Feldman's Faves: April 5, 2021

Happy Monday everyone. I hope those of you who celebrated Easter (and everyone else of course) had a wonderful weekend. Yesterday was glorious. For those of you who like basketball, last night’s game between Stanford and Arizona was epic. Tonight’s final should be pretty fun too (although I do not love the 9 pm starting time….)

This week’s topics are a little on the “heavier” side.

IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS – LOVE, TERROR AND AN AMERICAN FAMILY IN HITLER’S BERLIN: By: Erik Larson – A few weeks ago Mike recommended that we read the Splendid and the Vile, which tells the story on a more intimate level as to what Winston Churchill and his inner circle were doing and thinking during the Nazi bombings of London during WWII. It is well worth reading. In response to this recommendation, Steve Halperin suggested that we read another classic by Erik Larson, called In the Garden of Beasts - so here we are. As Steve says, this true story reads like fiction and is an account of the experiences of William E. Dodd and his family in Nazi Germany during the 1930s. Dodd was an academic who wrote about the history of the Southern United States and who FDR (after asking many other more qualified people to do the job) appointed as Ambassador to Germany. Larson describes in great detail both Dodd’s experience as well as his family’s during this period (and especially his daughter Martha, including the many men Martha dated both from within and outside the ranks of the Nazi party – at one point she kind of had a date with Hitler and she described him kissing her hand – very creepy). You really get a sense of what daily life was like in Berlin and in the rest of Germany during this period in a way that is quite unique. At the same time, this book is chilling because we all know how the story ends. The real time accounts of people not believing things could ever get too bad, that Hitler was a clown and not worth worrying about and that “this too shall pass” is part of the tragedy. As the story unfolds and the Dodds start to understand what they are witnessing notwithstanding the reluctance of the US government to do ANYTHING about it (other than make sure the Germany paid back its debts to American investors). Since Dodd was not part of the elite group of the foreign service (i.e., the independently wealthy) his views were generally not taken seriously even though he was one of the very few people that rang the alarm bell of the threat of Hitler. Reading this book is like watching a car go over a cliff in slow motion with no ability to do anything about it. Here is a great review from the NYT Book Review - https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/books/in-the-garden-of-beasts-by-erik-larson-review.html

RAMSAY WRITES Jim Crow 2.0 – For this week only I am including BLOG rather than a PODCAST. Bob Ramsay is a great thinker and writer and has been focusing on the new voting reforms taking place in the USA following the previous election. This BLOG focuses on the shameful conduct taking place by the politicians in Georgia who are effectively trying to deny voting rights to black people in their state.. Here is the content: None of us was alive for the original Jim Crow laws back in the 1920s which made racial segregation legal in the southern United States. “Colored only” washrooms, poll taxes, “back of the bus” and IQ tests asking “how many bubbles in a bar of soap?” weren’t just the rule, they were the law.

Jim Crow laws were crushed by the relentless march of social progress. Or it seemed so until Donald Trump was elected President in 2016 and Republicans decided that one way to stop them was voter suppression.

Their thinking was, if we can keep Blacks and their white and Latino friends, and young people from voting at all, we’ll win again in 2020.

They didn’t. But far from discouraging their use of a blatantly racist set of laws, losing has spawned a whole raft of new ways to keep Black people down by keeping Black voting down. This isn’t happening in Washington, but at the state and county level. As of last month, lawmakers have introduced 253 bills that restrict voting access in 43 of America’s 50 states.

The flashpoint is Georgia, where Republican Governor Brian Kemp last week signed a 98-page bill under a painting of a slave plantation that would make it a crime to provide food or water to people standing in line to vote; shorten polling hours so poorer voters can’t get to the polls; end early voting hours on Sundays, when many Black voters are at church; demand multiple ID requirements; and limit drop-off points for mail-in voting.

I suppose this is revenge for Georgia electing the two Democratic senators (one Black, one Jewish) which gives the Democrats a majority in the Senate, and which allows Joe Biden’s agenda to move forward at all. In fact, Biden & Co have already pushed their For the People Act through the House of Representatives. The Act’s full title is: “An Act to expand Americans’ access to the ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics, strengthen ethics rules for public servants, and implement other anti-corruption measures…..”

The Bill is now going to the Senate where the Republicans are already trying to stop it via a filibuster, a form of death-by-delay unique to the US Senate which has killed decades of civil rights legislation.

Biden’s response is to try to do away with the filibuster. As Heather Cox Richardson noted in an oddly emotional blog on March 25: “If Republicans block this measure, the extraordinary state laws designed to guarantee that Democrats can never win another election will stay in effect, and America as a whole will look much like the Jim Crow South, with democracy replaced by a one-party state….If the Republicans get their way, no matter how popular Democrats are, they will never again get to direct the government.”

Are things really as bad as this?

After all, lawmakers in a different set of 43 states have also introduced more than 700 bills to widen access to voting.

Governor Kemp, who also had six white male Georgia legislators by his side when he signed last week’s bill, didn’t take kindly to all the mutterings that his bill is racist. “There’s nothing ‘Jim Crow’ about requiring a photo or state-issued ID to vote by absentee ballot – every Georgia voter must already do so when voting in person,” he said. “President Biden, the left, and the national media are determined to destroy the sanctity and security of the ballot box.”

I think he’s right about state-issued ID, by the way. Not every part of Kemp’s bill is blatantly racist. Some of it is only secondarily so.

But whenever I hear words like “sanctity” and “integrity”, I get suspicious.

Why?

As Carol Anderson noted in her 2018 book One Person, No Vote, “In 1890...the Magnolia State passed the Mississippi Plan, a dizzying array of poll taxes, literacy tests, understanding clauses, newfangled voter registration rules, and "good character" clauses—all intentionally racially discriminatory but dressed up in the genteel garb of bringing "integrity" to the voting booth.”

Sadly, we’re all alive for Jim Crow 2.0.

Thank you for your ongoing participation.

And remember to stay safe, stay healthy and to docket daily.

Jon