(I was a little late finishing this post, but perhaps it’s not bad to keep MLK Day going all week. — Charley)

I’m used to hearing on MLK day, especially from white politicians, that we’ve made a lot of progress, but there’s still much work to be done. Some of that type of tribute, like the secular beatification of Dr. King himself, is self-congratulatory and empty. But it also is an acknowledgment that the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, and the Voting Rights Act, were indeed signature moments, the result of endless labor and untold physical and mental sacrifice.

This excellent discussion from Saturday’s Under the Radar restates the obvious: That we are in fact in an era of active backsliding — the culmination of a generation of deliberate attacks on the franchise for African-Americans, and on democracy itself. This benefits those who would gain power through illegitimate and anti-democratic white supremacy — not just specifically white racists, but powerful conservative-aligned business interests who claim “plausible deniability” while using white supremacy for political muscle.

Specifically culpable is Chief Justice John Roberts, who ascended to his role not in spite of, but because of his career of hostility to voting rights. He was mentored by Justice Rehnquist on this matter; and was groomed by the conservative establishment for precisely the role of eroding the franchise. In Shelby vs. Holder he got his chance, which inaugurated a new Jim Crow era of voting rights restrictions across the country. Without Shelby et al, Stacy Abrams is your governor of Georgia, for example.

On MLK Day we talk about gauzy themes of equality and justice. But these are nothing without power — specifically, the political power of black people. As Dr. King said in 1957, political power will provide its own balance:

Give us the ballot, and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights.

Give us the ballot (Yes), and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an anti-lynching law; we will by the power of our vote write the law on the statute books of the South (All right) and bring an end to the dastardly acts of the hooded perpetrators of violence.

Give us the ballot (Give us the ballot), and we will transform the salient misdeeds of bloodthirsty mobs (Yeah) into the calculated good deeds of orderly citizens.

Give us the ballot (Give us the ballot), and we will fill our legislative halls with men of goodwill (All right now) and send to the sacred halls of Congress men who will not sign a “Southern Manifesto” because of their devotion to the manifesto of justice. ⁵(Tell ’em about it)

Give us the ballot (Yeah), and we will place judges on the benches of the South who will do justly and love mercy (Yeah), and we will place at the head of the southern states governors who will, who have felt not only the tang of the human, but the glow of the Divine.

Give us the ballot (Yes), and we will quietly and nonviolently, without rancor or bitterness, implement the Supreme Court’s decision of May seventeenth, 1954. (That’s right)

Dr. King prefers political power to reliance on the good nature and generosity of spirit of white people: Give us the ballot! The elections involving Barack Obama, and some of those in the South in 2018, have proven a point which has become unavoidable: That the Democratic Party, without very strong black turnout, is toast. The inverse is also true: In its current racist-rump form*, the Republican Party is toast, even in supposed “red state” strongholds like North Carolina, Texas, and Georgia — in the long term if not immediately. If you actually include everyone, red states aren’t actually that red. Republicans know that!

And it may seem crass, but I think it’s completely in keeping with Dr. King’s words: Any Democrat of any race knows how dependent the party is  on the black vote. It’s just an acknowledgment of power. That’s not a bad thing, and in fact it’s more reliable than the vagaries of white peoples’ good will. African-Americans don’t need to ask, when they have the power of the vote which is the margin of victory.

*There is no inherent reason why the Republican candidates couldn’t moderate their views, and reach out to African-Americans with a message and agenda that included and appealed to them. But they’ve decided not to do that; it’s incompatible with the profits of the right-wing media-industrial complex.

In Tuesday night’s State of the Commonwealth speech, Governor Baker made a pledge, and used some well-framed and welcome language on the urgency of climate change (my emphasis):

“From fishing and farming to critical public infrastructure and basic necessities like clean drinking water, there’s no dispute that the consequences of climate change are real and potentially devastating.

“Thankfully, despite significant steps backward in Washington, we in Massachusetts continue to lead …

… “But yesterday’s solutions and yesterday’s plans are no longer sufficient. We must continue to take bold action to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

“Tonight, I’m committing the Commonwealth to achieving an ambitious climate goal: net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.”

So, besides the very welcome TCI, and the yet-to-be-realized wind power initiatives: If Baker wants to be a climate leader, all he has to do is follow, and lend his vocal support to legislation that is teed up and ready to go. The State of the Commonwealth would have been a terrific opportunity to support this legislation — and he passed it up. Why?

So, the first thing, the most immediate and high-impact thing he could do, is cancel the Weymouth gas compressor, which is the equivalent of 1.1 million cars on the road, according to BU Professor (and protestor) Nathan Phillips. Baker and MassDEP have refused to take these duties of public protection seriously. One cannot claim to be serious about climate change and let this thing through.

2050 is frankly too late to go net-zero — and “net” zero is not the same as “zero”, as Ben Hellerstein points out in this thread. (If you throw your trash on your front lawn, while fixing up your back yard, your home beautification is “net zero.”) We must start making immediate, drastic cuts in emissions, racking up big wins right now. That means interim goals. Why doesn’t Baker come out and support the Garballey/Decker/Eldridge 100% renewables bill (H.2836/S.1958), a bill with 102 co-sponsors in the House? A bill that requires 100% renewable electricity by 2035, and everything else by 2045?

And why doesn’t he come out and support the H.2810, the Jen Benson/now Bill Driscoll carbon tax/investment bill, which will raise funds in an equitable way for a wide variety of green infrastructure priorities (= JOBS)?

The bill (H 2810) calls for 70 percent of the money generated by putting a price on carbon to be delivered back to households and employers through rebates, and 30 percent — an estimated $400 million to $600 million a year — to go into a Green Infrastructure Fund to support clean transportation, climate resilience and renewable energy projects. The carbon pollution charge would start at $20 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions then increase by $5 annually until it reaches $40 per ton.

… [Clean Water Action’s Cindy] Luppi said the Benson bill is “specifically formatted to be compatible with” the regional Transportation Climate Initiative, which is still taking shape.

There’s so much he could do, just by saying yes, let’s do this. Why doesn’t he?

Tell me something I don’t know. I’m dividing my attention between impeachment and Governor Baker’s State of the Commonwealth, which generated more questions than answers in my mind …

There is one conclusion that is a certainty: The Republican Party, in the House and Senate, has wrapped its arms around Trump’s betrayal of country; and his corruption; and his endless lies; and his vindictiveness. They will forever be associated; and if we survive long enough to still have history, it will remember them as shamed and guilty.

And so I find myself, in the moment, agreeing with jconway that we have under-valued harm reduction. I certainly don’t like Biden’s history of centrist straddling on Social Security, or crime; or his long work as a bagman for the credit card industry. I don’t trust Buttigieg’s McKinsey-opportunist mentality. But these are ordinary, ambitious people. They’re not special, or especially wicked; they’re simply the kind of people who run for president. We will at least survive them, and maybe even do better, with the due application of public pressure.

PBS’s “American Experience” recently had a terrific documentary on Joe McCarthy. McCarthy had cowed the entire political establishment into a defensive submission — including a war hero President. And yet, by June of 1954, when Joseph Welch asked him, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” McCarthy had already been hitting the bottle pretty hard. Less than three years later, McCarthy, a newlywed and father to a young child, was dead from alcoholism. I think that in his heart of hearts, Joe McCarthy did have a shred of decency. There was a dissonance, and the dissonance killed him. It’s a Greek tragedy, really.

The lesson for the GOP — from McCarthy, even more from Nixon, and then Iran Contra — has been to try to jettison the shame. It wasn’t doing them any good, after all. Trump, as we can observe, has absolutely no sense of decency, no shame. He’s pure in that way; it’s his superpower. He famously doesn’t drink; he doesn’t need to. But I really wonder how much dissonance the rest of the GOP can stand. How many of those folks are hitting the bottle, because they know that what they’re doing is vile, and unpatriotic, and corrupt?

It’s the job of patriotic Americans to heighten that sense of dissonance, to make it ring in the ears and burn with shame. Again, we act like the Republicans are scorpions, that they can’t help it, it’s in their nature. What if they do know better, but just can’t admit it now — in for a dime, in for a dollar? What if we don’t take their arguments and protestations and antics at face value? What if we call out the fear that they feel? How do we stage an intervention?

They do know better. They just won’t do better. The intervention is in November.