Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

This really is a full service blog.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Let there be snark.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

This fight is for everything.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

You are here: Home / Politics / America / Good Reading: The Anthropoliteia #BlackLivesMatter Syllabus

Good Reading: The Anthropoliteia #BlackLivesMatter Syllabus

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The Anthropoliteia website describes itself as “critical perspectives on police, security, crime, law and punishment around the world.”

For the past 31 weeks, they have been running a series “@BlackLivesMatter Syllabus.” This series “mobilizes anthropological work as a pedagogical exercise addressing the confluence of race, policing and justice.” It is set up as a resource for college professors who teach courses that touch on such things. But it is also an outstanding resource for all of us on those subjects. Reading and other media are recommended by professors who use them in their courses, with explanation of why and how they use them. Some sample posts.

Week 30: Savannah Shange’s Key & Peele Mix Tape Because Laughter Keeps Us Honest

Week 29: Courtney Morris For Black Boys Who Look Blue

Week 26: Sameena Mulla on Missing Black Girls and Women

Week 22: Beatrice Jauregui on Humanity, Intersectionality, Inclusion

All the posts listed here.

Reader Interactions

70Comments

  1. 1.

    aimai

    Thank you for posting this. I am bookmarking the site and hoping to come back to reading the individual syllabi.

  2. 2.

    Aleta

    Alan Neuhauser @alneuhauser
    @SheriffClarke announces he will “accept an appointment as an assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security.”

  4. 4.

    Yarrow

    Thank you for the post and link to the site. Very interesting.

    @Aleta: Sheriff Clarke has ties to Russia. I’ll be interested to see what happens in this Russian investigation.

  7. 7.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Cheryl, this site looks wonderful. Bookmarking for more leisurely study.

  8. 8.

    Mike in DC

    Thanks for the links!

    Off topic: Trump’s speech on Islam to be written by Stephen Miller. Oy.

  9. 9.

    Shalimar

    @Aleta: He has gotten too much publicity locally for the whole letting inmates die of dehydration thing to get reelected, so Clarke has to look for something else.

  12. 12.

    rikyrah

    Trump is Being Taken Apart, Step By Step
    by Martin Longman
    May 17, 2017 1:30 PM

    J. Edgar Hoover died when I was still in nursery school, but I knew his name from about that time. People talked about him differently than they talked about anyone else. He was fearsome and untouchable because he knew secrets about everybody, especially the politicians in Washington. He seemed like some kind of evil Santa Claus who could control people’s fate depending on whether they’d been naughty or nice, and apparently every adult who mattered had been naughty. Nixon finally resigned a few weeks before I started kindergarten, but my house was filled with much older people and they discussed Watergate while I played with my blocks and trains. Hoover had been dead for over two years by then, but it felt like he’d had an influence even from the grave. I had to wait more than three decades to get a confirmation of that feeling, but it came when Deep Throat was revealed to have been Mark Felt, the Associate Director for Hoover’s FBI, who felt like he’d been unjustly passed over for a promotion after Hoover’s death.

    Maybe James Comey shares little more in common with Hoover than former job titles, but he might be able to take down a president while he’s still living, and in broad daylight. For a lot of people, this is an example of a Deep State or an incompetent Establishment carrying out a coup that overrules the verdict the people made at the ballot box. And, it’s true, our clandestine services have been known to orchestrate coups and meddle in elections in other countries. The presumption in these cases is that this meddling is unjustified or even immoral, but I don’t know that people would have felt much differently about Watergate if they knew someone at the top of the FBI was leaking to Woodward and Bernstein. Nixon really had committed crimes and he really was committing more as he tried to cover his tracks. The way to make sure he was removed from office wasn’t to prosecute him. It was to make sure the people knew what he had done.

    ………………………………………………….

    We can debate who deserved their fate and who did not, but we should be clear that things look substantially the same regardless of which side is wearing the black hats. Trump is getting taken down in a way I began predicting he would when he began publicly denigrating the Intelligence Community’s assessment of Russian involvement in the election. I don’t believe this would be happening if Trump were trustworthy and competent.

    For example, had President Obama blundered by revealing sensitive information to the Russians that had been provided by the Israelis, the reaction would have likely been to quietly do damage control, explain to the president his error, and go on with the assumption that the mistake would not be repeated. When Trump did it, the damage control involved taking steps to remove him from office. How do I know this?

    …………………………….

    I’ve been writing about this slow-moving coup in various ways for months now because its not well understood and it’s the most consequential thing going on in this country and the world right now. Nixon won a landslide reelection in 1972 even after many details of the Watergate burglary were reported, yet his efforts to obstruct justice were thwarted by leaks from the intelligence community. People generally don’t see this as a problem because Nixon was actually guilty and he was actually obstructing justice. But we can imagine a scenario where the intelligence community turns on an elected president because they disagree with him on policy and where the leaks are dishonest and the takedown is unjustified and undemocratic. It’s not a small thing to work for the president and then go running to the Washington Post to knife him when he screws up.

    In Trump’s case, though, his operation has been the subject of a counterintelligence investigation for almost a year now. He appointed a man on the Kremlin’s payroll to be our national security advisor. He’s giving out information to the Russians that could get Israeli intelligence assets killed, or prevent us from stopping a mass casualty terrorist attack on civil aviation.

    Nixon was abusing his power but we wasn’t endangering the country.

    So, the proverbial shoes will keep dropping. The grand juries will start producing indictments. The pace will continue to make White House staffers feel helpless and under siege. It will get ratcheted up, step by step, until the GOP resistance in Congress breaks.

  13. 13.

    rikyrah

    Trump and Republicans Are On a Collision Course
    by Nancy LeTourneau May 17, 2017 2:30 PM

    One of the standard lines about our politics these days is that we are becoming more polarized and that a kind of tribalism has taken over the conflicts that would otherwise merely be thought of as disagreements. Most honest political scientists will acknowledge that this phenomenon has been more pronounced among Republicans, as William Galston and Thomas Mann suggested with the term “asymmetric polarization.”

    Right now, that is being exhibited in the overall response among Republicans to Donald Trump. At best, they remain silent about his behavior and, at worst, defend it.

    It is important to keep in mind that whether we’re discussing habitual lying, possible collusion with the Russians, obstruction of justice or the leaking of classified information to a known adversary, all of these issues are self-inflicted wounds from Trump himself. As investigations over these matters progress, is there any reason to believe that there will be no additional items to add to the list?

    Even those who chide the media for assuming that Trump will pivot or somehow become “presidential” often fail to acknowledge that his behavior will continue to produce these kinds of scandals, if not increase in severity. While I am often loath to make predictions, this one isn’t a stretch…that reality is almost certainly on a collision course with Republican tribalism.

  14. 14.

    TenguPhule

    @Mike in DC:

    Off topic: Trump’s speech on Islam to be written by Stephen Miller. Oy.

    Somewhere in Syria, the leaders of ISIS just cracked open their first bottle of champagne.

  15. 15.

    Mnemosyne

    My First World Problem of the Day: I’ve managed to come down with a cold on the same day that we’re supposed to go see Wallace Shawn in The Designated Mourner, directed by Andre Gregory.

    I’m still considering dragging my ass there IF I feel confident I won’t end up coughing. I don’t want to be that asshole in a small theater who has a coughing jag at the worst possible moment.

  16. 16.

    TenguPhule

    @rikyrah:

    that reality is almost certainly on a collision course with Republican tribalism.

    Bet on the tribe to win out. Its who they are.

  17. 17.

    Elizabelle

    @Mnemosyne: Do drag yourself to see it. Take about 4 boxes of cough drops, and see if the usher will let you take in a bottle or two of water; explaining your problem with coughing. (That once worked for me.)

    Was going to put up an item about this play. Learned about it in the LA Times, and how cool that you actually get to see it.

    So go!

  18. 18.

    Elizabelle

    Thank you for this post, Cheryl. Glad to learn of this, and have much to learn.

  19. 19.

    Mnemosyne

    @Elizabelle:

    I called in sick to work, so now I’m laying in bed with the iPad trying to rest up for it. I’m just so frakkin’ annoyed that I had to come down with a cold today of all days this week.

  20. 20.

    Elizabelle

    Breaking news, WaPost website:

    Turmoil over recent Trump controversies triggers the Dow’s biggest losses since September

    The stock market took its biggest dive since before President Trump’s election, as investors began to grapple with the increasing possibility that Washington would be consumed with chaos and fail to enact policies to boost the economy.

    Gee, ya think, investors?

  21. 21.

    TenguPhule

    A pity the children aren’t going to be able to enjoy reading at the rate this mess is progressing.

    Funding for college work-study programs would be cut in half, public-service loan forgiveness would end and hundreds of millions of dollars that public schools could use for mental health, advanced coursework and other services would vanish under a Trump administration plan to cut $10.6 billion from federal education initiatives, according to budget documents obtained by The Washington Post.

    The administration would channel part of the savings into its top priority: school choice. It seeks to spend about $400 million to expand charter schools and vouchers for private and religious schools, and another $1 billion to push public schools to adopt choice-friendly policies.

    The first shot in the new Republican War on Children has been fired.

  22. 22.

    Elizabelle

    @Mnemosyne: Well, tell the cold to take a hike.

    Had you heard about the play a long time before? I just read about it this week and thought “wow.”

    In my cool news for today, I learned the Afghan Whigs will tour this summer and fall. Yes! They’re actually coming to Barcelona in two weeks! — on June 1, part of a big musical festival, but tickets are gone, gone girl.

    But: Virginia in September. Gives me something to smile about.

  23. 23.

    germy

    I was pleased to learn Jordan Peele is adapting “Lovecraft Country” for HBO

  24. 24.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Shalimar: So like so many other Rightwingers, Clarke falls upwards into a more prestigious position. Good to know.

  26. 26.

    Patricia Kayden

    @TenguPhule:

    and another $1 billion to push public schools to adopt choice-friendly policies.

    What does this even mean? That’s a whole lot of money. Devos’ plan to destroy public education is moving full steam ahead.

  27. 27.

    TenguPhule

    The Washington Post has improved greatly, with few exceptions.

    The Trump presidency is the discovery that what you thought was a man in a bear suit is just a bear. Suddenly the fact that he wouldn’t play by the rules makes total sense. It wasn’t that he refused to, that he was playing a long game. It was that he was a wild animal who eats fish and climbs trees, and English words were totally unintelligible to him. In retrospect, you should have suspected that after he just straight-up ate a guy. But at the time everyone cheered. It was good TV. Also, he was your bear.

    Okay. So you have spent 200 years building a fragile snow globe, and now you have given it to a bear. The animal doesn’t care. You cannot even explain to him what the thing is. To him, all your words are just sounds. He looks at you when you are making them and he looks away when you are finished. You can only hope the bear becomes bored and sets the snow globe down and wanders off looking for food.

    (Again, this is an insult to bears, who have fewer places to live than Trump and do not do so at the taxpayer’s expense.)

    Why is it that the best writing only comes out when things go South?

    ETA: Do go read the rest, its brilliant.

  31. 31.

    TenguPhule

    @Patricia Kayden:

    I don’t see how Republicans can play this down.

    You’re not cynical enough.

    They’ll ignore it when asked. Deny it if pressed. Blame Obama at last.

  33. 33.

    Aleta

    @Aleta: @aimai: @Yarrow: @SiubhanDuinne:
    Just saw this:

    Homeland Security @DHSgov

    Sr. positions are announced when made official by the Sec. No such announcement w/ regard to the Office of Public Engagement has been made.

    (posted about 15 min ago)

  34. 34.

    Elizabelle

    @TenguPhule: Good catch. Alexandra Petri. And it is terrific.

    WaPost: The president is not a child. He’s something worse.

    We were wrong, it turns out. Anyone cannot be president. Anyone can be elected president (any man, that is), but not anyone can be president.

    After the [yadda yadda yadda], many columnists lately have been calling President Trump a child, or a bull in a china shop. This is, I think, unfair to children, and to bulls. Bulls have done a good job running Wall Street. Sometimes children are not cruel on purpose. Children can sit still and are often unable to stick their feet into their mouths, and sometimes will let you get more ice cream than they get.

    He is something more terrifying than a child. Children can learn.

    …. The president is not a child. Children can improve. Children speak with inside voices. Children ask for help when there are things they cannot reach.

    He’s a human Failure to Read the User’s Manual.

    He’s a cartoon character. He only looks real on TV. When real things are put into his hands he drops them, and people get hurt.

    Confidence is good, up to a point. Now here is someone who thinks juggling hand-painted Fabergé eggs will impress you. Not because he is so supremely confident in his ability to juggle, but because he literally doesn’t know what they are. That they’re breakable. Only your house is in the egg. You are in the egg. Everything you care about is in the egg.

    The Pulitzer Committee should take Peggy Fucking Noonan’s Pulitzer away from her — she does not deserve it, and bestow it to Ms. Petri. A lot of truth in that column, disguised as “daring satiric writing.”

  35. 35.

    sheila in nc

    @Mnemosyne: Also too, wash hands frequently and don’t touch anything. Bring Purell. Get whoever you are going with to open doors for you. No need to infect other playgoers.

  36. 36.

    TenguPhule

    @Elizabelle:

    The Pulitzer Committee should take Peggy Fucking Noonan’s Pulitzer away from her — she does not deserve it, and bestow it to Ms. Petri.

    Yes. Even if it takes removing it from her cold, clutching fingers.

  40. 40.

    Aleta

    From the Hill:

    Sheriff David Clarke of Milwaukee County, Wis., said Wednesday he has accepted a job in the Department of Homeland Security.

    Clarke told conservative radio host Vicki McKenna during an interview on 1130 WISN that he will leave his post as sheriff to serve as a deputy secretary of Homeland Security.

    “I’m both honored and humbled to be appointed to this position by Secretary Kelly, working for the Trump administration,” he said during the radio show.

    Clarke said he will leave his position as sheriff in June to work in the Office of Partnership and Programs as a liaison with state, local and tribal law enforcement.

    While the DHS did not confirm Clarke’s reported role, it did note the position in question does not require Senate confirmation.

    Who knows if this is true….

  41. 41.

    Yarrow

    @rikyrah:

    The pace will continue to make White House staffers feel helpless and under siege. It will get ratcheted up, step by step, until the GOP resistance in Congress breaks.

    This is what Adam Silverman has been saying here for months. We’re watching it happen in real time.

  42. 42.

    Patricia Kayden

    @TenguPhule: If Israel makes a big fuss about this, Republicans cannot play it down — especially if anything actually happens to the ISIS infiltrator. The problem with a dope like Trump is that he doesn’t think through all of the consequences of his actions. He’s been skating along his entire life and only now is he faced with the prospect that his misconduct can seriously and irreparably damage innocent people.

  44. 44.

    rikyrah

    Immigration arrests up under Trump, including sharp rise for those without criminal records
    By Maria Sacchetti
    May 17 at 12:27 PM

    Federal immigration agents are arresting more than 400 immigrants a day, including violent offenders, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Wednesday. The sharpest increase in arrests is among immigrants who have never been convicted of any crime.

    In President Trump’s first 100 days in office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has arrested 41,318 immigrants, up 37.6 percent over the same period last year, the agency said. More than three out of four of those arrested have criminal records.

    Nearly 11,000 immigrants with no criminal convictions were arrested during that time period, compared with 4,242 during the same period last year.

    Acting ICE Director Thomas Homan said in a conference call with reporters that morale and productivity are up among immigration agents because of a perception that the Trump administration is giving officers fewer restrictions and more leeway to do their jobs.

    “Will the number of non-criminal arrests and removals increase this year? Absolutely,” Homan said. “That’s enforcing the laws on the books.”

  45. 45.

    Yarrow

    @Mnemosyne: That sucks. Can you take cough medicine to help just for that time? Take cough drops with you. If the theater isn’t totally packed you could also ask about changing to an aisle seat (if you don’t have one) so you can get up easily without bothering too many people if you need to. I’ve had ushers be helpful that way.

  46. 46.

    jl

    @TenguPhule: Congressional GOPers probably busy at a bootcamp on how to scurry down halls and sidewalks quickly, heads down, looking very very very very very… very busy. Very busy indeed.

    Preoccupied with important public business. Very important. Don’t have time for nonsense. Sorry, can’t find a sec to talk. Very sorry.

  47. 47.

    TenguPhule

    @Patricia Kayden:

    If Israel makes a big fuss about this, Republicans cannot play it down — especially if anything actually happens to the ISIS infiltrator.

    Wanna bet? They managed to blame Hillary and President Obama for Bengazi after the Republicans cut security funding just weeks earlier. They will now blame the media for “leaking” Trump’s disclosure and revealing Israel’s agent. Its already happening.

  48. 48.

    TenguPhule

    @jl: I posted a link to a story in the prior thread where they did exactly that when the Comey memos broke.

  49. 49.

    ? Martin

    @Patricia Kayden: Republicans are starting to claim that Trump is intellectually incapable of criminal intent – that his expressions don’t qualify as speech because they’re more like word salad – just words he vomits up.

    That’s their defense. Effectively, not guilty due to diminished capacity. But by all means, let him carry the nuclear codes in his pocket. After all, if he nukes something it won’t be so bad because he didn’t really mean it.

  50. 50.

    Yarrow

    @Elizabelle:

    A lot of truth in that column, disguised as “daring satiric writing.”

    There’s a long history of court jesters being the ones who can speak truth to the king. It’s not surprising that the political comedy, late night comedy shows and satirical writers seem to be the ones doing the best job of speaking truth.

  51. 51.

    ? Martin

    @Mnemosyne: Do you have cough syrup with cødeine? Take some just before you go in, and it’ll suppress that cough for a few hours. Even if it’s a bit expired it’s fine. Stuff is like magic.

  55. 55.

    Elizabelle

    @Yarrow: i think one of the factors that helped Trump steal the White House was no Jon Stewart and Colbert out of his persona, tucked away under CBS corporate.

  57. 57.

    ? Martin

    I don’t think the GOP will break anytime soon. I think they’re fully in North Korea mode now.

    An underdog in a market that is structurally aligned against them has two options: negotiate the terms of your underdog status, or substitute tolerance of risk where you lack power. The white christian culture has flipped into the demographic minority category, which means that the popular vote is can only be attained by either suppressing the majority or by pulling in outside groups that will tolerate the white christian policy goals. Guys like Trump and Richard Spencer are not naturally part of that group but have aligned with it because it is a better fit for them than the majority which currently demands significant concessions on social issues (gay marriage, tolerance of immigrants, etc.) The GOPs only agenda right now is to retain power because each time they lose it, the demographics shift ever further from them and become ever harder to recover from.

    North Korea is a small nation with minimal resources, but it can punch above its weight by being willing to subjugate their population, dump their entire GDP into offensive weapons, and hold onto power by holding a gun to South Korea and Japan. That’s the role Trump plays for the GOP now. He’s the political equivalent of a nuclear weapons program. He’ll threaten his political opponents, break the law, throw all norms out of the window with the solitary goal of holding power, which is exactly what the GOP establishment needs. It’s why evangelicals signed onto Trump in such strong numbers – he was a terrible representative of them, but he would keep them in power.

    The problem is once you’ve accepted that higher risk level, the norms and law breaking, you’re stuck with them. If you suspect you’ve overstepped, you can’t correct it without admitting wrongdoing. It’s difficult to ask forgiveness. Your incentives are to double down, and as you do so, you just end up even deeper in. Republicans under Nixon weren’t so deeply in that state. They saw the potential for demographic gains with Nixon out. I don’t think they do today. What group other than white Christians are they making any attempt to bring into the fold?

  58. 58.

    debbie

    @rikyrah:

    Never, ever, ever give up. Things will work out just fine. Look at the way I’ve been treated lately, especially by the media. No politician in history, and I say this with great surety, has been treated worse or more unfairly. You can’t let them get you down. You can’t let the critics and the naysayers get in the way of your dreams. … I guess that’s why we won.
    President Trump

    Aside from meaning sincerity, not surety, this clearly is a guy in some degree of stress. I’d love to be able to point out to him that it’s no worse than what he spent 8 years doing to Obama. How you like that now, bitch?

  61. 61.

    NeenerNeener

    OT: our blog host just posted a picture on Twitter of a silver Subaru being hoisted onto a flatbed tow truck. I hope it’s not his car.

  63. 63.

    Monala

    More on the debate sparked in last night’s open thread: Open Thread – Life purchased at the price of chains, about whether the author of this article, Alex Tizon, was as complicit as his parents in keeping the woman who basically raised him enslaved.

    The Seattle Times has several articles today, including the original (sanitized by Alex Tizon, unknown to them) obituary that was written about Eudocia Tomas Pulido when she died in 2011, and the obituary’s author’s mea culpa now that the truth is out.

  68. 68.

    dogwood

    I’m thinking this might be a good time to take a break for a week. The WH ain’t talking. Perhaps no more breaking news this week, and it’s wheels up on Friday and the press will go out of their way to fluff this trip. But next Wed. Comey goes to the Senate to testify in open session. Then things will heat up again.

  69. 69.

    Brachiator

    Just got a chance to look at this. Thanks much. Will bookmark it for letter. Welcome antidote to Trump madness.

  70. 70.

    Mnemosyne

    @Monala:

    Given that the author of the article mysteriously died in his sleep shortly before the article was published, I’m now wondering if his death was an undetected suicide.

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