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There's another journal with a massive argument over income and wealth inequality. The people you'd expect to deny that income and wealth inequality are problems are predictably denying that they're problems.

They're technically correct, but this is little more than a semantics game. The real problem is that the inequality exacerbates scarcity. On one end of the wealth spectrum, the haves control an excess of resources. Their abundance means that the have-nots are subject to worse shortages. Scarcity is the problem.

There are compelling arguments that we have enough resources in much of the developed world right now to be a post-scarcity society. If so, then our scarcity is really an illusion created by inefficient and inequitable distribution of goods.

Income and wealth inequality are not the same thing, but they contribute to the illusion of scarcity. If you have 10 cheeseburgers and 10 hungry people, an equitable distribution is that each person gets a cheeseburger. On the other hand, if one person grabs three cheeseburgers, it means that at least two people won't get fed at all. There's an illusion of scarcity caused by income inequality. If that person decides to take five cheeseburgers, the inequality gets worse, and at least four of the people now won't get any good. There were enough cheeseburgers to go around, but inequality creates the illusion of scarcity. It's scarcity, whether real or an illusion, that is damaging to society.

Why maintain or grow income and wealth inequality knowing that it creates the illusion of scarcity? I can think of two reasons: greed and control. Greed is easy to explain, that people who have an abundance tend to want more. There's also an element of fear among many conservatives that no matter how much they amass, it won't be enough in the future. That's why you see lots of ads for backup generators, food rations that last decades, and other prepper supplies on right-wing news outlets like Fox News.

Control is also a factor. Scarcity means that people are afraid of being out of work, afraid of losing everything if they don't have enough income. If people aren't afraid of this, they might be willing to take more risks like starting their own businesses or getting a better education instead of just continuing to work for The Man (TM). If people lose the fear of homelessness or starvation, they're harder for the wealthy to control. There's power in being confident that you'll have shelter, medical care, and enough food to get by. The illusion of scarcity takes this power away from the poor and keeps them subordinate.

Conservatives also love to make the argument that if people are confident they'll have enough to get by, they'll just choose not to work. I'm sure you'll find a few lazy people, but this is misanthropic view is almost universally false. People don't just want to exist, they want their lives to have meaning. When the Great Depression hit, Republicans like Herbert Hoover wanted to give people small checks that might help, but their efforts were very limited. Franklin Roosevelt ran on a campaign of giving more to the people, making sure they'd have food and shelter, and that his administration would create jobs for people. He bet that people didn't just want a check from the government. They wanted a purpose, to help their fellow human beings. Roosevelt expected that most people would choose to work, and he was right. He took a positive view of humanity, one that was hopeful and far more consistent with human nature than the Republican view.

The problem with scarcity is that it creates conflict over limited resources. A great many wars have been fought over scarcity. It also drives violence on smaller scales, where people who don't have enough might just decide to take it by force. Scarcity is poison to society.

It would be one thing if we simply didn't have enough resources to go around. But we do. Much of the scarcity in our society is an illusion, and the illusion of scarcity is created by income and wealth inequality. If you believe conservatives, a post-scarcity society is a frightening dystopia because people will simply choose not to work, and society will collapse. Sure, you'll find a few mooches, but this misanthropic view simply isn't true on the large scale. Most of us want to work, want to help others, and want our lives to have meaning. A society without scarcity is a step closer to utopia, not a dystopia. But it does require that we start by accepting that most of us have an inherent goodness and a desire for our lives to matter.

It's time to stop fearing our fellow human beings and start trusting that most of us have an inherent goodness.

First, a bit of unrelated news... Things changed a bit after posting my last journal, and I'm not going to be an editor. I think it's probably best for all involved. I'd like to spend more time on other projects during the fall including some things that are tied to football season. That's all I'll say about the topic.

Anyway, the point of this journal... The antics of the Texas governor and legislature are horrendous. There are worthwhile issues in the legislature's special session like improvements to flood warning systems and providing aid to flood victims, but gerrymandering that's being advanced is poison for democracy.

I understand the Democractic threats to gerrymander New York and California more than what's already done, but it's also fighting fire with fire. Most districts aren't competitive, where the primary is the de facto general election, which favors extreme candidates and drives polarization. Gerrymandering makes people feel their opinions aren't represented in government. When people feel their voices aren't heard, they're more likely to turn to violence. I fear that's the end result of the polarization. It doesn't have to be this way.

In recent decades, Republicans have played the gerrymandering game more effectively than Democrats. Just look at Princeton University's redistricting report card and see which states got the worst grades. But it's an ugly game that's more than two centuries old, named for Elbridge Gerry for drawing up a district in Massachusetts that looked like a salamander.

It doesn't have to be like this, and I've written about it before. Add a couple hundred seats to the House. Implement larger multi-member districts, at least three representatives each but preferably larger and perhaps around nine members per district, and elect representatives with proportional ranked choice voting. I prefer larger districts because it lowers the percentage of votes needed for third party candidates to pick up seats. A majority of Americans support having a third political party, so let's make it easier for third party candidates to win elections. Having more parties where none has a majority will force representatives to compromise to pass bills, and that's healthier for democracy.

We don't need to abolish the Electoral College, either. Just require each state to allocate two at-large electors for the statewide winner, then allocate the remaining electoral votes by statewide proportional ranked choice voting. It's effectively the Maine and Nebraska system for electoral votes, which is fairer than other states, but with a single statewide at-large district that's determined by proportional ranked-choice voting.

None of this requires amending the Constitution. For example, multi-member districts are currently illegal, but that can be fixed by repealing and replacing the Uniform Congressional District Act of 1967 with a law that mandates multi-member districts and proportional ranked choice voting.

These are common sense reforms that are healthy for democracy. They don't favor one party or one side of the political spectrum. The left would gain representation in some states and the right in others. But it will reduce polarization and give more Americans a voice in government. Surely we can all agree to stop poisoning our democracy.

Anyway, I'll be away for awhile longer but wanted to speak up about this issue since I hadn't seen it discussed elsewhere. Be well. Live long and prosper.

If I complete my editor training at some point, I plan to post monthly open meta discussions as stories. For now, I'm unofficially donating my journal to the cause and doing a trial run. There's no specific issue to be discussed, just general meta discussion that's of interest to the community.

I am assuming a neutral position, so no commenting or moderating from me. Besides, I'm 100% away for the next 3+ weeks on vacation, so breaking neutrality and meddling in the discussion isn't even an option for me.

Chances are nobody here is new to the internet. We all know what meta discussions are and aren't for. Common sense applies, as do the same rules as on the rest of the site. Don't be a dick. Or a petaQ. Or a veruul. Otherwise, carry on...

Laissez les bons temps rouler.

Enough of trying to play the game and satisfy extremes. Yes, I've gotten it wrong, and it's time to stop. It's time for common sense. I'm posting this journal to address my mistakes and choose a better direction. After posting it, I'll be away for at least the next few weeks on my summer vacation.

Calling your opponent a socialist, a Marxist, a fascist, or a Nazi doesn't work. We've heard this so much that it's become part of our political noise. Attacking your political opponents, calling them threats to democracy or saying they're guilty of reason, just doesn't work. Playing to conspiracy theories to take down your opponent is a distraction. You can call the people facile simpletons or whatever derogatory term you like because they don't accept the rhetoric, but it's not going to win elections.

Choosing common sense over the distractions doesn't make a person a Nazi or a socialist. It makes them a human being, just like yourself. Trump's policies suck, and we all know it. But instead of playing to the noise or rooting for your opponent to fail, and for yourself to get caught as collateral damage, offer better ideas. Want to know how Obama won Indiana in 2008? He had better ideas than his opponents, Hillary Clinton and John McCain. People believed he understood their needs, he proposed solutions, and he offered hope. That wins elections, just as it always has. People don't want to be governed by extremes. They want common sense, leaders who understand the people's needs, how to compromise, and how to deliver results that help the people.

Here's what matters:

• The economy: We need lower prices for goods, stuff like groceries. Tariffs aren't helping when the people really want to prevent inflation. Affordability is what matters. People are tired of inequality, where the few accumulate more wealth while the many fall behind. We want an economy that works for everyone, jobs allow them to pay the bills and have a decent standard of living, health care that covers their needs, and affordable housing.
• Immigration: People want to keep criminals out of the country, but they don't want indiscriminate ICE raids on our communities. Make background checks quick, easy, and effective to enter the country. If you want to come here and work, it should be easy to do so legally. If you want to come here and commit crime, we'll keep you out. Immigration is good for the country. We can welcome immigrants and also prevent crime.
• Foreign policy: Americans don't want more forever wars. We don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons. We don't like China's aggression. We want real solutions that allow Ukraine to repel Putin's aggression and quickly end the war with Ukraine intact and free. We just don't want to get entangled in more costly forever wars that don't benefit the people.
• Humanitarian needs: We care about humanitarian causes. We agree that Hamas is evil, that they need to surrender and release their prisoners. We also feel great sympathy for the humanitarian plight in Gaza and want better for those people. We want to stop minorities from being persecuted in Syria, Iraq, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and so many other places where it's happening. We're on the side of human decency, not for some people but for all people. That means treating our own people with dignity, too.
• Leaders who work for us: Compromise isn't a dirty word. We're just tired of back room deals that serve one party, massive bills that nobody reads or understands, which get passed at the 11th hour. We want our leaders who understand our needs and priorities, who make compromises in public, who work together instead of as two parties, and who make common sense agreements that work for the entire American people.

If you want our votes, suggest better ideas on the issues that matter to us. We're not served by the two parties we have now, and the extremes certainly aren't working for us. If you don't like this, and I certainly don't, the solution is to win an election. Focus on what matters, not the noisy extremes and the distractions.

I've made plenty of mistakes trying to placate those extremes and getting mad because the extremes think I should be mad. Yes, I've gotten it wrong. But from now on, my side is common sense, the side of human decency, the side of the people. Instead of trying to defeat your opponent, it's time to win for the good of all the people.

I'm planning to be away at least for nearly the next month spending time with family, taking vacation, and working on some Python and C++ projects I'm excited about. If I feel like things are in a good place here in late August when summer vacation is over, I'll resume my editor training and try to contribute to the site. If things aren't in a good place, I'll wish the community well and quietly move on.

Thanks for reading. I hope we'll work together and build something better. Be well.

Human society is a bit like the fluid dynamics of the atmosphere, where processes originating at the smallest scales of motion where individual molecules form the base of a hierarchy that generates the familiar processes we observe at the largest scales. But the system does not exist as we observe it because of the choices of a few or perhaps a great many of the molecules, but is rather an emergent property that arises and feeds back into the behavior of the individual molecules. As with the atmosphere, human society is a chaotic system, where perturbations at the smallest scales occasionally and unexpectedly amplify to influence the largest scales.

Unlike the atmosphere where laws like the Navier-Stokes and Clausius-Clapeyron equations allow for a high level of predictability at many of the scales of motion, we lack similar well-tested laws to model the behavior of human society. While the system is still an emergent property from smaller scales that feeds back to influence the behavior of the individual molecules, those molecules also assert free will and self-determination. We observe that when enough of those molecules collectively exert pressure in one direction, they can tip the larger scales of the system to find a new metastable equilibrium.

The question arises to what extent the individual molecules truly use their self-determination to influence both themselves and the emergent system. Given the opportunity, do they embrace their free will and mostly join together collectively to influence the system for their betterment? Do individual molecules that serve as agents of anarchy inevitably assume those roles as the system permits, lacking the will to overcome the programming of their prior experiences? And do these agents of anarchy ultimately prevent the molecules from banding together to exert pressure in one direction, allowing the larger scale system to continue to exert its influence to drive the motion at smaller scales?

When permitted, do the molecules simply assume their normal behavior within the system, doing what they usually do? Do the agents of anarchy reprise their usual roles? And do the molecules that act as friction against the anarchy quickly assume their place within the system, too? Let's find out.

Epilogue

As the fire slowly burned out within the Dalek city and the smoke began to clear, the shells of travel machines strewn about the Emperor's chamber became visible. The mutants within all dead from the battle that had ensued just a few minutes prior, leaving only a solitary light flashing atop the Emperor's metallic shell. The usual heartbeat of the Dalek city was reduced to a barely audible murmur, with the Emperor's usually bustling chamber now frozen in time as a memorial of the brief but deadly battle on Skaro. While a few of the critical systems still hummed in the background, the usual din of the Dalek city had otherwise vanished.

The meddlesome Doctor reprogrammed a few Daleks to question his leadership, and the good of the Empire required that those malfunctioning mutants be promptly exterminated. Instead of the faulty Daleks orderly accepting their necessary extermination, they fired weapons haphazardly as if for their amusement. Not only were many loyal Daleks killed by the renegades, but the systems that distributed static electricity throughout the Dalek city were struck and severely damaged in the crossfire. The weapons fire required more static electricity, drawing additional energy through an already damaged grid to sustain the battle. The remaining transformers were overloaded, exploding and releasing power surges through the grid that critically wounded any Daleks that had survived to the point. The Emperor raged at the rogue Time Lord and his human companions, who had succeeded in bringing anarchy to order before fleeing in their TARDIS.

But the Emperor's rage promptly gave way to another emotion, the fear that the Dalek Empire was now weak and vulnerable, little more than a smoldering ruin on Skaro. Then the fear transitioned to yet another emotion, one that was truly alien to the Emperor. Rage, hatred, and fear, were all familiar to Daleks, but not the doubts the Emperor felt now. He wondered if the disorder of the Doctor and his companions might have been the human factor the Daleks sought to isolate and control. Were those Daleks infused with a sense of insubordination perhaps a superior form, one that possessed the human factor that had again defeated the Dalek Empire? The Emperor felt the comfortable rage and fury, but also envy that perhaps the human factor granted others a superiority over Daleks. Yes, the Emperor was envious that other beings, Dalek and otherwise, might actually have supremacy. And this only amplified the Emperor's fear and rage.

If the Emperor's wounds could heal, he was capable of rebuilding the technology that powered the city and restarting the cloning machines to create new Daleks. But those Daleks would contain the same programming imparted genetically by Davros over a million years ago, the unquestioning belief in Dalek supremacy and absolute obedience within the Dalek hierarchy. This programming made Daleks rigid and inflexible, and no amount of rage and fury could suppress the Emperor's doubts, the question of whether a rebuilt Dalek Empire would inevitably succumb to the same destruction that had just rocked the city.

But before the life support systems within the Emperor's travel machine could begin to heal him, another explosion pierced the eerie quiet, violently shaking the ruins of the city while the emergency lights flickered and then faded to black. The blast that rocked the city quickly faded to an eerie silence, with even the hum of the remaining systems now quieted. The Emperor knew that the shield grid around the Dalek city was now inoperative. It was a matter of time before Thal forces would arrive to do as they wished. But it wouldn't just be the Thals, as the Sontarans, Cybermen, and scouts from other warring empires would soon arrive on Skaro in hopes of harvesting the remaining Dalek technology for their advantage.

The Emperor had no choice, knowing that many others would soon arrive in the Dalek city. His hope for the survival of the Dalek Empire was reduced to the possibility that many of the warring factions could not overcome their disdain for each other. He hoped that these factions would follow their own familiar programming and obliterate each other before they could harvest the Dalek technology. Once that happened, he could set to work rebuilding the Dalek empire from the remnants of the technology, and Daleks would once again reign Supreme. But that was a distant glimmer of hope, much like the lone light atop the Emperor's damaged travel machine that now only occasionally emitted brief and faint flashes.

Then the Emperor heard distant voices echoing through the corridors of the Dalek city, and he knew the experiment forced on him was now well and truly underway. Would the usual suspects continue fighting among themselves, or would they find a will within to cooperate and permanently end the Dalek Empire?

Let's find out...

I've taken the previous content of this journal, which generated only a spam comment from the usual fuckwit in a poll but no actual discussion, and inserted it into spoiler tags. The content isn't gone, and it involved Donald Trump's labor policies. It affects people, and if Trump actually did what I suggested, it would certainly require major adjustments at United States universities because of how it would affect their budgets amid the loss of federal funds and restrictions on F&A costs. But our discourse isn't about policy these days, and this is a microcosm of where we are in the United States.

Let's replace the original content with what will actually get discussion: the Wall Street Journal made salacious allegations about Trump and Jeffrey Epstein and got sued for their efforts. MAGA apparently loves Trump again even though he just got done dumping on MAGA and blaming Democrats. Apparently Trump isn't pleased with Pam Bondi over the alleged Epstein files, though her job supposedly isn't in danger. When Congress isn't trying to kill NPR and PBS while also cutting foreign aid that benefits US foreign policy, they're trying to decide whether to vote on a resolution about files about Epstein.

Only one of the things I mentioned in the previous paragraph actually matters to the American people: the cuts to NPR and PBS, and the cuts to foreign aid. That matters because it's a policy decision that affects us, and a truly awful one at that. But allegations from an increasingly extreme right wing insists that NPR and PBS are pushing leftist propaganda. This actually is a big deal, and it's not a serious effort to balance the federal budget. If we actually gave a damn about that, we wouldn't be extending tax breaks for the wealthy while raising the debt ceiling by trillions of dollars. No, this is far more like when Mississippi banned Sesame Street because they thought that Black and White kids playing together was too woke.

But we're not really talking about that either because all of our attention is focused on Epstein. The right seems to be mad at Trump, or they're backing Trump again, depending on which day of the week it is. The left didn't care about Epstein until now, and that's because it's now useful to weaken Trump's presidency. The alleged secret client list is way too similar to the QAnon and "Pizzagate" conspiracy theories, but now we're giving attention to this BS. What the hell is wrong with us?

For those who say that weakening Trump's presidency is a good thing, I agree. He's a tyrant who needs to be removed from office by the power of law, then prosecuted for crimes that include crimes against humanity. As a nation, we need to learn something, which is when we touch the hot stove once and get burned (Trump 45), we really shouldn't run up and touch it again (the Trump 47 Regime) because of obvious bullshit promises about the economy and immigration. If this really turned into "Epstein-gate" and led to Trump being impeached or resigning, it would be a sad commentary on us. Many of us seem totally okay with the brutal and illegal treatment of migrants, Trump's illegal rescission of federal funds (which does not include the legal but weapons grade stupid cuts to NPR and PBS), the illegal tariffs, and so many other abuses of power. Instead, it's a conspiracy theory about a supposed Epstein client list that's nary a step above QAnon and Pizzagate that matters?

We don't care about the rule of law. Apparently we don't read the Constitution, otherwise we might know what it actually says, how frequently the Trump regime violates it, and how much the inept GOP-controlled Congress looks the other way. We don't seem to care about economics, otherwise we'd know that mass deportations of workers, massive tariffs, threats to fire the Federal Reserve's chair to exert undue influence over monetary policy, and the constant Ross-and-Rachel will there or will there not be tariffs, are all harming our economy. We don't seem to give a damn that Trump thinks he's the law, and has a submissive Congress and Supreme Court to let him do whatever the hell he wants. We don't care about how to maintain and repair a broken democracy, but we're fixated on a fucking conspiracy theory.

Congratulations, the dumbing down of America is well and truly underway. Good work!

For those who actually give a damn about policy, here's the journal that previously occupied this space:

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

Subject: Trump may sign executive order on college athlete employment

Content: Donald Trump may issue an executive order directing cabinet secretaries to write an memo about whether college athletes should be considered employees of their schools. This comes shortly after athletes began receiving pay directly from their schools for being athletes and a $2.8 billion agreement to settle House v. NCAA. The settlement actually covers three separate antitrust lawsuits arguing that the NCAA's previous restrictions on athletes' name, image, and likeness (NIL) illegally suppressed athletes' ability to earn money from their NIL rights.

The NCAA's rules about compensation for athletes were draconian and were often selectively enforced. Athletes were expected to compete as amateurs, not being paid directly or otherwise to play for their schools. For example, employment of athletes during the summer by third parties was tightly regulated, mandating that the pay be close to the market rate where the athlete was employed out of concern that a business might exploit this to funnel extra money to a school's star quarterback under the guise of employment. This also meant that if you were an athlete with a YouTube channel, the NCAA would regulate your sponsorships and whether you were even permitted to say that you were a college athlete. These rules were frequently violated, and enforcement was uneven with historically successful schools perceived as getting weaker penalties for breaking the rules. As the late basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian once said, "The NCAA was so mad at Kentucky they gave Cleveland State two more years of probation."

The system was broken, but states began to mandate that college athletes could be paid for NIL rights, creating a patchwork of different regulations around the country. Transfers were once heavily regulated, requiring that after a player transferred, they must sit out a year. This had been eased with the transfer portal, but lawsuits brought by athletes effectively forced the NCAA to allow a player unlimited transfers without sitting out. NCAA rules barred the use of NIL payments to entice athletes to enroll at one school rather than another, but this was difficult to enforce, and NIL really did provide a recruiting advantage. With unlimited transfers, this allowed players to effectively shop around each year for the highest NIL payments and then transfer. The NIL payments for top players were rather extravagant, and then players could transfer and seek more money the following year. In professional sports, players often have multi-year contracts with a team, meaning that college players were effectively paid as professionals while having more free agency rights than their professional counterparts. The House settlement put much of this to rest, with schools now directly paying many players.

Trump's executive order wouldn't set policy, instead directing his cabinet to issue a legal brief with guidance on whether college athletes are actually employees. Congress could mandate policy, and it doesn't seem like Trump is claiming that authority. The main issue here is that if athletes are employees of their schools, they could unionize and collectively bargain for higher pay and more benefits from their schools. That's exactly how professional sports work, where players have unions and bargain over pay, how player contracts can be structured, and even details like the number of preseason and regular season games on a team's schedule.

I stand by my prior arguments that college sports are broken, and the massive amount of money spent in this manner is poorly prioritized when it should be spent on academics. You might expect I'd hope Trump's cabinet would argue against athletes being employees, but that's not the case. Instead, I hope Trump actually does issue the executive order, that the resulting executive order says that athletes are employees, and is even more expansive.

Many of the restrictions that were once imposed against college athletes also are also present either officially or as de facto policy for other student workers, including graduate students. In practice, it can be difficult for a graduate student to transfer between schools if things aren't working out at their current institution. I personally knew foreign students who were exploited, with a faculty member threatening to pull their assistantship if they didn't work 60-80 hours per week, a threat that would effectively cause the student to lose their F1 visa and be forced to leave the country. Administrators are often reluctant to intervene, and students feel pressure not to speak up about the situation. While the situation is better for domestic students, there are still major issues. For example, students with research assistantships often aren't permitted to have outside employment, meaning that a student who wants or needs extra money has to either take out loans, or they get another job and try to keep it secret from their school.

Why shouldn't students that have teaching or research duties for their schools also be classified as employees? That would allow them to unionize, where collective bargaining could reduce the power differential between faculty and students. I hope that Trump really does issue this executive order, and the resulting opinion is sweeping, arguing that both athletes and student workers really are employees. It wouldn't have the force of law, but a broad statement about student employees could still push a broken system to change. As it stands right now, universities pressure faculty to keep student wages down. As someone who hired many students during my time in academia, those students should have been considered employees, and I shouldn't have been pressured to pay some undergraduates scarcely above minimum wage to assist in research. I chose to pay those students at the top of the pay scale imposed by the administration, but I still believed the wages were too low for the type of work being done. If those students were officially considered employees, they could have bargained for better terms from the university.

I'm not actually opposed to treating college athletes as employees and permitting them to collectively bargain for better terms. Although I believe college sports are broken and show that universities have disordered priorities, I don't blame the athletes for seeking to earn more money. My biggest frustration is that the discussion usually begins and ends with athletes. If Trump really wants to make a bold statement, his cabinet should argue that all student workers are employees of their schools.

Otherwise, you may proceed to discuss Jeffrey Epstein in this journal. Just don't expect me to pretend that it matters.

There's a beautiful building in downtown St. Louis known as the Old Courthouse. With its rotunda and two wings, it looks like it could have been a state capitol from the 18th or 19th centuries. The dome high atop the building was designed to resemble St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. The Old Courthouse is often photographed with the Gateway Arch in the background, which might be the most recognizable image of St. Louis to residents from outside the region. The building housed both state and federal courts in the 19th and early 20th centuries and is now part of the Gateway Arch National Park, a tiny national park along the riverfront in Downtown St. Louis. I've visited the Old Courthouse more than once and, as a student, reenacted its most famous case.

The Old Courthouse has a complicated history, one where Virginia Minor unsuccessfully sued seeking voting rights for women, and where slave auctions were held on its steps until 1861. But it's also a building where many slaves sued for and won their freedom on the grounds that they resided for a time in free states before returning to slave states. They successfully argued they had become free by their temporary residence in states where slavery was outlawed, and decades of legal precedent supported them. By some accounts, hundreds of slaves were freed in this manner at the Old Courthouse.

Dred Scott and Harriet Scott sue for their freedom in state court

The trial I reenacted, and the most famous at the Old Courthouse, was Dred Scott v. Emerson, which was actually tried twice in this building. I participated in the reenactment of the second and more historically significant of the trials. Dred Scott's wife, Harriet Scott, also sued separately for her freedom, hoping that both her and her husband would be freed from slavery.

Dred Scott's story was like many other slaves who resided in free states and argued that once they were free, they were always free. It should have been a routine case, but Dred Scott was denied his freedom in his first trial on a technicality, after which his lawyer petitioned the Missouri Supreme Court for a new trial. Before the high court ruled on the matter, the original judge agreed and already had granted Dred Scott a retrial. In 1850, justice prevailed at the Old Courthouse in the second trial, and Dred Scott was awarded his freedom.

Unfortunately, this was not the end of the story. Irene Emerson, who had been Dred Scott's owner, petitioned the judge for a new trial and was denied. As a result, the case was appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court in an effort to overturn the verdict that had been reached at the Old Courthouse. The appeal was heard in Jefferson City, and Dred Scott was denied freedom by a vote of 2-1. The majority opinion not only argued that Missouri should not be bound by the laws of free states, but that slavery was the will of God, and that "Times now are not as they were, when the former decisions on this subject were made."

Dred Scott sues again in federal court

In 1853, Dred Scott once again sued for his freedom against his current owner, now John Sanford, the brother of Irene Emerson. Although Sanford resided in New York and the case was brought in federal court instead of state courts, the trial was held in the Papin Building in St. Louis. This building that no longer stands but would have been roughly at the northern leg of the Gateway Arch. Although Dred Scott's new lawyers were strong opponents of slavery, limited evidence was presented to the jury, and the judge directed that the case be decided on the basis of Missouri law. Because the state's highest court had previously ruled against Dred Scott, that instruction effectively ordered the jury to also rule against him. They did, once again denying Dred Scott his freedom.

The case is argued before the United States Supreme Court

From there, the case was appealed to the United States Supreme Court, where a clerical error resulted in it being recorded as Dred Scott v. Sandford. Oral arguments began in February of 1856, and in May of that year, the justices requested that new oral arguments take place later that year in December. In the interim, James Buchanan was elected president on November 4, 1856, running as a Democrat with John Breckinridge as his running mate. There was deep division within the Democratic Party, and although Buchanan was from Pennsylvania, he had the support of the pro-slavery Southern Democrats. In contrast, Northern Democrats generally opposed slavery.

Buchanan feared civil unrest early in his presidency from the ruling in Dred Scott's case. As a result, he requested that one of the nine Supreme Court justices and his personal friend, John Catron, seek to have the decision rendered prior to Buchanan's March 4, 1857 inauguration. Buchanan was aware of the upcoming Supreme Court decision, but he also sought to not have the decision split with justices from the South supporting John Sanford while justices from the North favoring freedom for Dred Scott. Buchanan also wanted a verdict that went beyond a narrow ruling on the matter of Dred Scott's freedom, instead seeking a broader precedent to settle the legality of slavery. To that end, he pressured another justice, Robert Cooper Grier, also from Pennsylvania, to rule with the Southern justices.

Buchanan also recveved updates on the progress of the court's deliberation from Grier. Despite being considered unacceptable in the 1850s as it is today, Buchanan had exerted political pressure to influence the Supreme Court's decision.

Roger Taney's opinion for the majority

The Supreme Court released its decision on March 6, 1857, two days after Buchanan's inauguration. It was a 7-2 decision with all nine justices authoring opinions, and all justices in the majority joining Chief Justice Roger Taney's opinion. That majority included Grier, with Benjamin Robbins Curtis and John McLean as the two lone dissenting justices. Taney's opinion is most often quoted, and I'll include four quotations cited in the Wikipedia article on Scott v. Sandford.

The question is simply this: Can a negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all of the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guarantied [sic] by that instrument to the citizen?

The question is simple and accurately described by Taney, which is whether a Black person who had been a slave ever become a citizen of the United States. He answered this question by writing:

We think ... that they [Black people] are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time [of America's founding] considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.

Taney wrote that his ruling interpreted the Constitution as it was originally intended by its framers, and his opinion includes a review of many laws from the late 18th century. Taney summarized his interpretation of the laws and opinions he cited by asserting:

It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion in relation to that unfortunate race, which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted. ... They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order ... and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.

Taney effectively dismissed the case, ruling that Dred Scott lacked standing to bring suit for his freedom. He concluded that Black people were inherently inferior, were not intended to be citizens and, thus, lacked the right to sue in federal court. As shameful as this opinion was already, Taney wasn't done pandering to the wishes of James Buchanan. If this ruling hadn't ensured him a place in infamy, Taney continued his opinion with judicial activism, cementing him a place firmly on the wrong side of history:

Now, ... the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution. ... Upon these considerations, it is the opinion of the court that the act of Congress which prohibited a citizen from holding and owning property of this kind in the territory of the United States north of the [36.5 degree North parallel] line therein mentioned is not warranted by the Constitution, and is therefore void...

This ruling nullified the Missouri Compromise of 1820, though it had already been effectively repealed three years prior by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Despite being unnecessary because the Missouri Compromise was repealed and Taney already dismissed the case, it was the sweeping decision that Buchanan had sought. Buchanan believed that a broad and sweeping Supreme Court decision would unite the country in support of slavery.

In his argument against the principles of the Missouri Compromise, Taney argued that if a slave owner brought a slave into a free state and resulted in the slave becoming a free person, it deprived the slave owner of the right to due process with respect to their property. Taney effectively placed the property rights of slave owners unequivocally above the liberty and human rights of Black People. Although judicial review is commonplace in the present day, Wikipedia states that Dred Scott v. Sandford was only the second time that a law had been struck down in this manner, the first being Marbury v. Madison which had established the precedent 54 years prior.

Dred Scott's case is still important today

As do many people, I regard Dred Scott v. Sandford as the most shameful decision in the history of the Supreme Court. The court prioritized the due process rights of slave owners, asserting that their legal right to own another person as their property took precedence over the liberty and human rights of Black people. Today, the Old Courthouse in St. Louis is a museum, much of which is dedicated to educating visitors about the efforts of Dred Scott and his wife, Harriet Scott, to be recognized under law as human beings and American citizens instead of another person's property.

This story matters greatly 168 years later because it's a reminder of a time when a president influenced the judiciary, which is supposed to be an independent and coequal branch of government, to deprive people of their liberty and human rights under law. The court regarded the interests of slave owners, specifically their ownership of Black people as their property, over the fundamental rights of Black people.

The Supreme Court didn't give James Buchanan everything he wanted since the ruling came two days after his inauguration. The decision was delayed for several weeks because Roger Taney found the dissenting opinion of Benjamin Robbins Curtis so persuasive that he felt the need to revise his own opinion. The compelling nature of Curtis' arguments should have been a sign to Taney that he was wrong. Instead, he caved to political pressure anyway in a sweeping ruling that gave Buchanan everything else he requested. Taney wrote the majority opinion for the most disgraceful ruling in the history of the Supreme Court. According to Taney, some people were inherently inferior to others, and those who he deemed inferior were undeserving of liberty, basic human rights, or any rights at all. For his part, historians for the better part of a century widely regarded Buchanan as the worst president in the history of the United States.

I write this not just as a history lesson, but because many elements of it should sound all too familiar to us in the present day.

What the hell is wrong with us? As an American, I fully expect the rest of the world is watching our country right now and marveling at how fucked up we are right now. We've seen one batshit crazy extreme get power in the United States, and it appears that the other side of the political spectrum's response is to embrace its lunatic fringe.

A good priest once told me that anger is the proper response to injustice. There's a huge amount of injustice in the United States, meaning that it's completely justified to be angry. There's a couple of lines from TNG's final Borg episode, Descent that explain this very well:

DATA: Anger is a negative emotion. I wanted to concentrate on something more positive.
TROI: Data, feelings aren't positive and negative, they simply exist. It's what we do with those feelings that becomes good or bad. For example, feeling angry about an injustice could lead someone to take a positive action to correct it.

More than ten people on the left's lunatic fringe ambushed ICE agents in Texas, trying to murder them. In Southern California, there's an investigation into a person who appeared to fire a gun at ICE agents who were conducting a raid.

Let's be clear: these ICE raids are wrong. They're not targeting the worst criminals, not even close. This is bullshit, trying to inflate the number of people being deported to satisfy some arbitrary quota. It's about placating the loudest and most extreme voices online, people who will complain if there aren't massive numbers of migrants being deported. That's why we get raids targeting farm workers, because that inflates the numbers. They're not removing dangerous criminals, and ICE is diverting resources to conduct these raids at the expense of apprehending violent criminals. We're less safe because of this bullshit, and you should be angry about.

When migrants are injured, killed, or treated in a subhuman manner during aggressive ICE raids, you should be angry. When these people are deported to concentration camps in El Salvador, sent to any country that will accept them upon deportation, and denied due process, you should feel anger. The proper response is to demand justice for the migrants who are harmed by these senseless raids. Then put forth better ideas.

When ICE agents harm migrants with no valid reason, they should be held accountable. The excuse, "I was only following orders," can all too easily be used to justify atrocities. The leaders who give those orders must also be brought to accountability. But conducting vigilante attacks on ICE agents is not accountability, not even close. It's mirroring the worst tendencies of the MAGA lunatic fringe. The accountability you're looking for is to charge ICE agents and the leaders who give the orders with crimes, prosecute them in court, convict them when the law and evidence support it, and punish the guilty according to law. That's justice, unlike the vigilante bullshit I've mentioned.

When I posted my journal correcting the record about the Texas floods, I felt I had to include my final paragraph that criticized the Trump Regime's policies, lest I be accused of tone trolling and making excuses for MAGA. If political discourse isn't sufficiently extreme to have street cred with one lunatic fringe, you'll be accused of tone trolling for the other side's lunatic fringe. If Democrats are too civil in their criticism of MAGA, the left's lunatic fringe says they should "get shot" visiting ICE facilities. The left's lunatic fringe wants blood spilled to get attention instead of winning on justice and better ideas. That's apparently what we've come to now.

You see that polarization right here on this site, and it mirrors the trends in American society. One AC wasn't satisfied with the harsh criticism I've posted in multiple journals and the use of terms like "Trump Regime, because apparently that's not enough. It's almost like they wanted to tell me I should "get shot" to prove I have street cred with the left's lunatic fringe. If my blood isn't spilled, I must be protecting MAGA. Again, that's a microcosm of the current level of our political discourse. What the fuck is wrong with us? No, I'm not giving MAGA a pass, and don't even start with that bullshit. The problem is that the lunatic fringe on the left is becoming like MAGA, just like the thing they correctly despise.

This isn't tone trolling. The problem isn't the tone, it's the substance. The substance from both lunatic fringes is poison to our democracy and to our society. We're become so filled with rage that we've decided to drink poison and then hope that the other side dies.

We need justice and better ideas, not more outrage. What the hell is wrong with us?

You may well have heard about the recent flash floods in central Texas and the severe impacts on many people in the region. You've quite possibly also heard about the political response, including complaints about cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS). Let's cut through the bullshit.

The two weather forecast offices primarily affected were San Angelo (SJT) and New Braunfels (EWX). Although the San Angelo office (SJT) does have a virtual tour that includes explanations of the various positions at the office, it's not easy to find a current list of their staff. I have been able to determine that the meteorologist in charge (MIC) position is vacant at SJT. Overall, it seems that SJT is short four staff members of 23, also including a senior hydrologist. It's not clear what the two other unfilled staff positions are, but the MIC does sometimes directly participate in forecast shifts and isn't strictly a management position.

The New Braunfels office (EWX) does post their staff directory online. They don't currently have a science and operations officer (SOO) or a warning coordination meteorologist (WCM). They're also short one lead forecaster and one general forecaster. Although the SOO has a research and development role, specifically in developing forecasting techniques applicable to the needs of the forecast office, the SOO also has a forecasting role and does take some forecast shifts. In some respects, EWX is really short three forecasters if you include the SOO's role. One duty of the WCM is spotter training classes, where they teach classes during the spring about how to identify and report severe weather. But they also work with local stakeholders to help make sure that they're prepared for severe weather, in that they are able to receive warnings and have plans in place to act on them. In effect, the WCM is a liaison position, and they often directly speak to the media and the public when high-impact weather is expected.

Did the DOGE buyouts and vacant positions at SJT and EWX degrade forecast accuracy or prevent warnings from being issued in as timely of a manner? The answer is no.

The NWS forecasters union says that staffing didn't cause problems during these flash floods. Meteorologists in both the private and public sectors say that the NWS alerts were as accurate and timely as they should have been. A meteorologist who worked in NOAA for a long time and someone I know personally from my time in the field, Alan Gerard, did a detailed analysis and said that there could be small improvements in the alerts that went out to the public, but concluded that forecasters did their jobs well. He wrote:

I will conclude by saying this: just as what I have been able to see about this event shows me the NWS did a solid job, similarly there is little evidence that any of the recent cuts to NOAA/NWS negatively impacted services for this event, regardless of what may be being said on social media. It is possible that the reduction in balloon releases could have had some impact on model forecasts, but that would require more detailed examination. Additionally, I of course have no knowledge of what staffing was like at the NWS office, and if typical decision support to emergency managers was able to be provided.

As I stated previously, the NWS employees union also didn't believe that staffing adversely affected the forecasts, though they warned that other offices with more vacant positions might have bigger issues during high-impact events. It's a caution that the current situation isn't sustainable, and we do need to properly staff NWS offices. But it's also false to try to say that people died in central Texas because the NWS wasn't properly staffed. I also know from my time in the field that nobody really likes the NWS hiring process, where applications are reviewed by non-meteorologists at the Office of Personnel Management, in a process that is very opaque.

As Alan Gerard's blog noted, this wasn't a situation like a landfalling tropical cyclone or an atmospheric river where there's a large-scale phenomenon that can be predicted with a high level of accuracy many hours or even days ahead of time. The processes that made these storms so devastating were smaller-scale processes that are harder to forecast that far in advance. It's a limitation of the science, and if we want to improve our ability for forecast events like this, we need to invest in research like better numerical modeling of the atmosphere and better observational platforms. But it takes quite awhile, perhaps a year or two if not longer before that research can start to have an impact on operational forecasting. There's never enough research money to fund all the worthwhile projects, though budget cuts don't help.

We also need to talk about how people get weather alerts, particularly when they're in rural areas and it's the middle of the night. Marshall Shepherd, a professor at the University of Georgia, wrote about this in an article published by Forbes, where he suggested that we have some old but reliable technology that could help. One outcome of the Super Outbreak of 1974 was that we needed to greatly expand NOAA weather radio broadcasts so that people virtually anywhere in the CONUS can receive alerts via radio.

Even in the middle of the night, NOAA weather radios have alarms that can wake people up when warnings are issued. They broadcast with a power of around 1 kW on seven frequencies from 162.400 to 162.550 MHz, and they are operated specifically so that the public can receive alerts like tornado or flash flood warnings when other forms of communication aren't available. We've had systems in place for five decades to prevent exactly the type of situation that happened in central Texas. Despite all of our technology, this is why we need to continue using legacy systems like NOAA weather radio.

As a scientist, my duty is to the truth, and the truth doesn't change depending on politics. If I want to be taken seriously when I criticize Trump, and I do so quite frequently, I also have to tell the truth when it doesn't support the harshest criticisms of Trump. The fact is that staffing cuts didn't cause people to die in the Texas floods. But the situation also isn't sustainable, meaning that we do need to fund the hiring of more staff at the NWS and we need to invest in research. We also need to pay to maintain and upgrade our infrastructure, whether it's numerical weather prediction, weather balloon launches, weather radars, NOAA weather radio, or any of the other systems are involved in forecasting hazardous weather and disseminating alerts. Trump has a history of being openly hostile toward meteorologists, lest we forget his lies and attacks on forecasters at NWS Birmingham over Hurricane Dorian. Project 2025 calls for dismantling a lot of the NWS, which is weapons grade stupidity. NWS staffing cuts didn't cause people to die in the central Texas floods, but that also doesn't mean the current situation is acceptable. There are big problems with the cutbacks at NWS, but we're never going to solve anything as long as we're focused on political bullshit like Project 2025.

It's been awhile since I've written about Star Trek in my journal, so let's do that again. Previously, I dedicated a journal to Spock's Brain, often derided as the worst episode of TOS. But classic Trek on its worst day is still better than a whole lot of the media we consume. I'm going to try to post a couple of these per week and look at a lot of themes from classic Trek. This journal and the next one will be about Nazis. I'm going to begin with Patterns of Force from the second season of TOS, then my next journal will ask whether the Cardassians in TNG, DS9, and VOY were space Nazis. The next journal is a topic that's been debated on many forums, but I have some opinions on that allegory.

Unlike the complex allegory of the Cardassian Union, Patterns of Force leaves no doubt that it's about Nazis, with the abundant swastikas, Nazi flags, and Nazi salutes. I started writing this journal under the assumption that it's generally dismissed as a bad episode, but there's actually quite a bit of variance. As a bit of background, here's Memory Alpha's summary of the episode, with a detailed description of the plot. If Kraetos' guide to TOS can be viewed as a rating from one to four stars, this episode is three stars. The comments in Jammer's review have a lot of variance ranging from garbage to a great episode of TOS, but Jammer also gives this story three stars out of four. And Steve Shives' review acknowledges the shortcomings of this story but still concludes that it's a solid Star Trek story.

I'll let you read the Memory Alpha article or the Wikipedia article if you'd like a reminder about the plot. The basic premise is that a Federation historian, John Gill, was on the planet Ekos as an observer and went missing. Gill was supposed to be an observer, meaning that the Prime Directive should prevent him from intervening in the affairs of Ekos. The Enterprise is dispatched to determine Gill's fate and if the culture of Ekos has been contaminated by Gill's presence. When Kirk and Spock beaming down to Ekos to investigate. Nazi symbols are immediately visible as they materialize.

Gill violated the Prime Directive when he saw Ekos in a state of disorder and lawlessness and tried to implement the efficiency of the Nazi regime. He describes Nazi Germany as the "most efficient state Earth ever knew", and he believed that he could separate the efficiency from the brutality and inhumanity. Although Gill is the Führer, he's also been drugged by Melakon, who is the real leader of the Nazi regime on Ekos. Gill is a figurehead who speaks to the Ekosians while powerful drugs keep him under Melakon's control.

The Enterprise has visited Ekos at a point in time just before Gill is to issue an order described by a Zeon named Isak as a "a formal declaration of war against Zeon. Their Final Solution." The writers were hardly subtle about names in this episode, with Zeon intentionally sounding very much like Zion, and Isak being almost exactly Isaac. While the story doesn't go into great depth about this topic, Isak states that "without us [Zeons] to hate, there'd be nothing to hold them together. So the Party has built us into a threat, a disease to be wiped out." This is, of course, the Nazi principle of Herrenvolk, where the Aryan race is viewed as the master race and all others are inferior.

Although that's an element to the story, it's actually very much about Führerprinzip, the Nazi leader principle where the supreme leader's word takes precedence above any law or dissenting opinion. As a result, the state exists to serve the will of the supreme leader, with those subordinate to the state expected to obey without question. Classic Trek often used the final scene of an episode to emphasize the writer's idea about the main idea, and the script of Patterns of Force does just that:

SPOCK: Captain, I never will understand humans. How could a man as brilliant, a mind as logical as John Gill's, have made such a fatal error?
KIRK: He drew the wrong conclusion from history. The problem with the Nazis wasn't simply that their leaders were evil, psychotic men. They were, but the main problem, I think, was the leader principle.
MCCOY: What he's saying, Spock, is that a man who holds that much power, even with the best intentions, just can't resist the urge to play God.
SPOCK: Thank you, Doctor. I was able to gather the meaning.
MCCOY: It also proves another Earth saying. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Darn clever, these Earthmen, wouldn't you say?

Put another way, the writer argues that there's no such thing as a truly benevolent dictator, and that entrusting a single individual with that much power will lead to the corruption of that individual. The question I want to ask is what's different from Gill becoming Führer as opposed to, say, becoming the king of Ekos. The difference here is that the Ekosians weren't just united in support of Gill's (or really Melakon') regime, but in their hatred of the Zeons, believing propaganda that Zeon was the the true source of the problems on Ekos. The planet is a fascist regime not merely because it has a supreme leader, but because of the extreme nationalism and the belief in the superiority of the Ekosians above all others. I do not suggest that monarchy is a good system of government, only that there is a meaningful and significant difference between monarchy and fascism, much of which is the extreme nationalism.

In this sense, I believe Kirk's assessment is overly simplistic in that it's not just about the concentration of power but also the strong belief in the superiority of a single group of people. It's not the belief that a set of principles are superior, but that the specific people are inherently superior. It's patriotic but not nationalistic to say that the United Federation of Planets has superior principles to those of the Klingon Empire and the Romulan Star Empire. On the other hand, it would be nationalistic to place the people of Earth as inherently superior to Vulcans, Andorians, Tellarites, Klingons, Romulans. But Kirk is correct that you can't separate the efficiency of a fascist regime from its malevolence.

There's another point here, which is that John Gill thought he could control the nationalist movement he created, but it actually ended up controlling him. In this story, it's quite literal, with Melakon drugging Gill and being the real force behind the Ekosian fascism. This concept was hardly novel, though it's a helpful reminder that could have made the final scene of the episode more profound.

The first actor to portray Adolf Hitler in American film was Moe Howard, doing so in You Nazty Spy! and again in I'll Never Heil Again. I regard The Three Stooges as the greatest slapstick comedy act ever made, but these films were atypical for the Stooges in that they generally weren't political. But these films consisted of three Jewish actors, Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Curly Howard, satirizing and mocking the Nazi regime. Although Moe Howard's character was named Moe Hailstone, it was undeniably a caricature of Hitler. These films were undeniably in favor of the United States entering World War II and thoroughly annoyed some isolationist members of Congress. The Wikipedia page about I'll Never Heil Again states:

In the previous film on this subject, You Nazty Spy!, Hailstone is shown as a tool of arms makers. In this film, they are shown as regretting their support, reflecting the real-life fact that all groups attempting to use the Nazi movement for their own ends ended up being controlled by it.

That's the real point here, which is also shown in Patterns of Force, that you can't cultivate a fascist movement and expect to not ultimately be controlled by the fascism. A leader can't create a fascist movement to achieve a specific goal and expect to figuratively flip a switch and turn off the fascism once the goal is achieved. Gill thought he could use fascism to restore Ekos to its past greatness, but he became an unwilling tool of the movement he created, leading Ekos not to greatness but to tyranny.

Overall, Patterns of Force has a message that's very blunt and somewhat muddled. The plot is somewhat repetitive, and I wonder if some of that repetition could have been replaced to provide more depth about how John Gill lost control of Ekos. Still, I agree with Jammer and Steve Shives that it's a very solid episode. In my next journal, I plan to examine another of Shives' videos, this one about whether the Cardassian Union in DS9 really is a strong allegory for Nazi Germany.