Harris’s background hits a lot of demographic spots

I am not a fan of identity politics, the slots that a candidate checks off in terms of delineated demographic characteristics. For me its the policies that are of paramount importance. That does not mean that I am not pleased and supportive when someone whose group identity has never been represented in high office breaks through that perceived barrier and achieves it. But identity should only play a significant role if all other things are roughly equal.

But it seems that identity politics matters to many people, especially the political consultant class, and Kamal Harris’s selection by Joe Biden seems to be very beneficial to the Democratic ticket and a source of concern to Trump’s campaign. This is because she is someone whom many diverse subgroups can identify with.
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The extinct ‘liberal Republican’

On NPR news yesterday that I listen to when I am in the kitchen doing various chores, I was startled when they announced the death of James Thompson, who had been the longest serving governor of Illinois. What startled me was not that he had died (at the age of 84, he had been out of politics for a long time) but that he was referred to as a ‘liberal Republican’, a political label that one never hears these days.

It made me realize how things have changed because there was a time, not that long ago, when that description was not obviously an oxymoron. There used to be John Lindsay, mayor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller, governor of New York, and Jacob Javits, New York senator, the first two of whom were considered potential Republican presidential material despite having views that were classified as liberal.

Nowadays, everyone in the Republican party runs as far away as possible from the liberal label. Even the labels ‘moderate’ and ‘centrist’ are seen as poison. Conversely, there seems to be no extreme right wing label that they will shy away from, even if it has racist and sexist and xenophobic overtones or is even outright bonkers such as being called a QAnon sympathizer.

Sexuality in Julius Caesar’s time

We tend to fall prey to what can be called ‘presentism’, to think that the way things are now are somehow ‘natural’ and the way things always were. But as Aven McMaster writes, when we examine ideas about sexuality in the times of ancient Rome using Julius Caesar as a case study, we find things were quite different.

Like many premodern societies, the Romans rarely if ever identified people by their sexuality, at least not in terms of what gender their sexual partners were. To be sure, they had categories for types of sexual activities, but not for the sexual identities we use today. The terms ‘homosexual’, ‘heterosexual’, ‘bisexual’ and so on are modern inventions. There is no evidence for the existence of the concepts themselves, and Romans didn’t define people by the gender of their sexual partners.
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Trump’s war on the postal service

It has been clear for some time that Donald Trump is gunning to destroy the US Postal Service. As with so many of his obsessions, it is hard to find a rational basis for them. Among other things he seems to think, against all the evidence, that the USPS gives preferential treatment to Amazon and he is angry because Amazon is owned by Jeff Bezos who also owns the Washington Post that Trump regularly castigates as part of the news network arrayed against him.
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They hate us, they really hate us

It used to be that Americans were welcomed around the world but thanks to Trump’s utter incompetence in dealing with the pandemic, even neighboring Canadians, notorious for their politeness, are angrily telling Americans that they are not wanted there.

And as the pandemic has continued to spread across the US, so have tensions between American drivers and Canadian residents.

While non-essential travel is forbidden, commercial drivers delivering goods and people who work across the border in essential services are permitted to cross.

People with American licence plates have reported being harassed and having their vehicles vandalised, even if they have every right to be on the Canadian side.

Mr Saunders, an immigration lawyer who has many clients who cross the border regularly in order to work, says many people are afraid.

“They’re all scared of driving their cars in the lower mainland because of vandalism, dirty looks and just getting treated as some ‘horrible American’,” he told the BBC.

One of his clients, an architect who was allowed to practise in Canada during the shutdown, says he was told to “go back home” because of his car.
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Ontario Provincial Police say a Canadian in the town of Huntsville filed a complaint after two men allegedly accosted him over his Florida licence plate.

“Most recently this weekend, there was a gentleman up towards Huntsville getting gas in his vehicle, and two gentlemen approached him and said, ‘you’re American go home.’ And he said, ‘I’m Canadian. I live here.’ And they literally said, no, we don’t believe you show us your passport,” Phil Harding, the mayor of nearby Kuskoka Lakes, told CP24.

“It just becomes a little bit aggressive, and they fear for their lives a little bit.”

Well done, Donald! You have succeeded in making even Canadians rude towards Americans.

We need more questions like these asked of Trump

The person who asked the question says that he had been waiting a long time to be called upon so that he could ask it.

I have also been wondering when a reporter might reprise Joseph Welch’s famous words to senator Joe McCarthy that are now seen as signaling the beginning of the end of that demagogue’s career: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” This shocking public rebuke to a US Senator, delivered by Welch in his sad and gentle voice, was a pivotal event that exposed McCarthy to the whole nation as an overbearing, reckless, and lying bully and started his rapid decline.

A good time to pose that question would be now in response to Trump’s attempts to stir up birtherism against Kamala Harris.

Trump is plumb obsessed

With the US and the world reeling from the pandemic, the economy staggering, large numbers of people unemployed and finding it hard to make ends meet, losing their health insurance, and getting evicted, what is Trump obsessing about? Plumbing. No, really. He seems to have a fixation that water does not come out fast enough from the showers to make his hair ‘perfect’ and he wants the regulations changed.

I don’t know what he is talking about. Why would taking a longer shower affect how your hair looks after it dries? Does he think that hair keeps absorbing water and that the more it absorbs the less ‘perfect’ it is, whatever that means? How self-absorbed with your looks can you get? This is in addition to his earlier complaints that new water saving devices were adversely affecting the performance of toilets, dishwashers, and washing machines.
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