a woman (Gail O'Grady) reports the disappearance of her 11-month-old granddaughter, the detectives suspect the girl's mother (Hilary Duff) of killing her daughter. The detectives however find out that the baby actually died of measles because another mother (Anastasia Barzee) refused to vaccinate her son. After Cabot puts the evangelical mother on trial, she is found not guilty of manslaughter, prompting the baby's grandfather (Mike Pniewski) to take the law into his own hands.”

 

About halfway through the issue in this episode switches from a murdered baby to the issue vaccinations. I want to say a few things about vaccines. I think that they should be optional in a lot of cases, maybe all of them. But I think there should be an effort to encourage people to get them. That’s basically how I feel about the COVID-19 vaccines. Although I’m worried that they were rushed because of Trump putting pressure on the medical science industry (because he thought his elections chances would go up with vaccines being ready for use) and there might be problems with them, Dr. Fauci has said that they’re good and I really want to see America return to normal as soon as possible, and I encourage people to get them and I’m going to get one as soon as I can.

Trump's Loss and COVID-19

Below is first what I submitted to CNN when they asked people to respond to Biden's win, and below that is another note about Trump and COVID-19. The first one hasn't been edited by me since I submitted it to CNN.

1. I'm really glad. I had a lot of anxiety about it, which won't completely leave until Trump either concedes or it's clear that he's isolated and alone. But Trump is worse than George W. Bush and Bush was worse than his Dad and most republicans. In addition to everything else, Trump has been a disaster in relation to the pandemic. He would actually make fun of people for wearing masks. We have suffered disproportionate to our numbers as a nation. At the end of May we had lost 100,000 people. At the same time, at that point Israel had lost just 284 people- in America, 30 times bigger, that's 8,520 people. As much as I dislike Netanyahu, if he were our President in the early months of the pandemic, we would have lost 8,520 people instead of 100,000. I'm sure something similar can be said about the time since late May. He predicted a pandemic while Trump was calling it a media hoax, he was putting his foot down about social distancing while Trump was prematurely talking about re-opening. I write at greater length about this at- https://theblackandthegreen2.blogspot.com/2020/04/trump-netanyahu-and-covid-19-coronavirus.html     But the main thing is that we had a horrible President when we needed, more than ever, a good one, and now (what will hopefully be) the final months of COVID-19 will be more bearable and less anxiety producing if we have a President who encourages mask-wearing, who doesn't seek political favors in exchange for desperately-needed medical supplies, who doesn't push us too far as far as re-opening, who will allow the scientists and doctors to develop a vaccine that is safe and effective without political interference, etc.

2. Somewhere in my COVID-19 posts I need to put something. I am a very strong believer in masks and I also respect Dr. Fauci. Trump likes to point out that in the very early weeks of COVID-19 Dr. Fauci opposed the idea of encouraging the general public to wear masks. Dr. Fauci's main or only argument was that there weren't enough masks for medical personnel AND the general public. Now, in hindsight and maybe for some people at the time, opposing mask use by the general public was a stupid mistake. There would have been fewer deaths in the Spring if we had all been wearing masks. I understand that medical personnel were a priority, but this is another example of Trump failing to use the Defense Production Act like a sledgehammer. We could have had enough masks in early March if he had. I don't know how Netanyahu did on this question, but Trump failed. Before he started making fun of people for wearing a mask, at one point in April or May he made some half-hearted suggestion that people "might" want to wear a scarf over their mouth and nose. And he seems to think that masks are primarily for the benefit of the wearer, when it's for the people around them. He also doesn't understand that you should wear a mask when no one's around but there's a decent chance someone will come up to you unexpectedly, instead of just when there ARE people around you. We all forget sometimes to wear a mask when we go out, but if you plan on putting one on when you leave the house instead of just when someone unexpectedly comes up to you outside, it’ll work out better.

Trump, Masks and Conspiracy Theories

Two miscellaneous thoughts about Trump. The first about masks and the second one about right-wing conspiracies.

 1. First, Trump has said (three times with large audiences) that a recent CDC study found that 85% of people who wear a mask get COVID-19. I’m going to rely primarily on a CNN article to refute that and add a couple things. First, the CNN article is here. Second of all, this shows that trump, like many Americans, still doesn’t get it- a mask isn’t supposed to offer more than partial protection to the wearer. It protects people around the wearer in case they are pre-symptomatic  or asymptomatic- in case they have COVID-19 and don’t know it. You can still  get it with a mask because the mask doesn’t protect your eyes, but the only way for the virus to get out is through your noes and mouth (well you also sort of have to worry about your hands as well to some degree). Third, I can only imagine how much damage he did tossing around that fake information. Bearing in mind what CNN says about its accuracy, he must have strengthened the resolve of mask skeptics like a steel beam placed in their spine. I mean, if 85% of mask wearers get COVID-19, who in the world would wear a mask?

2. In the NBC Trump Town Hall that partly replaced the second debate, Trump was asked to reject a popular conspiracy theory. Referred to as QAnon, it is basically saying that Democrats are part of a satanic conspiracy based on pedophilia. I’m not sure how connected it is to the Pizzagate conspiracy theory or if it is separate. Pizzagate resulted in an incident of armed violence and QAnon could, too. Pedophilia (a sexual attraction by adults or adolescents towards pre-pubescent children) is a serious problem. And Trump refuses to say this conspiracy theory is nonsense. Instead he says that all he knows about them is that they’re against pedophilia and apparently that makes it okay. He also emphasizes that he only RE-tweets QAnon stuff. But A) he has the FBI and the rest of the intelligence community at his fingertips- he knows that QAnon is slanderous, politically-motivated nonsense, B) Who ISN’T against Pedophilia? and C) when you retweet something you are, to one degree or another, endorsing it.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews F

This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

(Now that I’m getting into some of the episodes that involve the character John Munch, I’m going to ignore most of his political statements)

“Nocturne” Season 1. Wikipedia summary is: “After a pharmacy turns over some disturbing photos of a young boy, Benson and Stabler arrest a piano teacher (Kent Broadhurst) for child molestation. After the boy claims to have seen other pictures of young boys at the teacher's house, the detectives get a warrant and discover a series of videos that document the life of a young boy named Evan (Wilson Jermaine Heredia). Believing he can make or break their case, the team searches for him, only to realize that his testimony may not help at all because Evan is scarred far more deeply than they realized.”

One of the detectives at one point distinguishes between homosexuality and pedophilia. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the American College of Pediatricians, which doesn’t make that distinction, is a much smaller group than the American College of Pediatrics, which is anti-homophobic. The former has a membership in the low hundreds and the latter had a membership around 67,000 around 2019.

“Manic” Season 5. Wikipedia summary is: “Detectives Benson and Stabler learn that an alleged victim (Rory Culkin) of a school shooting that claimed two lives, was in fact the perpetrator. After learning about the boy's psychiatric problems from his mother (Mare Winningham), the squad realizes that a major pharmaceutical company is also responsible. “

There are a few things about health care insurers and HMOs denying therapy and generally getting in the way of people’s health. This turns into one of the episodes where a business is the bad guy- it’s a drug company that irresponsibly mailed out samples of an anti—depressant without a doctor’s supervision of the patients. It was a pretty messed up marketing scheme and got two kids killed.

“Coerced” Season 5. Wikipedia summary is: “A homeless and schizophrenic man (Leland Orser), desperate to see his son (Spencer List), kidnaps a different boy (Dylan Bluestone) from his bed at night. After being attacked by the man, Detective Stabler begins to contemplate the factors that caused him to snap. This investigation exposes further crimes at an adult group home.”

Mental Health and Class

This is slightly about class gaps in the mental health care system, where some of the lowest income patients are treated by institutions that are corrupt and treat them poorly. I’m not sure how common that sort of thing is and it might have more to do with corruption than with class. The mental health center I get my treatment at wouldn’t do anything comparable to what is talked about in this episode and treats low income people and homeless people. But I know that some homeless and low-income mentally ill people can’t get benefits like SSI and SSDI (that are run by Social Security) and some of them probably end up in places like the group home illustrated in the episode.

“Choice” Season 5. Wikipedia summary: “A man (Rick Aiello) is arrested for attacking his pregnant wife (Josie Bissett) in protest of her drinking during pregnancy. Detective Benson finds out that she also overindulged in alcohol while pregnant with an earlier child (Katherine Roberts). The wife is taken to family court by her husband, who accuses her of endangering the fetus by putting it at risk of developing fetal alcohol syndrome.”

There’s some good pro-choice stuff in here. In fact, to a large degree it’s more about abortion than it is about rape.

“Abomination” Season 5. Wikipedia summary is: “The homosexual poster-boy of a sexual re-education group is found murdered. After a local fundamentalist is cleared, the detectives turn their attention to the victim's thesis about the failure of sexual re-education groups. An opposing professor (George Segal) is found who has a dysfunctional relationship with his son (Jonathan Tucker).”

 

Conversion Therapy

This is about homophobia and specifically “conversion therapy,” the idea that gay people can become straight through prayer and therapy. It reminds me of a movie called “Boy Erased” which is a true story about a young man who tries to complete such a program. It’s a fairly brutal program and doesn’t work (because sexual orientation is not a choice) and at the end of the movie we learn that the head of the program is now married to another man. It’s a great movie and illustrates what’s wrong with conversion therapy and like I said, it’s a true story.

Roseanne Reviews C

This is a set of reviews of Roseanne episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I will focus only on the political aspects and will mention what percent of lines spoken by non-family members are spoken by people of color.

“Canoga Time” Episode 11, Season 1. Wikipedia summary is: “Roseanne proposes a deal when Dan cannot bear to part with his old "junk" that Roseanne wants to donate to a rummage sale. Darlene forges a passing grade on her report card.”

There’s about 15 lines spoke by a non-family member, but they’re all by a white person.

“Bridge Over Troubled Sonny” Episode 13, Season 1. Wikipedia Summary: “Crystal still struggles to cope with her first husband's death, Sonny, whose body was accidentally buried inside the bridge that Jackie drove them over on their way to work. Roseanne is unsure whether she should tell Crystal about Sonny's infidelities. Crystal finally confronts her emotions and reveals that she knew about Sonny's cheating and had her own affair to spite him. Darlene decides it is cool to smoke until Roseanne finds her pack of cigarettes.”

First, this is the episode I referred to earlier about work-place safety. Unfortunately, they make it sound like he just screwed up, but I would say that there may have been some kind of safety measure that could have prevented his death, and I still think it illustrates how most or at least many working-class jobs are more physically dangerous than all or at least almost all middle-class jobs. And that should be taken into consideration when we look at (in addition to safety measure) rates of compensation and things like breaks during work and hours (i.e. forced over-time) (considering that fatigue can contribute to accidents happening). Every year on the 28th of April, the global labor movement (and apparently many outside the labor movement as well) mark Workers Memorial Day, remembering all those killed or injured on the job. There is more information here and here.

In the COVID0-19 era, there is a new dimension to the issue of workplace safety. I won’t go into it much, but although I once found myself frustrated that Best Buy wasn’t doing work on computers, I overwhelmingly am concerned about people who have had to and are continuing to work in this situation. I can’t believe that we weren’t all wearing masks a long time ago, that would have increased the safety of everyone including workers at, for example, meat-packing plants. I’ve worn a mask 99% of the time that I’m outside a home and my car since about March 15th.

Also, out of about 40 lines by non-family members, all are by white people.

“Mall Story” Episode 16, Season 1. Wikipedia summary is: “It is time for the annual Landford Mall-A-Thon, and Roseanne and her brood scout out the deals during a Saturday in retail heaven. Roseanne makes Dan buy a new pair of shoes he does not want. Becky finds the perfect dress for the high school dance that Roseanne says is too expensive. Roseanne asks Dan to return the shoes so she can afford to buy the dress for Becky.”

The only thing worth noting is that out of about 40 lines by non-family members, none are by people of color.

“Becky’s Choice” Episode 17, Season 1. Wikipedia summary is: “Becky must decide between her first crush, Chip, and the infamous "Tongue Bandit". The decision worsens when Roseanne and Dan invite Chip's parents for dinner. During the evening, Roseanne catches Becky in the backyard with the other guy.”

The only thing worth noting is that out of about 40 lines by non-family members, none are by people of color.

“The Slice of Life” Episode 18, Season 1. Wikipedia summary is: “Becky prepares for a slumber party, and Darlene practices to pitch in a baseball game. Darlene is extremely moody, and storms out of the house after arguing with Roseanne. Later, Roseanne gets a phone call that Darlene was rushed to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy. Roseanne is wracked with guilt after Darlene develops complications; Roseanne and Dan anxiously wait for the doctor's prognosis.”

This raises the issue of health-care insurance, although not very critically. I think the only thing critical is it says that parents shouldn’t have to worry about health-care insurance when they’re also worrying about their child being in emergency surgery. It’s not a bad point, and there’s a little bit about dealing with health insurance bureaucracy, but it could be more critical of that industry and/or it could have said something about Roseanne having insurance as part of a union’s Collective Bargaining Agreement.

In this episode about 50% of the lines by a non-family member are by people of color. One of the two people of color, the one with about 45% of all such lines is a surgeon who is a black woman. In some ways that’s pretty cool. The only way I dissent from that is that I have heard that the TV show The Cosby Show actually fueled racism in this country because it gave people the impression that black people had equality in financial terms and had nothing to complain about. I watched it fairly often as a kid and remember one episode that probably didn’t help at all. Cliff wants to buy a car and at the dealership he tries to act like he's down on his luck in order to get a better deal. I’m not making that up.

In general though it’s awesome that 45% of the lines by non-family members were by a black female surgeon.

The other thing I should say about health-care is that the COVID-19 situation just makes health-care reform even more important in multiple ways. The main thing is that although the period of late March and early April wasn’t the apocalyptic disaster it could have been, there would have been less of a disaster and maybe fewer deaths if we had had a health-care system set up for the entire population instead of just for those wealthy enough or lucky enough to have health-care insurance. There would have been plenty of ventilators and ICU beds if we had a system with the capacity to help everyone who needs health care.

A Letter to Bernie Sanders About Mental Health Care and Stigma

Below is a message I sent to Bernie Sanders. UPDATE 11/18/20 I sent an almost identical letter to my congressperson, Joe Neguse. His response is below my signature at the end of the letter to Sanders.

Senator Bernie Sanders,

I am not a constituent but I voted for you in the 2016 CO caucus and also this year. My blog doesn’t get much traffic which is a problem I am working on, but I link to your campaign web-site and also Our Revolution. I used to be a DSA member and between 1994 and 2004 I did a ton of activism. Since then I haven’t done much activism, partly because of my disabilities but since 2008 I have done a political blog which until 2018 got a lot of visitors and in the last 3 months I got a lot of visitors because I include the URL for my blog when I leave progressive comments on Politico. In the last 8-10 years I have volunteered 4-6 hours a week on average at a food bank. I left DSA for a hybrid of personal and political reasons but I am a fellow traveler and link to them in 2-4 ways in my blog’s links list. In 2002 I represented the Anti-Racism Commission of DSA at the National Conference of Sinn Fein Youth in Galway, Ireland. My blog is at- https://theblackandthegreen3.blogspot.com/

I am emailing you instead of my own Senator because I’m more familiar with you, because you’re a national leader, because I know you feel strongly about funding mental health care and because I can imagine the likely thoughts that Bennet and/or his staff will have when they read about a mentally ill progressive. I appreciate what you have done- we need more funding for mental health care. Although I’m very slightly middle-class, I qualify for SSI and SSDI and am part of what you might call the low-income part of the mental health care system. The mental health center I go to is fairly well-funded (it serves two counties in Colorado, one being Boulder), but sometimes they have to ration therapy. Sometimes I have only gotten therapy every other week and at one point they were talking about me taking a break from getting therapy. For a lot of us therapy is very helpful.

But in addition to funding, we also need to address what is called stigma. As the National Alliance on Mental Illness said several months ago in ads seen in movie theaters, stigma can result in people not getting help. I think there is a major problem with stigma in our society. When I have a good reason to, I mention that I am mentally ill. I don’t hide it. But recently when I mentioned it to 4 progressive activists in an email, 2-3 of them didn’t respond (it’s a little complicated).

I usually think of things this way. As individuals and as a society, we should do whatever is reasonable so that people with disabilities can participate as much as possible in our society. But I think a lot of people have a double standard between physical disabilities and mental disabilities.

I have had for roughly 25-30 years, Depression, Tourrette’s Syndrome, Attention Deficit Disorder, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Although I would have said in the past that they floated between mild and moderate, now they hover around moderate, and the ADD is a little worse than that. To give you a better idea of what I mean by “moderate,” let me give you two examples: With the ADD, if I watch a two hour movie by myself, on average I have to stop and rewind about 10 times before I’m done, just because of the ADD. One aspect of the OCD that can be measured is that, after I make sure my car or bedroom door is locked, I go back 2.5 times on average to make sure it’s locked. I suffered a brain injury in 2010. It affects my hearing, my immediate/working memory, and my ability to organize my thoughts. It MIGHT have made my short-term memory a little flawed, but my long-term memory is still really good. At the risk of putting down other mentally ill people, I have a firm grip on reality.

After my ADD got really bad in 2007 and the 2010 brain injury there was an insurmountable barrier to me doing activism. I have since gone to an occasional event or protest and I don’t refuse to have face to face conversations with people about politics but I don’t look for trouble by going to weekly or monthly meetings where events are planned and there are discussions about goals, tactics, vision, and strategy. I do my blog, I volunteer at the food bank and I go to events as an audience member.

So I understand that there are some things mentally disabled people can’t do. But I think there are a lot of times when stigma keeps mentally disabled people from participating in our society as much as they really can.

I’ll be honest, I’m not real familiar with what they do because I haven’t needed their help, but I like to think that if I encounter stigma in one form or another, if it were serious enough I could turn to the local or state or national office of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. But I am sure they could use some more money. If someone encounters bias against them because they’re physically disabled, they get plenty of help. If someone is mentally disabled and less able to deal with bias against the mentally ill, I don’t think they get much help. I would ask you to look into NAMI and when appropriate promote them.

Thanks for your time and everything you’ve done for progressive causes. I don’t expect a personal response, but if someone working for you could let me know that this message was received I would appreciate it. If I don’t get such a response, I will try to contact you via your Senate office web-site, and after that I will drop it.

Tom Shelley
Boulder, CO 

 

********

 

Below the asterisks is the response I got from my congressperson. He doesn't address the issue of stigma, but he does seem fairly concerned about mental illness in a positive way.

***********

 

October 23, 2020
 

Mr. Tom Shelley

(I deleted my address)

Dear Mr. Shelley:

Thank you for contacting me with your support for mental health services. I appreciate hearing from you because it enables me to better represent the beliefs and values of our district, and I agree with you that Congress must do more to help individuals who are suffering with mental illness access the resources they need.

There are millions of Americans living with undiagnosed mental illness, and millions more who have received their diagnoses but aren't receiving the care they need to properly manage their health and wellbeing. I believe that every American has the right to high-quality, affordable healthcare, which includes mental health treatment. Too many individuals are forced to prioritize other aspects of their lives over taking care of their mental health, and too often there are not enough resources available for them to get the help they need. Mental health and substance abuse treatment facilities lack the funds they require to serve their communities, caregivers lack adequate support to assist their loved ones, and far too many people dealing with mental illness end up in prison, which only exacerbates their struggles. To that end, I am a cosponsor on H.R. 945, The Mental Health Access Improvement Act of 2019. This bill would provide coverage for marriage and family therapist services and mental health counseling under Medicare.

In addition, Colorado has one of the highest suicide rates in the country, especially for children and young adults ages 10-24. We need to be taking care of our children and youth populations and increasing resources that are available to prevent many of these tragic deaths. I am proud to cosponsor H.R. 4194, the National Suicide Hotline Designation Act of 2019, to designate the number 988 as the national suicide hotline and provide support to those in need. I also joined several of my colleagues in asking for increased funding for the National Institutes of Mental Health, Community Mental Health Services Block Grants, and other programs in the Fiscal Year 2020 appropriations process, and voted in favor of amendments to the Labor, Health, and Human Services Appropriations Bill that passed the House on June 19, 2019 to add additional funding for mental health programs to the Fiscal Year 2020 budget.

As your Representative, providing accessible mental health resources is something that I care deeply about. Should other legislation regarding mental health services come before the full House of Representatives for a vote, I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind.

I appreciate that you took the time to contact me, it is one of my priorities that the constituents of the Second District of Colorado have their voices heard. I encourage you to continue contacting me about the issues that are important to you. Please visit my website at https://neguse.house.gov/ to sign up for my e-newsletter and receive periodic updates on my activities as your representative in Washington.
 

Sincerely,

Joe Neguse
Member of Congress 

Trump Doesn't Understand the Need for Widespread Testing

This focus exclusively on health workers when it comes to testing and masks is ridiculous. Yes, I am concerned about them. But testing them and giving them masks is not going to slow the spread of COVID-19. And they'll be safer if we slow the spread, by testing everyone at least once a week and doing whatever is needed to get everyone to effectively cover their mouth and nose. What we needed 1-2 months ago was for Trump to use the Defense Production Act like a sledgehammer and get tons and tons of what we need made. It sounds like he's still dragging his feet on that, for the most part.

Testing just those who are sick is ridiculous. Before they get tested, before the are symptomatic, they can spread it. Trump seems to think that a test is an inoculation, but days after you get tested you could get it.

Also, read this, about the failure of Trump's idea of a treatment for COVID-19. He is finished.

There are Confederate flags at anti-lockdown/pro-Trump protests. I found several articles that briefly refer to it, but since it's such a small part of the articles, I'm not going to link to them. Do a search and you'll find them. I AM going to link to this, because it de-bunks a claim that a photo of a protester with that flag was doctored. Also, two such examples were in Wisconsin and Michigan, states that weren't in the Confederacy.

*****IMPORTANT*******

There is more evidence that Trump is a fascist. Read this. They aren't planning on replacing the entire Federal workforce with Trump loyalists for just 4-8 years. This is supposed to be permanent. Someone should ask them if they believe that every time someone moves into the White House, the entire Federal workforce should be replaced.

As Michael Farrell (the popular Irish civil rights/civil liberties lawyer) said, a characteristic of fascism is "the total identification of party and state."

UPDATE 4/22/20 I just wrote most of the following to a friend who thinks that fascist is the wrong word:

**He is supported by a right-wing populist movement. This thing with the federal workforce is, as I said, wanting to make the State an extension of the Party. He is bigoted, believes in an INCREIBLY imperial presidency, is thuggish (in 2016 he had his supporters assault protesters at his rallies), and is slightly imperialistic and militaristic. And there is a cult of personality involved.**

See this and this as examples of his recent, BROAD assertion of the President having more authority than he has. Also, see this as far as him purging Inspectors Generals in a way that is worrying not just Dems but GOPers as well. And he doesn't believe in an independent judiciary. First, at some point at least once he said that judges he appointed should side with his administration, and there's also this about how he thinks that judges who don't like him should recuse themselves from cases involving his administration.

 
UPDATE 4/23/20 Bearing in mind that criminal "justice" reform is a issue of racism, see this.

With the unavoidable depression and the lack of funding for local and state governments (which will happen if we don't start taxing the rich and maybe corporations more than they are taxed now) we will see economic insecurity skyrocket. And the Republicans, especially the hard-core Trump fans who are right-wing populists, will not blame capitalism for this increased economic insecurity, they will blame people of color. That is my solid prediction.

**************

That's Michael Farrell, the Irish activist not the actor. As I wrote elsewhere:

Michael Farrell is one of my top political heroes. He wrote an amazing book “Northern Ireland: The Orange State.” It’s a great book- it’s fairly introductory at the beginning and is a history of N. Ireland ending at some point in the 1970s depending on which edition you read. It’s also almost a labor history of N. Ireland, offers a lot of analysis, exposes the sectarian, brutal and near-authoritarian nature of the Northern state. It highlights the contributions made by Protestants and leftists to the struggles for justice, equality, and freedom. It exposes the role that capital played in creating and maintaining N. Ireland and the ways that capital benefited from the partition of Ireland and Orange rule in N. Ireland. Farrell was a leading member of People’s Democracy whose politics and activities I describe in the first half of this post (starting in the very early 1970s they expressed support for the Provisional IRA).

According to his wikipedia page:

After moving to Dublin and becoming a solicitor, Farrell was co-chairperson of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties from 1995 to 2001. He was appointed a member of the Irish Human Rights Commission in 2001 and reappointed in October 2006, serving until 2011. In 2005 he was appointed to the Steering Committee of the National Action Plan Against Racism [according to his ECRI page, it was 2001-2003- TS]. He is currently working for Free Legal Advice Centres, Dublin, and has brought cases to the European Court of Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee. In 2011 he was appointed to the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, and in 2012 he was appointed to the Irish Council of State by President Michael D. Higgins.

I can confirm pretty much all of it (including the Council of State part), and there’s also the fact that people who were (between 1970 and 1990) very vocal and active Northern supporters of the Provisional IRA are not appointed to the Council of State (by a mainstream Labour politician) 20 years later without being (for example) a ridiculously well respected human rights/civil liberties lawyer.

What Trump Was Told and When He Was Told It (COVID-19 (Coronavirus))

You should read an article here. It's largely an expose of the fact that Trump was warned about the seriousness of COVID-19 in January and February. Very soon I'll add a couple more relevant links.

UPDATE Another relevant article.

One thing that the first article touches on reminds me of something else. When people say we lose a similar number of people each year from the flu, they're ignoring a couple things. First, early on there was plenty of evidence that COVID-19 is VERY communicable and more likely to result in death than the flu. Second, COVID-19 deaths are IN ADDITION to earlier flu deaths in the 2019/2020 flu season.

Masks and Social Distancing and Test, Test, Test For a Long Time

I posted most of this comment on Politico.

Why the hell did NO ONE at the beginning talk about wearing masks for EVERYONE who had one? Other countries did that and some of them are among the most successful at responding to COVID-19. Why were we only worrying about medical people getting them? Why weren't we keeping people from getting sick in the first place by preventing others from spreading it by having everyone wear SOMETHING, ideally the same kind of mask that doctors wear!

People act like we're the Brits in WWII and all we have to do is do the COVID-19 equivelent of going into a bomb shelter- social-distance and stay at home for a brief period of time. We will have to social distance and wear masks and test, test, test, for a long time. (COVID-19 isn't becoming less communicable and the curve is flattening because of social distancing, not because COVID-19 is going away)

WHY DIDN'T WE WEAR MASKS?

Trump didn't like the election year optics of Americans wearing masks, and is an idiot and a racist (see below).

That applies to a lot of others.

The Dems who weren't worried about election-year optics? They're idiots and kind of racists in this case- they were thinking, "ASIANS wear masks, and we're not Asians. We'd look silly, like Asians look silly when they wear masks."

CODVID-19 (Coronavirus) Thoughts

I'll post some more COVID-19 thoughts, but you should read a post by Juan Cole of Informed Comment here. It's about when to re-open the country, about how earlier social-distancing/stay-at-home orders could have saved lives and how Dr. Fauci might be fired soon.

1. Blaming China for COVID-19 and Racism

Although I get the impression that China DID do some bad things in respect to their response to COVID-19, a focus on China could just encourage hostility towards Asian and Asian-American people here. There WERE attacks on Asian people wearing masks a month ago and Trump was persuaded to stop referring to its as “the Chinese virus” because of this. But just about 15 days ago Secretary of State Pompeo was insisting to the Group of 7 industrialized nations that COVID-19 be officially labelled the “Wuhan Virus.”

UPDATE 10/24/20 An article about an increase in anti-Asian-American racism in connection with COVID-19 is here. Also, Trump has been saying that Biden called Trump's partial China travel ban xenophobic. Apparently, within an hour or so of Trump announcing the ban Biden called him xenophobic but Biden wasn't aware of the travel ban at the time- he hadn't heard of it yet when he called Trump xenophobic. There's plenty of things Trump has done that were xenophobic but the travel ban was not one of them.

UPDATE 2/16/21 A CNN video story about anti-Asian-American racism is here.

2. In response to an article here, I wrote the following:

"I think a big part of this is that we have a health-care system set up for a lot less than the entire population. If we had something resembling what they have in other countries (like Canada) and properly funded it, our hospitals wouldn't be as overwhlemed as they are. We should have done social distancing earlier. I don't think this is said with hind-sight- I think if in some alternate reality, we had social-distanced starting in early March and after a week or two it was SORT of a fale alarm, people would have been okay with that. At the very least, WITH hind-sight it makes sense. I mean, if history is a guide, something that could become a pandemic will happen maybe once every 4-5 years or something. We can live a little differently for 1-2 weeks. At the first sign of a pandemic, Trump should have used the Defense Production Act to make more medical supplies like masks and whatever would be likely needed for testing. Our economy would survive if, in a similarly alternate reality, we produced a bunch of stuff for a week and then it turned out okay and we had to wait as production was switched back. And if we taxed the rich (not neccessarily corporations) more, A) they would survive and B) we could afford compensating corporations for making a bunch of medical supplies we end up not needing right away (we could use them and briefly cut back on production so overall supplies can go back down to normal).

We also need to stick with past plans and stuff as the article says. As far as when the alarm should have been raised, 4 days after Trump called it a hoax, his buddy Netanyahu called it a Pandemic."

3. After reading an article here, I wrote the following comment:

"I don't think anyone has mentioned this yet, but I could swear (and the article kind of says this) that one of the things the Dems want is for Affirmative Action to be a factor in support to small businesses. I generally support AA and think this is a good idea. in about a week there will be a post on my blog supporting AA."

That post is here.

4. I read an article here. There is valid concern that people of color are dying disproportionately from COVID-19. That’s partly just the correlation between race and class and also capitalist healthcare. Trump is also a racist. There's Charlottesville, and there's this, and this, and this. UPDATE 4/23/20 Bearing in mind that criminal "justice" reform is a issue of racism, see this.

5. I read a an article here and left the following comment:

"This thing where you have to say nice things about Trump to get supplies is horrible. I was hoping that this would end months before the election and those governors who, rightfully, want to criticize Trump could do so and he woud lose the election, but he is messing up so bad, who knows when this will end, and governors will have to keep saying nice stuff about him to get supplies. They might take a chance shortly before the election and try to get him kicked out of the White House, but if they try that and he wins (probably in an unfair election), they're in trouble. Liberal and progressive media and activists unconnected to governors need to spread the word about what a bad job Trump is doing. GREAT JOB POLITICO!!"

When Can We Return to Normal? (COVID-19 (Coronavirus))

After I read an article on Politico, I left a comment. Most of what's below is that comment.

The only reason he is including business people on the council is so that they can vote to re-open the country. They're not epidemiologists, they have no idea when the country can reopen. It's great that he'll include some governors and doctors, but I have a bad feeling that the business people will out-vote the others and recommend opening the country. And Trump saying he'll close it back down if there's a resurgence of COVID-19 is stupid. That means he'll wait until AFTER a bunch more people will have gotten an often deadly disease and THEN close the country again.

What we need is for him to use the Defense Production Act to dramatically ramp up the production of masks and whatever is needed to test for COVID-19, and maybe AFTER we have enough masks and everyone is getting tested frequently, then we can reopen the country.

The thing is, the decrease in cases, when it comes, is because of social-distancing. COVID-19 isn't becoming less communicable. We need masks and testing before it's even sort of safe to return to normal. And even then, restaurants and such will have to stay closed (you can't take your mask off) but a lot of non-essential businesses can open again, including many that can't do stuff on-line.

What we really need a is an effective treatment- not the ones that Trump recommends. And from what I've heard, a lot of health-care people think his obsession with hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine is requiring effort that could be better spent on other stuff. If you think that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are treatments, you should read this, this, and this.

You should also read the other post I did about COVID-19.

UPDATE 4/14/20 Trump's real reason for not encouraging people to wear masks and and ramping up production of them is that he thought it would look bad if there were a bunch of people wearing masks and it would be bad election-year optics.

Trump, Netanyahu, and COVID-19 (Coronavirus)

I had earlier thought that I would keep the topic of Coronavirus (COVID-19) off my blog. I have sent some thoughts about it (more or less political thoughts), to a handful of individuals by email. Soon I’ll post some more thoughts about COVID-19 but right now I want to get this out there immediately. (I get almost all of my COVID-19 news from Politico)

In general there are a lot of ways to criticize Trump for his horrible response to Coronavirus. But there is one thing that I don’t hear anyone mentioning. For about two months until about 20 days ago I read A LOT of stuff in The Times of Israel, an online and apparently mainstream Israeli newspaper which is only slightly pro-Israel (the founding editor is described here). I found an article that contrasts Trump’s response to COVID-19 with that of Netanyahu, which is the only good thing I can say about Netanyahu. When reading that article, remember that it was the 29th of February when Trump said that COVID-19 was a liberal “hoax.” (UPDATE 4/12/20 Trump can't accuse Netanyahu of predicting a pandemic because he's a liberal in love with the American media)

On March. 17th, Netanyahu said: “This isn’t child’s play, it’s not summer vacation, it’s a matter of life and death,” and “If you don’t have to go to work, stay home. I assume you know the English expression ‘My home is my castle.’ Please adopt that. Your home is your castle in defense against the coronavirus pandemic…stay home.” It was March 24th when Trump said: “I’d love to have it open by Easter, OK? I would love to have it open by Easter. I will tell you that right now.” On March 26th it was reported that Israeli police were handing out fines for violating social distancing regulations. On March 23rd, Trump said of schools: “In many cases, they are open now. But the schools are going to be open. In other cases, (New York) Governor (Andrew) Cuomo, Gavin Newsom of California, certain governors are going to maybe have a decision to make.” Trump has resisted calls for a NATIONAL “stay-at-home” order and continues to refuse to do that, despite the fact that Dr. Fauci supports it (an April 3rd article). Here’s a good (March 27th) article about the response of many Governors to Trump’s March 26th plan for lifting social-distancing restrictions in the near future on a county-by-county and state-by-state basis. A March 22nd article reports that the Isareli Health Ministry said that social distancing will probably last until the Summer and maybe beyond.

In an article here it was illustrated that the Israeli State wasn’t very well prepared for this. But I think that Netanyahu still did a better job. In a more recent article, on April 5th it was learned that at least 10,000 tests a day will be done, and it sounds like that was a pretty realistic estimate. It sucks, but it’s still better than Trump. According to this, only in late March did testing in America get to 100,000 a day, and America’s population is about 30 times bigger than Israel’s.

On production of things like ventilators, I haven’t found much info. But the first article I link to above strongly implied that Netanyahu was deploying the power of the national government to combat COVID-19. And I found an article here saying that Israel has already used a 2/3 public 1/3 private partnership to produce more ventilators. The new production line was set up in days and in one day produced 30 ventilators. From what I’ve heard, the new production lines for ventilators in America haven’t been set up yet. And again, America’s population is 30 times Israel’s. I don’t know how many ventilators America normally produces or how many were already being made in Israel, but again, if you consider the different population sizes involved, Israel might be doing better on ventilator production, and it was set up quickly and Netanyahu was a lot more willing than Trump to involve the State instead of relying, to one large degree or another, on the private sector. (I wish I could find more information about Israel and this aspect of responding to COVID-19, but I am kind of sticking with The Times of Israel and after doing a few searches using Google Advanced Search, I don’t think there’s anything more I’m likely to find). I know more about Trump’s efforts to ramp up production and I THINK it’s worse than Netanyahu’s. An article, from April 2nd goes into Trump’s efforts here.

1-2 weeks ago I tried to get this message out to people I know (and some politicians like Senators Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren) because I thought it could be used to pressure Trump to do the right thing (in addition to the thing about ventilators, there’s the first article I link to that strongly implies that Netanyahu was deploying the power of the national government to combat COVID-19- some would point out that they don’t have a federal system, but the point is that Netanyahu didn’t take a hands-off approach, and in America, the fact is that this situation is the sort where there is broad, bipartisan agreement that the Federal government is supposed to act (why else do we have the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Defense Production Act? (the states don’t have a DPA))). It might be too late for that, but when COVID-19 ends, this can be used to attack Trump. Why? Trump and Netanyahu are very good friends politically. Trump isn’t going to attack Netanyahu as a socialist or liberal or a pussy (on the other hand, there are reports that Trump likes to grab Netanyahu without permission). He won’t have a response. When I thought that this could be used to get Trump to do the right thing, I wrote: “I think it might help if people start pointing out that it's okay for a "tough-guy," right-wing, capitalist, racist motherfucker to take Coronavirus seriously.”

UPDATE 5/29/20 According to CNN (and this), at this point Israel has recorded 284 COVID-19 deaths. The US population is 30 times that of Israel's, so if we had the same death rate per capita, there would only be 8,520 deaths in this country and we just passed 100,000.

Liberals, Progressives, and Clintionites

In recent years I have struggled with how progressives define liberal. In very early 2003, I organized an anti-war panel discussion sponsored by the Young Democratic Socialists at CU-Boulder and by an embryonic group I started called “Liberals Against War.” I’ll keep this brief for now, although I might do a post about it later (UPDATE 10/29/20 That post is here), but I felt like the main anti-war group at CU-Boulder was trying to convert people to progressives as a way of making them oppose what Bush wanted to do, instead of convincing them that an invasion of Iraq was wrong, and I felt the focus should be on a massive part of the population that would listen to the anti-war movement- liberals, as I define them. But one of the panelists thought I was talking about listening to what pro-war liberal and moderate Democrats had to say. I clarified what I meant. I just found an article about moderate Democrats here.           

The very beginning is:

Twenty-four years ago, I published an essay titled “Liberals, I Do Despise” in the Village Voice, which Common Dreams reprinted as an enduring oldie in 2009. The title was a play on an old doggerel, in this case rendering it:

Liberals and flies, I do despise

The more I see liberals, the more I like flies.

I wrote the essay in disgust after Bill Clinton concluded his and other New Democrats’ deal with the devil by signing the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act—welfare reform—that ended the federal government’s sixty-year commitment to direct income provision for the indigent.

I am frustrated by this progressive obsession with referring to Clinton as a liberal. He was not a liberal as President. Besides being economically moderate or even right-wing (on the internal DP spectrum) and generally being the candidate of the moderate part of the DP in 1992, he was also a militarist and was only sort of socially liberal. Although I’m far from familiar with his environmental record, I get the impression it was pretty bad. Although he was fiercely pro-choice, he took a moderate position on affirmative action (my thoughts about AA are here) and opposed gay marriage. He was “tough on crime.”

His Vice President was married to a woman half responsible for the “Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics” stickers on many music albums. I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with not wanting your kids to hear a bunch of swear words and references to sex and drugs, but there were some serious problems with those stickers. First, those behind them wouldn’t have been successful without massive support from the religious right. Second, many music stores refused to sell albums with the label. Third, I’m willing to bet that the majority of albums affected were by artists who were people of color. And fourth, many of the songs on many of those albums were incredibly political with messages of the sort embraced (to one degree or another) by liberals and progressives.

Welfare reform, although largely a question of economic injustice, was also an example of social injustice if you consider A) the popular, racist image in America of a welfare recipient, and B) the fact that all mothers are working mothers.

Clinton was not a liberal. They are at least socially liberal, often passionately so, slightly skeptical of the military (and favor efforts to avoid war), and I would argue they are a bit to the left of Clinton on economic stuff although not much. They believe strongly in what you might call (STATE) CHARITY, but only sort of in CHANGE (like Single-Payer, laws that would strengthen unions, etc.). (based on what he did with welfare reform, it can be argued that Clinton doesn't consistently believe in (STATE) CHARITY very much)

Progressives seem to think that to the left of center there are only progressives and Clintonites and there is no space in between to be filled by those I would call liberal. Did everyone who opposed welfare reform (strongly) support unions and/or support single-payer health care? Did all straight supporters of gay marriage support economic justice, i.e. oppose the North American Free Trade Agreement? Same thing with affirmative action. To one extent or another there are some other things like that.

(UPDATE 10/5/25 I have a feeling that a lot of readers still don't see a couple things I'm trying to illuminate with this- the difference between a progressive and a liberal and the difference between a liberal and a Clintonite. One argument I make when I think about what my readers may say is that as important as it was that (most) progressives tried to stop Clintonite welfare "reform," welfare is not revolutionary- it did not EMPOWER people and/or TRANSFORM any structure. It was and is reformist- I can easily see MANY liberals opposing "reform" in the Clinton years without supporting single-payer or opposing NAFTA. It was a kind of CHARITY, it was not CHANGE)

Although Obama isn’t a progressive, is he a Clintonite? I could just point to the 2008 primaries, but some would say that it was two Clintonites and the anti-racist/Black vote helped Obama win against the wife of a Democratic President very popular with Democrats. But Obama was a liberal candidate. About 10 years before he ran for President he HAD been a progressive. His Justice Department went after racist police departments and let large numbers of people out of jail. Obamacare is MUCH better than what Hillary Clinton pushed in the 1990s. Unlike Hillary he had opposed the Iraq war. At the end of his presidency he commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, the Army whistleblower previously known as Bradley Manning. Some would point to Hillary’s role in the Obama administration, but consider this- it’s not uncommon for Heads of Government to give some positions to people in other factions of their party, and she was only there the first half.

The Clintons are not liberals, but liberals exist. And as a progressive, I believe that here and there many of them are my allies.

Babylon 5 Reviews C

Years ago I did what you might call “reviews” of Star Trek episodes. I mostly just briefly noted what progressive politics were involved and sometimes used that as an excuse to talk about similar situations in reality.

Last year I finally watched all five seasons of Babylon 5, another sci-fi show, one I had thought of watching once in a while stretching back a couple decades. It isn’t as political or as progressive as ST but there’s some good stuff there- in fact, on one issue, a progressive take on the working-class and/or labor movement, B5 is better than ST. Because there is so little progressive material, I’m going to do one post for every four episodes reviewed, and only mention the episodes that have some progressive political stuff. I might ignore some of the more minor and/or less unique stuff about conflict resolution because from what I remember, it’s very common in this series. Also, although less so than is the case with Star Trek, multiculturalism is a big part of Babylon Five and I will also only be commenting on that when it is more significant than usual. Lastly, there are issues raised about telepaths- I’m going to completely ignore stuff about telepaths when reviewing these episodes.


**Season 1 Episode 15 “Grail”** See this for a plot summary.

After some serious criminal activity, the stations’ security chief wants to do a sweep through a high-crime area that, of course, is also a very poor area (A: Earth and B5 aren’t utopias like the Federation  is on Star Trek, and B: the security chief seems to be a mixture of different political tendencies whereas the commander is  more consistently progressive (the doctor, and, maybe, the second-in-command are also progressive)). The Commander rejects that request and says: “most of them are just people with no where else to go. They come here looking for a new life, a new job and when they don’t find it they can’t afford transport back.”


**Season 1 Episode 16 “Eyes”** See this for a plot summary.

At one point the chief of security, a male, refers to God with a female pronoun.


**Season 1 Episode 17 “Legacies”** See this for a plot summary.

Commander Sinclair agrees to take part in a memorial service sort of thing for a late military leader of the Minbari who was a hero of the Earth-Minbari war Sinclair had fought in. He says that it would help with the reconciliation between the two alien races. I think that sort of approach is often a good idea. Possibly not when it comes to WWII (I think that had it been tried after WWII it might have made de-Nazification less successful, and it might have contradicted the message that Hitler’s wars of aggression were war crimes). On the other hand, I think that it would have been acceptable and helpful after the American Revolution and the American Civil War, for example; and I am fairly okay with the actions taken by mainstream republican leaders to advance the N. Ireland Peace Process by meeting with people like the Queen, or Prince Charles, or (on a similar note) by marking the Battle of the Somme (something important to Unionists), etc. etc.


**Season 1 Episode 21 “The Quality of Mercy”** See this for a plot summary.

There are about four issues raised by this episode:

1. I can’t remember what we learned about this in earlier episodes, but it seems that B5 doesn’t believe in juries. On the other hand, a judge refuses to allow the sometimes right-wing security chief to go on a “fishing expedition” in relation to a criminal who may have committed more murders than he was charged with and convicted of.

2. Aside from mutiny and treason, the death penalty is not used anymore (well, they CAN sentence someone to having their mind wiped, which seems at best a little bit less offensive than killing someone, but the show still makes a good statement against the death penalty as we know it today)

3. Although this is unclear, we might learn in this episode that one of the main characters is both male and female. This positive statement is slightly diluted by the fact that A) he’s a “bad guy” for the most part; B) he’s an alien; and C) the character he outs himself to is at least a little uncomfortable with it.

4. The very best thing about this episode is that it promotes free health-care. As I’ve said, Earth and B5 aren’t utopias like the Federation on Star Trek. There’s a lot of poverty on B5 and the head doctor there spends some of his time running a free clinic in the poor area of the station. He even gets the second-in-command, Ivanova, to help him with it. UPDATE 5/17/17 In the season 2 episode "A Race Through Dark Places" the doctor says that he was using the free clinic to help telepaths who were on the run. So, I guess it's not nearly as impressive a political statement as I thought it was (on the other hand Ivanova DOES agree to help him, thinking that it's a free clinic for "normals.")

Star Trek: Voyager Reviews HH

This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.
I’m not very familiar with The Original Series and there might be some small amount of material there that would affect what I say about Star Trek (i.e. how often religion is mentioned)

Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).

There are several episodes in VOY that involve the question of whether or not holograms are alive, and/or feature conflict between holograms and organic beings. I’m going to ignore that part of VOY, it’s a bit too philosophical, and comparing the maltreatment of holograms to the maltreatment of, for example, Black people, seems stupid. Although I kind of make an exception for The Doctor (it’s impossible to be a fan of ST and not do that) I lean towards saying that holograms are not life forms, but I don’t feel like going into it.

“Critical Care” See this for a plot summary.

In general a good political episode about health-care. It’s basically criticising how an elite get excellent care, even preventative care that isn’t neccessary at the moment. Something similar happens in real life today where 10s of millions don’t have insurance; many who do have insurance have limited options, have to pay a lot out of their pockets, have high premiums and deductibles and frequently their insurance company denies coverage.

What happened in this episode is similiar to what happens with health-care in America. In this episode The Doctor’s criticism of their health care system can be seen as reflecting how the Federation feels about that. I'm a supporter of the Single-payer (Canadian) model for health care.

There is one more time when a Starfleet officer and (in this case) Neelix each individually engage in questionable interrogation tactics. I wouldn’t call them torture, but they’re not far off from that. Something similar happened with the administrator of the hospital the Doctor is working at. What the Doctor does is a little questionable, but the idea of giving the administrator a chance to experience what most of the patients experience seems good.

I give it four stars out of five.

“Inside Man” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it two stars out of five.

“Body and Soul” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode, but I do like how Jeri Ryan has to play Seven of Nine as if she were the Doctor.

I give it three stars out of five.

“Nightingale” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. One thing I’d like to note is that their failure to promote Kim is ridiculous- Tuvock got TWO promotions.