Cheque Cards, Negative Connections, and Sian Leah Beilock’s Error

Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock

Curmie had a conversation a couple of days ago with a student who is preparing to spend a year at a British conservatory with which our university has a long-standing exchange program.  She wanted to know about things like student visas, health care, and the like.  Curmie, as regular readers of this blog know, did his MA at the University of Birmingham in England, and he was the faculty point-person on our end of his university’s exchange with that conservatory for about a decade.  He hopes he was able to help, despite the fact that some of his information may be out of date.

Anyway, that conversation conjured memories of Curmie’s own attempts to navigate the experience.  It was the first time to truly be on his own, without knowing literally anyone in a new location; having that happen in a foreign country added to both the excitement level and the stress. 

At the time, Curmie didn’t have a credit card in his own name.  He did have a one or two cards linked to his father’s account for use in emergencies, but really wanted to be as independent as possible… and didn’t necessarily want to explain purchases to the ‘rents.  Importantly, this was long ago: a lot of smaller businesses, like the convenience store across the street from Curmie’s bed-sit, didn’t accept credit cards, anyway.  Oh, and debit cards hadn’t been invented yet. 

Curmie established a checking account with the local branch of Lloyd’s Bank, and made lots of trips there to get cash.  ATMs existed, but few were located outside bank property.  So if you needed to, say, go buy a new shirt or something, you’d have to make a trip to the bank to get cash.  Or… and Curmie finally gets to his point… you’d write a check (or a cheque, to use the British spelling).

A number of banks, including Curmie’s, introduced what they called a “cheque card” as a service to their customers.  Curmie was able to get one.  Essentially, this card guaranteed that merchants would get their money on cheques up to £50 (Curmie may be misremembering the exact amount): even if there were insufficient funds in the account, the bank would make it good, and they’d be the ones to deal with their customer. 

Alas, what started out as a service that benefitted customers and merchants alike soon took a turn.  Within months if not weeks, cheque cards become a sine qua non: it was no longer a good thing to have such a card, but a bad thing not to have one.  For customers who didn’t have the account balance or sufficient reliable income to get a card, it meant that even businesses that had accepted your cheques for years would no longer do so.

Curmie was thinking about that phenomenon when reading that his undergrad alma mater, Dartmouth College, was the only Ivy League school whose president had not signed on to a “Call for Constructive Engagement” from the American Association of Colleges and Universities.  As of this writing, that open letter, dated April 22, has 509 signatories. 

Dartmouth spokesperson Kathryn Kennedy says that President Sian Leah Beilock “does not believe that signing open form letters like this one is an effective way to defend Dartmouth’s mission and values.”  With all due respect, Dr. Beilock: bullshit.  Just as the absence of a cheque card quickly became more important than the presence of one, we’re at the stage where not joining in solidarity with the leaders of hundreds of other institutions of higher learning across the country makes more of a statement than signing would.

Back in the days when Curmie taught courses in Persuasion and Public Speaking, he talked a lot about the difference between positive and negative connections.  A positive connection is when if you do X, then a good thing, Y, will be more likely to happen.  A negative connection occurs when failure to do X will make a bad thing, Y, more likely to happen.  Stop pretending that only positive connections exist.  Signing on to that manifesto almost certainly won’t make things better, but not signing will almost certainly make things worse: for Dartmouth, for higher education in general, and for the nation.

At the moment, Dartmouth is one of only two Ivy League schools not to have substantial cuts in federal funding based on little but the caprice of the most anti-intellectual administration in history.  Dartmouth’s time will come, no doubt.  Surely we’re not under the impression that craven silence is any kind of reasonable solution.  Just ask the Republican leadership in Arkansas how their embarrassing obeisance has worked out when they’re no longer a particular asset.  “No, you don’t get FEMA assistance after tornadoes.  Don’t be silly.  Bootstraps, and all that…”

By contrast, China, Canada, and the European Union refused to buckle under tariff threats and left Trump behaving as the blustering xenophobic buffoon that he is.  Or check out the international students who sued the government rather than cravenly getting on the next plane home.  Friday’s New York Times headline: “Trump Administration Reverses Course on Student Visa Cancellations.” Or look at the difference between Columbia’s cowardly capitulation which led only to more demands, as opposed to Harvard’s suggestion that 47 perform an action best suited to particularly limber hermaphrodites, which led to a declaration that the letter to Harvard was “unauthorized.”  Bullies are always cowards.

More to the point, that statement from the AAC&U is pretty inoffensive.  First off, it’s not the monodigital salute to the Trump administration that Curmie would have written.  (Curmie had most of the skills of a successful administrator… except, crucially, the ability to suck up to powerful idiots.)  The presidents seek not confrontation but “constructive engagement.”  “Let’s talk this out,” in other words.

The signatories claim write that 

We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight. However, we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses. We will always seek effective and fair financial practices, but we must reject the coercive use of public research funding.

That’s clear and focused, but it’s not antagonistic.  The most important two sentences are these:

American institutions of higher learning have in common the essential freedom to determine, on academic grounds, whom to admit and what is taught, how, and by whom. Our colleges and universities share a commitment to serve as centers of open inquiry where, in their pursuit of truth, faculty, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints without fear of retribution, censorship, or deportation.

In other words, our colleges and universities take seriously both the First Amendment and their responsibilities to pursue truth, as opposed to claiming to have found it.  That seems a pretty straightforward articulation of both the goals and the realities of high education.  Are there sometimes breakdowns in the system that lead to unjust results?  Of course.  Educators are human. 

But does virtually every college or university care more about free inquiry than the Trump administration does?  Is that even a serious question?  Which one seeks to thwart research into contagious diseases, cancer, or climate change, and which one wants to bring together our best and brightest academics to perform that research?  And, regardless of the academic discipline, no one gets anywhere by just repeating what they’ve been told.  That’s the job of lazy undergrads… or AI (a.k.a, A-1, according to the hopelessly unqualified Secretary of Education).

Of course, not all research is conducted in scientific disciplines, but if that made research in the humanities and social sciences unworthy of pursuit, Curmie would have done a lot less of it.  All research at the level at which university faculty engage in it is about an attempt to understand the world in which we live or the way we live in it.  Importantly, studies in languages and literature, the arts, history, philosophy, sociology, and the like tend not to be those that receive big government grants (there are some, of course, from sources like the NEH and NEA), so restricting federal funding has its most serious impact on precisely the STEM fields the right seems to think are the only ones that matter... or, in Harvard’s case, on support for area hospitals.

President Beilock’s passivity is disappointing for two fundamentally different reasons.  First, Curmie was impressed by her handling of the pro-Palestinian rallies last spring: guaranteeing the protesters’ right to free expression, but placing appropriate boundaries: no interfering with others’ rights, no taking over buildings, no true threats or intimidation, etc.  Curmie is saddened by the idea that someone who could exercise such appropriate leadership then could be such a milquetoast now.

Secondly, Curmie understands why not all college and university presidents feel safe in supporting even such a moderate document as this.  Of the five schools where Curmie either received a degree or held a full-time teaching position, four are in red states, and two are state universities; we’ve certainly seen enough evidence of the vindictiveness of GOP pols to warrant a bit of extra discretion.  The two private schools are small colleges; their endowments are less than $100,000 per current student.  They aren’t necessarily in a position to take even moderate risks.  They should, but their reluctance is understandable.

By contrast, Dartmouth is a prestigious private college in a purple state.  Its endowment is about a million and a half dollars per student.  Few institutions are in as strong a position, have as loyal an alumni body, or are as well insulated from any potential downside to signing on to the AAC&U statement.  Yet President Beilock remains passive, as if that’s a safe position.

Deliberate inaction is action.  Curmie was never a great fan of the Canadian rock band Rush, but they had their moments, like this line: “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”  The name of the song?  “Freewill.”

Trying to Parse the Kilmar Abrego-Garcia Case

A rally in Baltimore last week.

Curmie is a skeptical lad, especially when it comes to politics.  Experience suggests that proclamations from inveterate liars like Donald Trump are to be treated as mendacious until proven to be true, but that doesn’t mean that the opposition doesn’t stoop to a little… erm… misrepresentation from time to time.

The saga of Kilmar Abrego-Garcia (hereafter, KA-G) is a case in point.  In one sense, whether he is the gang member and terrorist the administration would have us believe or the tax-paying family man the left would like to portray him as is utterly irrelevant.  ICE agents knew he was, at the time of his arrest, a legal resident of the US.  They also knew that a federal judge had ruled that he should never be deported to El Salvador, even as a free man when he arrived there.  They arrested him and sent him to (let’s call it what it is) a Salvadoran concentration camp, anyway.  “Administrative error.”  Oops!  (By the way, the DOJ lawyer who admitted that there had been an “administrative error” was suspended and subsequently fired.)

Whatever KA-G’s character or his affiliations (or lack of them), this case is about due process.  That’s it.  As Senator Chris Van Hollen said on ABC’s “This Week,” “I am not defending the man. I'm defending the rights of this man to due process.”  The Senator took a much-publicized trip to El Salvador, where he was eventually able to meet with KA-G.  Was that grandstanding?  Of course, but, unlike the disgusting display of Kristi Noem and a gaggle of Republican pols, it actually had a purpose other than just showing off.

The administration would like to claim that supporters of the basic principle of due process, guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment to everyone (not just citizens), want to import foreign-born terrorists.  No, actually, the terrorists in this scenario are the ironically named Justice Department, ICE, DHS, Trump, Vance, Rubio, Noem, and their apologists.  Every accusation does indeed appear to be a confession.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the administration should “facilitate” KA-G’s return.  The administration first tried to pretend the ruling was in their favor, then pretty much ignored the court order, then openly defied it.  The administration is clearly in the wrong, and they don’t want to take responsibility for their fuck-up.  There’s no news there for any administration, especially this one.

The procedural violations are sufficient to rally to KA-G’s defense, and no honest and rational American would say otherwise.  Yes, Curmie just called the entire Trump administration and the overwhelming majority of GOP pols dishonest and/or irrational.  On second thought, they might not all be corrupt or stupid, just craven.  Moving on…

The facts that KA-G was denied due process, that he was deported in violation of a court order, that (unlike POTUS) he has never been convicted of literally any crime: these matter.  What they don’t do is paint him as an entirely innocent victim in ethical as opposed to legal terms.  In other words, if the administration had followed the rules and gone through the appropriate processes, incarcerating KA-G might have been the appropriate outcome.  (Sending him, or indeed anyone, to a Salvadoran Gulag is, of course, a different matter, one which Curmie chooses to sidestep at the moment.)

So… what are the actual facts, as best we can understand them?  Curmie is going to try to tease things out in chronological order.  Here goes…

We know that KA-G entered the country illegally as a teenager in March of 2012.  That’s about the only part of this saga about which there is no disagreement or need for contextualization.  He says he walked across the border near McAllen, Texas.

In 2019, he was detained for “loitering” outside a Home Depot in Hyattsville, Maryland.  Local police identified him as a member of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang.  Here’s where we get into murkier waters.  The “Gang Field Interview Sheet” claims that the hoodie he was wearing and the fact that he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat meant that he was “a member in good standing with the MS-13.”  There was also the corroboration of what one presumes was a confidential informant.

Curmie suspects that there may have been a few people in the country who weren’t in a gang but sported that Bulls cap, although according to one actual expert on the gang, “at some point, the Chicago Bulls logo with the horns became a stand-in of sorts for the MS-13's devil horns symbol.”  The details of the hoodie—“with rolls of money covering the eyes, ears and mouth of the presidents on the separate denominations“—may or may not be “indicative of the Hispanic gang culture.”  Is there a possibility that those sartorial choices at least suggested what the cops said they meant?  Yes.  Is there prima facie evidence to support that conclusion?  No.

Ah, but there’s the testimony of that presumed witness, “a proven and reliable source of information,” who said that Abrego-Garcia was an “active member of MS-13 with the Western Clique… with the rank of ‘Chequeo.’”  But, and as they said in burlesque, it’s a big but: Chequeo is the term for an MS-13 recruit who has not yet been initiated, so not an “active member.”  Oh, and the Western Clique operates out of New York, where KA-G says he’s never lived.  (It would be easy enough to check.)  And, of course, the cop who filled out the form was suspended for misconduct shortly thereafter and subsequently fired.  Other than those… ahem… minor details, the bust and its consequences seem totally kosher.

Anyway, the case went to an Immigration judge, who relied on this allegedly legitimate informant, and decided that there was enough evidence to support KA-G’s gang membership.  Another judge agreed.  At this level—remember, Gentle Reader, this is not a trial—the court, according to David Bier of the Cato Institute, “takes at face value any evidence that the government provides. It is not assessing its underlying validity at that stage.”

KA-G was therefore denied bail as a flight risk.  It’s important to note here that in such cases, the burden of proof shifts.  Denial of bail in these situations happens not because the authorities can prove that a foreign national is either a danger to society or a flight risk, but because the defendant cannot prove that he is not.  

During this time, KA-G applied for asylum so he would not be sent back to El Salvador.  This was denied.  Again, the reason is important: the application was filed too late.  What happened instead was the next-best thing: a “withholding of removal,” based on KA-G’s “well-founded” fear of persecution by Barrio-18, MS-13’s most notorious rival gang.  Does this provide further evidence that KA-G is an MS-13 gangster?  Maybe.  Or perhaps the whole business really was, as he claims, about extortions and threats against his mother’s pupusa shop.

Again, it’s time for some clarification.  The “withholding of removal” order means, first of all, that KA-G was in the country legally thereafter.  He could still be deported if the government chose to do so, but not to El Salvador, and certainly not to a Salvadoran Gulag.  It also means that the Department of Homeland Security had to sign off that he presented no “danger to the security of the United States.”  Lemme think… who was President in 2019?  It seems to have been that bellicose fat guy with the spray tan and the bad toupée.

It also means that KA-G had to have an annual check-in with immigration officials, including twice in the previous Trump administration; they proceeded without incident.  No new evidence has been presented, which, if nothing else, makes the present-tense accusations of recent weeks (see below) even a little more suspect.

OK, so now we jump ahead a couple of years to 2021. KA-G is now a husband and a father.  His wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, claimed he had attacked her, and a temporary restraining order was indeed issued.  She decided not to take the matter further; there was no formal charge of domestic battery or the like, and the case never as much as went to trial.  The couple sought counseling and seems to have completely reconciled.  She is certainly supporting him now, and, by the way, has repeatedly and emphatically denied that her husband is a member of MS-13.

Spousal abuse is not a good thing.  Indeed, the DHS tweet that KA-G is “not a sympathetic figure” has a point (sort of), even if commenting at all beyond releasing the court documents was tacky in the extreme and deceitful in its claim that he is an “MS-13 gang member.”  (In any actual professional organization, whoever posted that tweet would be fired.  Not so with DHS, of course.)  Notice, also, the present tense of that claim.  For the tweet to be other than slanderous, DHS would need actual evidence that KA-G is currently functioning as a member of MS-13.  Show us, then.

That said, KA-G was not, as Trumpian Puppet Vice President Vance declared, a “convicted MS-13 gang member.”  Unlike the proclamations of DHS, Karoline Leavitt (a.k.a. Bullshit Barbie), and Trump himself that KA-G is a gang member, Vance adds the word “convicted,” thereby changing speculation masquerading as fact to… (what’s that phrase again?  Oh, yes…) an outright lie.  He has a law degree from Yale and doesn’t know there’s no conviction without a trial?  On the contrary, he’s just a mendacious attack dog.  (Curmie intends no disrespect to literal attack dogs who happen to be Dobermanns or pit bulls or Rottweilers or whatever, and apologizes for linking them in any way to refuse like Mr. Vance.)

And so we move ahead to December of 2022, when KA-G was pulled over in what was initially a routine traffic stop by the Tennessee Highway Patrol.  The trooper noticed that there were eight men in the vehicle, but no luggage; he suspected the possibility of human trafficking.  All of the passengers gave the same home address as KA-G’s.  Yeah, that might raise an eyebrow.

That, plus the fact that KA-G was apparently driving with an expired “Limited Term Temporary” license, led to a little checking with other agencies, and that immigration judge’s ruling came to light.  There’s some confusion here, as one report says that KA-G’s name was found on a terrorist watch list; another says it didn’t, but that of one of the passengers did.

Anyway, after nearly two hours, the trooper released KA-G without even a traffic ticket, apparently at the behest of the FBI.  KA-G’s story that he was collecting prospective workers in Texas and taking them to Maryland seems to check out, which of course doesn’t mean that this wasn’t, in fact, a human trafficking operation.  The first reporting of this incident came in the Tennessee Star, a right-leaning publication which sort of hints at some kind of impropriety on the part of “Biden’s FBI.”  Exactly why the FBI would care is unclear.  There would seem to be no political advantage to be gained.  Bribery?  Possible, of course, but it would have to be massive.  ‘Tis, as they say, a puzzlement.

Anyway, rightly or wrongly, there was no arrest, let alone conviction.  Could this have been the prompt for the idiot Vance’s claim that KA-G wasn’t a good father because he’d been stopped for speeding?  Maybe.  And whereas suspicion about that traffic stop is reasonable, it’s well within the bounds of possibility that the FBI simply told the trooper that no, there’s no probable cause to hold him.

Bullshit Barbie has, of course, labelled KA-G a terrorist (among other things) because someone, Curmie isn’t sure who, accused him of that.  Well, if he’s guilty because of that, then BB’s boss is similarly guilty of treason, conspiracy to commit kidnapping, election interference, fraud, grand larceny, racial and sexual discrimination, slander, bribery, and rape.  Oh, and murdering his ex-wife.  That doesn't even count his actual felony convictions.  How anyone can take her, or indeed anyone in this administration, seriously is beyond Curmie’s feeble ken.

It could well be that KA-G really is a bad guy.  That does not mean that snatching him in the presence of his young son with threats to send the lad into foster care is anything but abhorrent.  Or that shipping him off to a Salvadoran hellhole in intentional defiance of a court order is legal, let alone legitimate.  Or that refusal to abide by a Supreme Court ruling is anything less than an impeachable offense.  The fact that there are too few GOP Congresscritters with the integrity of a hungry cobra or the backbone of overcooked linguini to actually take action doesn’t change their responsibility to do so.

Once again, had the administration followed legal procedure, detained KA-G on suspicion of membership on what Trump had by now declared a terrorist organization, provided due process, and, after appropriate opportunities for KA-G to defend himself, still found him guilty, it would have been legal to send him to El Salvador.  Not appropriate, not ethical, but legal.

OF course, the administration’s claim that they’re powerless to get him back, completely undercut by their (alas, successful) efforts to release the undeniably despicable Andrew Tate from a Romanian prison, is just downright silly.  One phone call from Trump would do it.  But, petulant toddler that he is, he just doesn’t want to.  Na-na na-na boo-boo.

Finally, there’s the pièce de résistance (Curmie seems drawn to that word “résistance” of late), the clearest example of the inability of the Emperor of Trumpistan to justify his actions, the most obvious demonstration of just how desperate he is to avoid accountability.  In an absurd and futile attempt to further smear KA-G, Donald Trump himself released a photo are what he purported to be tattoos on KA-G’s knuckles.

Curmie detected the aroma of bovine fecal matter immediately upon hearing about the story; if such a photo actually existed, it would have been released weeks ago in an attempt to quell the backlash.  But he hadn’t seen the photo and decided to check it out.  The photoshopping job on that image is so outrageously inept that Curmie, who’s used Photoshop only a couple of times a decade or so ago, has got 20 bucks that says he could create a more believable fake in about five minutes. 

As Curmie wrote on his FB page, anyone who believes in the authenticity of that image has already sent money to that Nigerian prince and is wondering why he hasn’t replied.  The good news here is that in his attempt to make points, Trump overwhelming overplayed his hand.  He’s a buffoon, and he proved it so convincingly that even the MAGA minions have got to be shaking their heads in disbelief.

So here we are.  Up to date.  Or maybe there’s yet another development that Curmie hasn’t seen yet.  The good news is that the illegality, the arrogance, and the racism of this administration are on public display.  The bad news is that GOP pols still pretend not to see what’s right in front of them.

La la, how the life goes on.

You will note, Gentle Reader, that as has happened once or twice in the past, Curmie hasn’t linked every fact or quote.  He’ll do that in his scholarship and usually, but not always, here.  So here’s a list of a few links that contributed to this piece: An early report from NBC.  General overviews from the BBC, Yahoo, and PolitiFact.  The Gang Field Interview Sheet from 2019, the denial of an appeal to be released on bail in that case, information about the cop’s suspension and firing from the Daily Voice and USA Today.  The 4^th Circuit’s ruling, SCOTUS documents on the administration’s attempt to overturn the 4^th circuit decision, and more from the 4^th Circuit.  DHS’s tweet.  Two stories about that traffic stop in Tennessee: from The Tennessee Star and WSMV.  Stories about that stupid photoshopped image of KA-G’s “tattoos” from Politifact, Newsweek, and The Latin Times.  Info on Sen. Val Hollen’s appearance on “This Week.” 

Vive la Résistance

It has now been 47 years since Curmie last visited Paris, and over 50 since he last viewed the monument you see here.  It’s located in the Jardin du Luxembourg, and commemorates the sacrifice of students in the French Resistance.  This statue ranks with the Eiffel Tower and the treasures of the Louvre among most powerful memories of Curmie’s fall term in France in 1974.

It may be a little difficult to read the inscription on the base: “Ami, si tu tombe, un ami sort de l’ombre à ta place.”  (“Friend, if you fall, a friend will come out of the shadows to take your place.”)  A dozen years ago yesterday, in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, Curmie wrote the following on his Facebook page:

I think of those words often, as we confront the horrors of the world, like today’s events in Boston. We can run, hide, cower. Or we can gaze into the heart of the abyss, unflinching. We can muster every ounce of Sisyphusean resolve and endure... and thereby overcome. The faces of evil are many, but they all seek a single goal: to engender fear.

I’m not buying. This page is dedicated to “cynics and other romantics.” I despair of the world because the idiots and the charlatans so often appear to be in charge. They aren’t. We are. And we are manifold. Dark forces seek to cajole, to bully, to intimidate us into submission. Ain’t gonna happen. I’m right here. Come get me, you bastards. And if I fall... there will be a friend emerging from the shadows to take my place before I hit the ground.

We now face a challenge not unlike the one faced by those courageous students of the 1940s.  Somehow, a dim-witted narcissist with literally dozens of felony convictions got elected to the Presidency of what had once been the most powerful force for democracy and individual rights the world had ever known.

It turned out even worse than we’d feared, as talented civil servants were replaced by sycophants, and agencies that actually helped people or kept them safe—FEMA, Social Security, the FAA, and so many others—were gutted, as were those who sought to restrain the unsafe and illegal business practices of a certain (probably illegal) immigrant multi-billionaire.

Federal agencies are headed by people chosen not despite, but specifically for, their lack of qualifications—Hegseth, Kennedy, McMahon, Noem, Oz… need Curmie continue?

People are being kidnapped by masked government apparatchiks and sent to foreign hellhole facilities without a whisper of due process.  Sometimes they seem to be targeted for expressing views the wannabe dictator doesn’t like; at least as often, they simply have a name that sounds “foreign”: you know, Gentle Reader, like Madawi or Abrego-Garcia.  Folks with good, solid, American names—like Drumpf or Musk or Hegseth, for example—are exempt, of course.  For now.  But Trumpian minions should check out what happened to Georges Danton or Leon Trotsky or Ernst Röhm before they get too comfortable.

The stock market is being manipulated to work to the advantage of the plutocratic class, in about as obvious an instance of insider trading as you’ll ever see.  Colleges and universities are being threatened for allowing perfectly legal, First Amendment protected, dissent.  It’s okay if the Vice President simply makes shit up to smear an innocent man (slander, in other words), but don’t even allow someone else to criticize the Netanyahu regime or you’ll lose federal funding.  The list goes on and on.

Meanwhile, the GOP-led legislature cheerfully abrogates their responsibilities to the nation they purport to love so they can curry favor with the Manchurian Cantaloupe.  And SCOTUS waffles behind semantic quibbles, virtually begging for the MAGA marauders to ignore their rulings.

And yet.  And yet…  Millions of people showed up for those April 5 protests.  The Bernie and AOC tour is packing in overflow crowds at virtually every stop, many of them in the heart of red states.  The handful of town halls Republican legislators dare to attend are also attracting a lot of attendees, but those crowds, even in “safe” districts, are in a considerably less cheerful mood than those who are feeling the Bern. 

We’re behind in this fight; there’s no question about that.  But those French students were behind, too.  They didn’t all make it to the end of the war, but their cause did.  They needed a little help from the US, and we may need them to return the favor in the not-too-distant future, but we shall overcome.  We must.  Curmie is no gung-ho flag-waver, but he’s spent at least two months in each of three other countries, all democracies, and his preference for the US, at least as it was before the last election, is not founded on mere nationalism.

We have work to do, Gentle Reader.  Republican legislators may be unwilling to do their jobs, but we must do ours.

Resist, my friends.  Resist.

Of Tails and Tales

Abe and Gene

   

When the Trumpian apparatchiks Republican members of the House of Representatives declared last month that there would be no “calendar days” for the remainder of the first session of the 119^th Congress, GOP pols proceeded as if the obvious falsehood was simply business as usual.  And the allegedly leftie press was deafeningly silent.

The same thing happened more recently when thousands of immigrants were declared “dead” in a maneuver apparently initiated by Kristi Noem and her gaggle of sadists despite the fact that these people were very much alive.  There are plenty of other examples, but let’s keep this post from turning into War and Peace, shall we, Gentle Reader?

The “calendar days” business was nothing more or less than an act of cowardice: GOP reps didn’t want to have to vote on a resolution to condemn Trump’s idiotic tariffs.  Vote against the tariffs and you’re saying Dear Leader is fallible; vote for them and you’re pissing off a lot of your constituents who saw their nest eggs ravaged by Trumpian incompetence/petulance/malevolence.  Of course, there’s no little evidence that Trump’s billionaire buddies, not to mention his family, were tipped off: “I’m going to impose economy-destroying tariffs, so sell now,” followed by “I’ll backtrack on the tariffs tomorrow; time to buy (at a huge discount).”

The “dead people” canard was simply a deceitful shorthand to allow the Xenophobe-in-Chief to further persecute people named Rodriguez or Argüello or something similar.  There’s mounting evidence, by the way, that not only were many of the victims of this purge in the country legally, but some are actually citizens. 

Curmie acknowledges here that Democrats aren’t above using similar tactics to the calendar charade, and that there’s a legitimate chance that some of those folks described in news stories simply as “immigrants” are in the country illegally.  He’ll grant, too, that some increases in tariffs might be appropriate if handled with moderation, discretion, and forethought (none of which were present in 47’s puerile recklessness).  Finally, he stipulates that the Trump administration didn’t invent bureaucratic incompetence; they merely raised it to an art form. 

Ultimately, though, that doesn’t change the narrative.  Trump and his minions simply lied unabashedly, and the minions were too stupid, too sycophantic, and/or too cowardly to do anything but cheerfully admire their emperor’s fabulous but non-existent new wardrobe.

Curmie, being Curmie, immediately thought of one of his favorite riddles, sometimes attributed to Abraham Lincoln.  (Yes, he’s cited it here before.)  Q: How many legs does a dog have if you call a tail a leg?  A: Four.  Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one. 

Similarly, calling a several-month-long period less than a calendar day doesn’t make it so, and declaring someone dead doesn’t mean they aren’t alive and well.  Indeed, such instances are not merely contrary to reality, they’re so obviously mendacious bullshit that even suggesting they might be something other than that is an insult to the American citizenry.

But the question about dogs’ legs also reminded Curmie, who is (or was) a theatre historian with a particular interest in the Theatre of the Absurd, of one of his favorite scenes from Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinoceros.  In Act I of that play, the Logician gives an example of a syllogism: All cats have four paws.  His companion’s dog has four paws; therefore, that dog is a cat.  Moreover, since all cats are mortal and Socrates is dead, Socrates was also a cat.

It doesn’t take an enormous imagination to get from this nonsense to something more contemporary: Some Social Security recipients are retirees.  Some Social Security recipients are five years old.  Therefore, five-year-olds are receiving retirement benefits.  Elon and Baby Bobby had better be looking over their shoulders; the Logician is coming for their jobs.

Of course, Rhinoceros is a play about the dangers of unthinking conformity, specifically with respect to the rise of fascism, and submission to, if not actual collaboration with, its evils.  The Logician is apparently a respected professional with an important position.  He, like, well, virtually any member of the MAGA hierarchy, is also either a pompous moron or a liar (or both).  The townspeople, all of whom except our hero, Berenger, turn into rhinos by the end of the third act, are pretty much parallel to our countrymen and -women in the red caps: lumbering, stupid, and enormously destructive.

They, or at least most of them, weren’t always that way.  They just found it easier, perhaps safer, to just go along, even at the expense of individuality.  Maybe it was fear; maybe it was just the allure of fitting in, irrespective of fitting in to what.  But the herd mentality, whatever its source, is directly contrary to the American spirit.  It’s more than a little scary.  So far, however, Curmie has been able to echo Berenger’s most famous line, “Je ne capitule pas!” 

As we await the latest illegal, immoral, and downright idiotic action of the Commissariat of Trumpistan, Curmie would like to take one moment to whisper to the MAGA faithful that Abe and Gene would like a word.

Today in Good Trouble: Melissa Calhoun

When educational policy is in the hands of dominionist jackasses Republican politicians (or their minions), bad things are likely to happen.  There’s the recent case in Idaho that Curmie wrote about a couple of weeks ago in which a poster reading “everyone is welcome here” was deemed political in nature.  (There’s a shocking but not surprising update on that story, by the way). 

There’s the ongoing attempt to require that public schools in Oklahoma teach the Bible; that one is currently “stayed” but not shot down by the state Supreme Court. 

There’s the attempt in Texas to give parents taxpayer-funded vouchers to pay for private school tuition (or to homeschool!), decreasing funding for public school in the process.  This should be unconstitutional, but isn’t, because the conservative majority on SCOTUS care more about ideology than about the Constitution want to pander to rich Christians think denying public funding for religious education is somehow a violation of the First Amendment.

But today, Gentle Reader, Curmie wants to write about a case in Florida, in which Melissa Calhoun (photo above), a high school English teacher at an arts magnet school in Brevard County since 2019, was de facto fired (she will not be re-hired for the next academic year) for violating an absurd law that prohibits teachers from addressing students by their preferred name.  This is all in the pursuit of “parents’ rights,” which is a catchy if deceitful term for denying students’ rights.

As Curmie wrote two years ago

The seemingly innocuous provisions of the [federal] Parental Bill of Rights actually provide a de facto open invitation for every homophobe, Christian nationalist, racist, or garden variety anti-intellectual within hailing distance to remove any topics of discussion, course materials, library books, or whatever else that might disrupt their myopic and theocratic view of the world. What purports to be an exercise in ideological balance and freedom of expression, therefore, is precisely the opposite.

In terms of what is immediately relevant in this case, which appears to be the first of its kind anywhere in the country, what is at stake is students’ rights to define themselves and to be treated with respect.  There are all sorts of problems with the law, not least of which is that no teacher worthy of the name would fail to call students what they want to be called, except in cases of something objectively offensive.  By “objectively” here, Curmie means a term that would clearly be offensive irrespective of questions of race, gender, religion.

Once again, Curmie quotes himself:

The laws in question, of course, are a paean to cis-gendering at the expense of individual liberty. What passes for the argument suggests that insisting on parental control over what a child can be called will somehow preserve that kid’s retention in the ranks of the cis-gendered. It won’t, of course; it will only add another layer of stress to a young citizen trying to figure things out.

Also, of course, there are some asshole parents out there who think they’re being cute by naming their kid something weird.  (Curmie once had Spring Day and Justin Case in the same class.)  Some poor kid named “Fauntleroy” or, God forbid, “X Æ A-12” or “Techno Mechanicus” is flat-out gonna get teased.  And whereas Muskian spawn are unlikely to venture into a public school, Daddy is a big enough asshole to refuse, on a whim, to let them go by “Bud” or “TM” or whatever. 

Think that couldn’t happen?  Curmie’s standard practice was to call roll on the first day of class by reading the surname and asking the students to tell him what they’d like to be called.  Some wanted to be known by their middle name or surname; some went by initials; a couple went by “Bud” or J.R. (for “Junior”); some used a standard nickname.  One young man said he’d like to be called Bob.  OK, Bob, no problem.  But he came up to me after class and said that if I ever had occasion to talk to his parents, I should always refer to him as Robert or he’d get in trouble.  Yes, really.  The lad was 19!

As Curmie wrote a couple of years ago, 

... if young Dana (to pick one of more than a few names that could refer to a boy or a girl) wants to be Daniel or Danielle (or Dan or Danny, or Dani…), and the parents object… THEY’RE THE PROBLEM. Curmie shudders to contemplate the fate of children who cannot trust their parents to support them as they work through questions of identity. And now, the state wants to take away their sanctuary: adults who see them as they believe themselves to be instead of what the parents want them to be.

The corollary to this is that if I’m in a class with my friend who wants to be called “Stephanie,” I’m gonna call her (or him) Stephanie, regardless of what their name was last year, or even last week.  And every kid in the class is going to follow suit.  So the teacher who submits to the absurd law that says that child must be called “Jacob” alienates not only Stephanie, but every other kid in the class… or, at the very least, all of Stephanie’s friends.  This does not create a positive learning environment.  Of course, the overwhelming majority of GOP pols aren’t actually interested in actual education, like knowing that the Civil War was about slavery or that there are millions of people alive today who remember when segregation was a thing.

Moreover, literally any deviation from the name at birth is verboten.  So if Susan wants to be called Suzy, there’s a form for that.  And when she’s in middle school and wants to be Suzi with a heart instead of a dot over the “i,” it’s another form.  And when she gets to high school and wants to be Sue, it’s another form.  And what happens if she still gets called Suzy by a teacher who goes to her church and has known her all her life?  Can that teacher get fired for the slip-up?  Can that teacher still call her Suzy outside of school?

Want to go by your middle name?  Get Mom and Dad to sign the form.  Curmie is so old that he remembers when Republicans were opposed to bureaucratic administrivia.

But revenons à nos moutons.  Is it reasonable that Calhoun should be out of a job for the transgression (get it? transgression) of acknowledging the right of a student to self-identify?  Well, as Curmie was notorious for saying in his Asian theatre classes, yes and no.  On the one hand, even stupid laws are laws, and disobeying them will inevitably have consequences.  She knew the risk.  On the other, willingness to stand against cruelty and stupidity ought to be applauded, not censured.  She did what she believes was right.  Curmie concurs with her assessment.  So, apparently, do her students and their parents.

The district bosses, having either made the announcement or confirmed its accuracy, are in a no-win situation.  They can’t follow through without being hammered by anyone with the slightest hint of empathy.  But they can’t back down without incurring the wrath of Ron (he’s an adult so we can call him that without a note from his mom) DeSantis and his merry band of howling banshees.

The best solution for Calhoun is to finish out the school year and head for a state that is a little more willing to face 21st century than Florida seems to be.  She could teach… or go on the lecture circuit for, probably, more money.  The best solution for the district is to concentrate on real problems, like the principal and teacher busted for partying with a couple hundred kids with alcohol, drugs, and weapons present.  Up until this week, nearly three months after the incident, those actual (alleged) criminals were on paid leave.  Oh, and the response from school board president Gene Trent?  “When we have thousands of employees, things happen.” 

La la how the life goes on.

Time for Another Velvet Revolution

      

It wasn’t exactly a New Year’s resolution, but Curmie kinda promised himself he’d write at least one blog post a week and would finish two academic articles in 2025.  Alas, to steal a line from the old song, his get up and go has got up and went.  He’s spent only a couple hours on those articles in the last fortnight.  Similarly, despite the abundance of topics to write about here, he hasn’t finished a blog essay in over a week. 

He’s got a paragraph or so written about the GOP’s re-invigorated attacks on the 1^st Amendment; the willingness of major universities to submit to these authoritarian impulses may be included in this piece or it may be a separate post.  Another topic would be the repercussions of NIL on collegiate athletics. 

But a confluence of completely independent events has got Curmie thinking that if he wants to get out of his current funk, it needs to start with some commentary about the April 5 protests.  More than anything, it was the chronological propinquity of those demonstrations and a Facebook post by a Friend of Curmie that made something click in his mind.  No, she wasn’t talking about anything having to do with the current US administration; she wanted to know if anyone could send her a copy of Václav Havel’s play, The Memorandum.  (Curmie could, and did.)

This request happened at about the same time as Curmie saw one of those Facebook “memories,” also about Havel.  It was about a recipe for roast pork and potato pancakes that Curmie had tried for the first time as a sort of remembrance on the occasion of Havel’s death and made again with a couple of minor alterations for Easter a year or two later (hence the late March date).

There is little doubt that Havel is the most significant Czech-language writer in history.  (Kafka was Czech, but he wrote mostly in German.)  His plays—The Garden Party, The Increased Difficulty of Concentration, Largo Desolato, The Memorandum, and Temptation, among others—negotiate the intersection of absurdism and socio-political commentary.  Curmie is a fan: he’s directed two of those plays and acted in another.  Curmie has worked in those capacities on three different plays by the same author for only one other dramatist: that guy from Stratford-upon-Avon.

For all that, Václav Havel’s place in the history books (except for the theatre history books) is secured not as a dramatist, but as an essayist, dissident intellectual, and ultimately as a politician.  Several of Havel’s books—The Power of the Powerless, Open Letters, Disturbing the Peace, Summer Meditations, Living in Truth, The Art of the Impossible—occupy a place of honor in Curmie’s office.  Curmie has been known on more than one occasion to read a chapter or two from one of those volumes when he needs a little inspiration… or courage.

More than anything, though, Havel is known for his leadership of what came to be known as the Velvet Revolution: the complete overthrow of Russian/Communist authority in what was then Czechoslovakia.  Impressively, perhaps miraculously, this happened without bloodshed.  Hence, “velvet.”  (Apparently it’s called the “Gentle Revolution” in Slovakia, but that term loses the reference, intended or otherwise, to the mutual admiration between Havel and Velvet Underground frontman Lou Reed.)  Compare this to, say, Romania, where over 1000 people were killed, and both Communist General Secretary Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife were tried and executed. 

Havel was subsequently elected president of Czechoslovakia, in which position he oversaw the “Velvet Divorce,” in which that artificially created country was divided into the two nations we now know as the Czech Republic (a.k.a. Czechia) and Slovakia.  Havel was promptly elected president of the former. 

It’s worth repeating: the Velvet Revolution was known for two things: huge protests and the absence of violence.  April 5 was sort of like that.  Curmie raises an eyebrow of skepticism that the crowds totaled 5.2 million protesters, as organizers claim.  (The Cheeto Chiseler doesn’t have a monopoly on exaggeration.) But the right-wing media’s estimates of “tens of thousands” are beyond ridiculous.  FFS, there were tens of thousands just in Boston, just in Washington, just in New York, just in Chicago… you get the idea, Gentle Reader.  That photo at the top of the page?  Taken in that hotbed of leftist ideology, Utah.  There are a lot of folks there.

There were, as far as Curmie can determine, no incidents of violence or even trespassing by protestors.  No attacks on police.  No buildings stormed.  No death threats against elected officials.  The closest thing to illegality Curmie can find is that a woman in Oregon allegedly keyed a city truck, scratching the paint job.

There was, of course, the usual bullshit about the protesters being paid.  (Would ‘twere so; Curmie could use a little help replenishing his retirement funds now that 47 has crashed the stock market.)  This plaint is particularly ironic coming from the likes of the Apartheid Asshole, who bragged about his attempts to buy votes in the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court race.  As God (the internet wag, not... you know...) writes, “Elon can’t believe we hate him for free.”

Even the occasionally perceptive Ann Althouse is complaining about protesters using “uniformly sized white poster board” and employing slogans they read somewhere.  Also, the poster-bearers were clustered near the speakers.  (Not true, and even if it were, who cares?)  Oh, (OMG!) and there were some mass-produced posters.  Or at least that seems to Curmie to be the subject of her whine; her writing borders on the incoherent, as defenses of the Emperor of Trumpistan so often are.

What does all this mean?  For one thing, like the refusal of GOP legislators to actually meet with their constituents, it means the power plays of the MAGA moguls aren’t working.  They want us scared.  They prove themselves willing to do unconstitutional, illegal, and unethical things and think that their show of force will be sufficient to cow any opposition.  But even if 5,000,000 people didn’t show up on Saturday, a hell of a lot did.  And on the 19th there are likely to be at least as many, especially if the absurd tariffs haven’t been lifted by then. 

Oh, there’s one other thing about the Velvet Revolution: It was successful.  The Russian puppets lost.  Keep the faith, Gentle Reader.