Monthly Archives: February 2020

Reckoning with Race and History in Dartmouth

Posted by on 2020-02-24 No comments

Like so much in America that is touched by race, a reckoning with the Dartmouth High School mascot has been simmering for years. Maine, Oregon and Washington state have all banned Native American school mascots. And here in Massachusetts – even after Pentucket, Groveland, Merrimac, West Newbury, Athol, Barnstable, Nashoba, Hanover, Winchester, Grafton, Brookfield, Taconic High, Braintree, Walpole, and Pittsfield abandoned theirs – many in the Town of Dartmouth insist on defending their “Indian” mascot as if it were a besieged Confederate monument in the Heart of Dixie.

Massachusetts legislation to ban Native American mascots brought the local issue to a head in 2019. That was the year the School Committee voted 3-2 to reject a public discussion of the mascot. With George Floyd’s murder, a short-lived national moment prompted the School Committee to create a “Diversity Committee,” in which the mascot issue was conveniently buried. This subcommittee, though it tried hard to address the issue, never really had the full support of the larger School Committee and the chair became the recipient of numerous ad hominem attacks by mascot defenders.

In 2021 Chairwoman Cheryl Andrews-Maltais of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) registered her formal notice to both the Town of Dartmouth and its School Committee that she was displeased with the “lack of consultation and coordination regarding the name and imagery” used by the school system and that she supported the mascot. A Dartmouth High School graduate herself, Chairwomain Andrews-Maltais’ sentiments were echoed by several other Aquinnah alumnae: her brother Clyde Andrews (who created the 1974 version of the “Indian”); her sister Naomi Carney; her nephew Sean Carney; Massachusetts Tea Party activist and former school committee member Christopher Pereira (who runs Friends of Dartmouth Memorial Stadium Inc. and the Dartmouth Indians Football Alumni Club); and twice unsuccessful anti-immigrant state senate challenger Jacob Ventura.

This group has the full and exclusive attention of both the School and Select Committees. Everyone seems content to let the Chairwoman speak for all Native Americans.

But the Wampanoag Nation is not the only indigenous nation in Massachusetts and it includes numerous tribes, not just the Aquinnah. Even voices within the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Aquinnah are anything but monolithic. Kisha James, a member of the Aquinnah who supports statewide legislation to ban mascots, told the Boston Globe last Fall that the word “mascot is just another word for pet.” She added, “It solidifies this idea that we’re not people. We’re costumes, we’re characters forever stuck in the past.”

Brad Lopes, Program Director of the Aquinnah Cultural Center, created a change.org petition disputing Chairwoman Andrews-Maltais’ efforts to promote the Dartmouth mascot “as the official position of our Nation.” In a separate letter to the Chairwoman he wrote, “I worked alongside members of the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy Nations here in Maine in an effort to ban mascots, with that bill passing, and would also think it would be wise to hear from them why. I do not feel this would provide any benefit to our tribal nation, and may in fact just create another symbol that Thomas King would describe as a ‘dead Indian’ for colonial narratives to use as they see fit. We are Wôpanâak after all, not ‘Indians’ or objects.”

Chairwoman Andrews-Maltais suggested in her letter to the Town and Schools that the Aquinnah enter into an agreement “much like the historic Seminole Tribe of Florida and Florida State University agreement of 2005.” In that agreement Florida State created scholarships for some Florida Seminole tribal members.

But Seminole history is complicated. Oklahoma Seminoles remember their ancestors being forced to march the bitter Trail of Tears, and not all were happy with the FSU accord. David Narcomey, a member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma who was part of the 2005 NCAA review that banned many Native American mascots, referred to Florida State’s use of Chief Osceola as a “minstrel show.” Here in the SouthCoast, members of other indigenous nations, other Wampanoag tribes, and other members of the Aquinnah have similarly expressed their frustration with Chairwoman Andrews-Maltais for speaking in their name.

Nevertheless, the School and Select Committees have chosen to hear what they want to hear – and who they want to hear it from.

So at the January 24th meeting this year committee member Chris Oliver asked the Committee to “reaffirm” the Indian and to begin discussions with [only] the Aquinnah – discussions he admitted that had long been in “limbo.” Committee member John Nunes went a step further, demanding that the whole issue be “put to bed” with an immediate vote, right then, right there. Nunes argued that “if we need to have discussions with the Wampanoag tribe [sic]” he was good with that. The Committee member revealed a decided lack of enthusiasm for consulting with even the Aquinnah. Level-headed members of the Committee urged that other, unheard, indigenous voices be respected and consulted.

Many of those ignored in Dartmouth were nevertheless heard at state Senate hearings on legislation to ban the use of Native American mascots and through letters and statements published by many local tribes and Native American groups. They include:

  • A letter of January 21, 2019 from Alma Gordon (White Sky), Sonksq of the Chappaquiddick Wampanoag Tribe: “Any time a school sports team plays a game against a school with an offensive mascot, they experience demoralizing racial prejudice. Native American mascots in sports are not educationally sound for Native American and non-indigenous youth.”
  • A letter of January 2019 from the Chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe: “A state law to address the problem of these nicknames / logos is necessary because many communities in Massachusetts resist calls to eliminate [those] used by the schools. The Tribe / Nation urges you to listen to our voices, and the voices of other Native American tribal nations […].”
  • A letter of January 2019 from Megan Page of the Pocasset Wampanoag Tribe: “We have tried at a local level to get offensive mascots removed, but attempts remain unsuccessful. We were not heard, and it solidified the need for state legislation regarding this matter. It is time we are heard. It is time we are celebrated for who we are. It is time for a change.”
  • A statement by Melissa Harding Ferretti, Chairwoman of the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe: “The fact that racist ideas about Native peoples in Massachusetts are deeply ingrained, and are reflected in sports teams mascots, should not have to be explained in 2020 – especially since Native activists and educators have worked so hard for so long to educate other Americans about this. But here we are again today.”
  • A letter of June 28, 2020 from Elizabeth Solomon on behalf of the Board of Directors of the Massachuset-Ponkpoag Tribal Council: “Despite repeated calls from Native communities, non-Native allies, and numerous professional organizations to eliminate the Native American nicknames/logos used by their schools, many communities maintain them while insisting that no harm is done and no disrespect is meant. The Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag urges you act on the research regarding the actual harm that is generated by Native American mascots and to listen to our and the many diverse voices calling for the prohibition of all Native American sport team mascots/nicknames/logos in Massachusetts public schools.”
  • A letter of July 7, 2020 from Cheryll Toney Holly, Sonksq of the Nipmuc Nation: “As humans living among the many communities in the Commonwealth, we would prefer to speak and reason with townspeople about the harmful effects of their school mascots. Unfortunately, our voices are not heard.”
  • A letter of July 22, 2020 from Fawn Sharp, President of the National Congress of American Indians: “Indian Country’s longstanding position on this issue has been made abundantly clear for decades – we are not mascots, and we will not tolerate being treated as such.”
  • An open letter of February 17, 2022 from Brad Lopes, Director of the Aquinnah Cultural Center: “Native American mascots can have a harmful effect on the development of self in indigenous students, even in settings where the tribal entity has been involved in these designs. The American Psychological Association acknowledges the negative impacts these mascots can have on students, and I was one of those kids unfortunately. I attended Skowhegan High School, which was the last Native American mascot here in Maine. Due to our ‘Indian’ mascot, which was meant to ‘honor the Wabanaki people’, I faced continually bullying and torment from students and some staff as well. I found my daily life in that school to be about survival, and whenever I could pretend to be white, I would. This has taken me years to unravel and heal from. I would not wish a similar experience on any other indigenous student.”
  • The website of MA Indigenous Legislative Agenda: “According to 2019 data from the Census Bureau, there are more than 50,000 Native American people living in Massachusetts, many of whom attend Massachusetts public schools. Native American mascots are likely a violation of state and federal anti-discrimination laws, including the Massachusetts Anti-Bullying Law. Often school districts fear community backlash and so fail to fulfill their legal responsibility to protect all students from this discrimination.”
  • The website of the United American Indians of New England: “Native Americans are people, not mascots.”
  • (non-native but relevant): American Psychological Association Resolution Recommending Retirement of American Indian Mascots: “The use of American Indian mascots as symbols in schools and university athletic programs is particularly troubling because schools are places of learning. These mascots are teaching stereotypical, misleading and too often, insulting images of American Indians. These negative lessons are not just affecting American Indian students; they are sending the wrong message to all students.”

Despite an impressive number of towns that have done the right thing and retired their nicknames and logos, about 20 Massachusetts school districts still choose to ignore Native voices and a large body of research shows how harmful their use is to both Native and non-native children.

It remains to be seen if any indigenous views will be honestly considered on March 8th at a special hearing for Native Americans on the mascot – or in time for a town referendum on the mascot on April 5th that the town’s Select Board decided to drop on the ballot at the last minute. The referendum vote is barely three weeks after the town’s first, last, and only community hearing on the issue on March 22nd.

Only between 11-15% of the 91% white residents of Dartmouth historically cast votes in the town election. When a voter walks into the booth and stares at the reverse side of a ballot, they will probably know little about what indigenous people think of mascots and will have had little or no time to digest any Native American testimony. They will also have been amply influenced by constant dog-whistling about “woke” “aristocrats,” “elites,” “outsiders” and “cancel” culture.

But people don’t just wake up one morning and decide to be arbitrarily “PC” or “woke.” Human dignity involves real issues, real moral values, and real people. The NAACP, whose members are hardly “aristocrats,” includes people of all colors and our local branch includes members of the Wampanoag nation. We have consistently opposed Native American mascots since at least 1999. We’ve said it again and again and again – and we’ll say it once more:

Native American mascots should not be a matter for a plebiscite. Human dignity is a moral issue.

We took some heat for remarking previously that if this were 1965 and not 2022, some of the “Dartmouth defenders” would be railing against “woke” white allies of the Civil Rights movement like Abraham Joshua Heschel, who marched to Montgomery, Alabama with Martin Luther King. This is the same Abraham Heschel, a respected German rabbi, who had to flee Nazi Germany.

It doesn’t take a genius to guess what Heschel would have thought of letting an ethnic majority take a vote on what rights or what level of tolerance a minority deserves.

As America changes, a reckoning with real history and real respect for every member of society is needed more desperately than ever. But great swaths of White America are pushing back with book and curriculum bans, and there is considerable whining from those who no longer feel free to practice their racial insensitivity at will.

Dartmouth College created not only the big “D” letter and the “Big Green” nickname but also the Indian logo that is virtually identical to the one Dartmouth High School uses today. But in 1974 – almost 50 years ago! – Dartmouth College actually honored Native Americans by agreeing to a 1971 student petition and retired a stereotype that, as the students described it, “is a mythical creation of a non-Indian culture and in no manner reflects the basic philosophies of Native American People.”

If the Town of Dartmouth can “borrow” every other sports symbol from Dartmouth College, why not also adopt a principled, ethical decision to retire their Indian?

Today the whole story of the “Indian” mascot at Dartmouth College has become a teachable moment. In 2020 the college offered History 08.07: The Indian Symbol at Dartmouth: A Story of Voices and Silence. Likewise, Dartmouth Schools could incorporate the town’s struggle with a tough issue into their own History or Civics curriculum.

Supporters may regard the Dartmouth mascot as a trivial issue foisted upon them by “woke” “outsiders,” but the stakes for the Town and the Schools are much higher. According to state data Dartmouth has 443 teachers and 436 of them are white. In a town that’s 91% white and where 98.4% of the teachers are white, how can Dartmouth ever attract BIPOC teachers and staff or make BIPOC students feel like they really belong?

Calls for retiring the mascot, which to some appear as nothing more than an arbitrary assault on a beloved town symbol, have much in common with ultra-conservative efforts to purge school curriculum that reckons with America’s racist history.

“Critical Race Theory,” a post-graduate research methodology that has nothing to do with teaching history in public schools, has become the latest Trumpian bogeyman in dozens of states. The many Constitutionally-questionable initiatives and enacted laws to limit speech, control thought, and let history be written by politicians of a certain sort, are designed to result in the Disneyficaton of American history and the whitewashing of America’s crimes against indigenous and enslaved people.

This is what can be found in the deeper waters of the mascot debate.

Let’s give Kisha James the final word. “It’s like settlers are hearing ‘no’ for the first time and they don’t like it. […] Getting rid of mascots and acknowledging racism humanizes us and a lot of people aren’t comfortable with that. Because if you do, you also have to acknowledge the other wrongdoings, like genocide.”

Great questions

Posted by on 2020-02-15 No comments

As the March 3rd Democratic primary approaches, I have been arguing with just about all of my centrist Democrat friends. It was interesting to come across an essay about the centrist-progressive dispute by Jim Hightower, who may be best known (at least in Texas) as the agriculture commissioner whom Rick Perry unseated. For progressives Hightower is probably best known for the many causes and candidates the sprightly 77 year-old has worked for, including Bernie Sanders.

In an essay entitled “The Irony of the centrist-progresssive Debate” Hightower argues that centrists “tinkering around the edges” aren’t going to fix America’s problems, and those who fear to make real change won’t appeal to voters in numbers sufficient to vote Trump out of office. Moreover, Hightower writes, polls show that voters want substantial and progressive change, not centrist diddling.

So — forget moral arguments for a moment and focus on tactics — you can’t replace a solid, political platform with a vague appeal to throw some bum out of office. Voters are not going to vote the bum out if Democrats propose the same cold, cautious, poll-tested and spreadsheet-engineered technocratic B.S. they always come up with. Instead, Democrats ought to be appealing to people’s hearts — you know, like the Republicans do. More importantly, I completely agree with Hightower’s South Texas dictum — grandes males, grandes remedios. Big problems, big solutions. And we have some incredibly big problems.

But — aside from nostalgia for a democracy centrists themselves had a hand in vandalizing when they voted for the Patriot Act, FISA courts, ICE, 287g, border walls of their own, the war on drugs, the war on crime, wars, wars, and more wars — centrist Democrats don’t really have a problem with the nation’s staggering economic, military, foreign policy, environmental, and race problems. If they did, we’d be seeing them proposing ambitious platforms like progressives. But for centrists a little tinkering suffices and no big solutions are necessary.

The centrist argument seems to boil down to this — that America isn’t ready for a progressive agenda and that Democrats can win only by being slightly less depraved than Trump. Specifically, that Democrats must align their own platform with Republican values. And more specifically, that Democrats have to embrace white Republican values. Flag-waving, red-baiting progressives, going soft on abortion, avoiding national conversations on reparations and criminal justice reform, and showing they can pray as fervently as Evangelicals is now their ticket to centrist Democratic victory.

This is not only distasteful but a fool’s errand because common sense dictates that nobody is going to rush out to buy a case of Pepsi when they already have a pallet of Coke in the garage. If you want flag-waving, god-fearing patriots, NATO, corporation-friendly trade agreements, a belligerent foreign policy, regime change, wars of choice, saber rattling with China and Iran, a new Cold War, coddling Israel, and the defense of private insurers and bailouts for Wall Street, it doesn’t matter if it’s in the centrist Democratic playbook.

Republicans do it so much better.

What America is desperately looking for are real solutions, and Democrats had better offer them now — or lose the next presidential election.

Hillel the Elder famously wrote in the Pirkei Avot: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?”

Desperate Americans have been asking the first of Hillel’s questions — “who will be for me” — and have yet to receive an honest reply from either party. In 2016 Republicans lied to voters, and continue to do so. As 2020 unfolds, Democrats — rejecting “identity politics” and unlikely to make desperately needed structural changes in a broken America — appear to be ignoring Hillel’s last two questions.

If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?”

Great questions.

The poverty of Liberalism

Posted by on 2020-02-13 No comments

This essay was written about, and intended for, a group of friends I respect for their political engagement and civility. I hope this is received in the spirit of dialog.

I can’t believe it was fifty years ago that I first read Robert Paul Wolff’s “The Poverty of Liberalism.” Written in 1968, Wolff’s book took on the limitations (and poverty) of Liberalism — with its technocratic and individualistic utilitarianism, its grudging tolerance instead of full embrace of diverse community, and its acceptance of power dynamics instead of working toward shared values. Today, Liberalism continues to suffer a crisis of confidence, and its frequent conflation with democracy leads some people to believe that the crisis of Liberalism is really a crisis of democracy. Wolff’s book shows that this is not the case.

I have been attending a series of Wednesday night political dinners which, until last night, were mainly discussions of the Democratic presidential primary and current affairs — specifically impeachment and our descent into autocracy.

Most of my Liberal dinner companions support centrist Democrats. There are a couple of Progressives and a couple of conservative Republicans — though they are nothing like the MAGA-hatted racists seen behind Trump at his rallies. These are earnest, civil people trying to explain what they find wrong with American society and why they have embraced Donald John Trump.

Mind you, I don’t agree with their analysis — at all — and I haven’t been shy about saying so. But they know something that some of the others don’t — that a successful politician must passionately express a clear vision in terms voters understand. I don’t think any of the Democrats are doing that yet.

I’m no Republican, but I can still tell you all about Trump’s platform. Individual One ran on a platform of ridding the country of Mexicans and Muslims, building a wall that Mexico would pay for, bringing back dirty coal, eliminating regulations, giving billionaires tax breaks and padding his administration with them, making America Great (by which he meant White), privileging Evangelicals, outlawing abortion, and filling federal courts with extremists. That was Trump’s clear vision, as evil as it is.

But — quick! — without consulting an “on the issues” web page, tell me what Amy Klobuchar’s platform is. Or Biden’s or Buttigieg’s. No points if you say “Anybody but Trump.” That’s a phobia, not a platform.

Even Elizabeth Warren has the same problem of clarity, but it’s not because she hasn’t spelled out in great detail her many plans for healthcare, education, a 2% Wall Street tax, and other issues. It’s because Warren has drowned voters in a thousand policy memos — while failing to offer a stirring, coherent vision of a new America.

For the first time, last night’s discussion veered into Trump’s appeal to voters. Some at the table thought his simplistic, vague, and easily digested policy positions were absolutely the wrong approach for Democrats. Several said that radical policies of any kind would derail party unity (whatever that is), that what we really need is to simply focus on beating Donald Trump. And each of the centrist candidates my dinner companions support says the same.

One participant pointed out that even Bernie Sanders has failed to talk about deep structural injustices in America. Nobody is really talking about Native Americans. All of the candidates of color have been pushed out by the DNC and nobody is talking about racism. Now that Jay Inslee has exited the debate stage, climate change is scarcely mentioned. Another participant mentioned that no candidate has a coherent foreign policy. The White American Middle Class seems to care mainly about itself, its retirement, its health insurance. But there is a huge, forgotten America that centrist Democrats have never regarded as their natural constituents. If you haven’t read Thomas Frank’s “Listen Liberal,” buy yourself a copy.

First it was Republicans, but now Democrats have followed them in pandering to White America. And Democrats want to copy Republican success by focusing on regions like the Midwest, the South, and the Iron Range. This is a losing strategy. If you haven’t read Steve Phillips’ “Brown is the New White,” he argues that Democrats’ obsession with appealing to white centrists in Flyover Country will doom them in the 2020 election as it did in 2016.

Candidates who have tried to push past this limited view of the centrality of the White American Middle Class have been accused of being too strident or unwilling to compromise. There was a debate in the Democratic Party about identity politics, and the party elite decided to focus on white voters, not minorities. It was no coincidence that Democrats announced their “Better Deal” campaign in a white suburb in the South. Corporate media friendly to Democrats (there is also corporate media friendly to Republicans) red-baits Progressives or calls them brownshirts — and centrist Democrats take the bait.

Ignoring the fact that Republicans won the 2016 election on radical change, Liberals are only prepared to accept an extremely narrow range of acceptable socio-economic values and reforms. This may explain the strangely familiar situation Progressives and Conservatives both value values. If there has ever been any affinity between Trump and Sanders supporters, it may center around values.

In the Liberal political landscape, where values are suspect and only “electability” has currency, it is no wonder that the DNC bent over backwards to accommodate a second billionaire candidate — Mayor “Stop and Frisk” Michael Bloomberg. It is alarming to me that Democrats who claim to hate an entitled, racist billionaire from New York have fallen in line behind another one of precisely the same species.

It is unlikely that the 40-45% of Democrats who identify as progressive will ever see their candidate on the ballot in November. The Democratic Party is a much smaller tent than previously thought. And it’s too bad. Because, until the Democratic Party sheds its hollow centrist poliicies, it can never hope to win the confidence of voters looking for a new vision for America.

Democracy did not die today

Posted by on 2020-02-04 No comments

Democracy did not die today with the Senate rubber-stamping the President’s “innocent.”

For a democracy to die, it must have first lived. There are many precedents for Trump’s sham impeachment trial which point an accusing finger at a nation that has never believed in the florid promises of democracy found in its own Declaration and Constitution.

Slavery, genocide, and subversion of democratic elections in other countries have been a steady feature of American “democracy.” Creating a society of equals with equal opportunity and equal representation has never been its object, as Jim Crow, voter suppression, mass-incarceration, censorship, and ever-new variations of McCarthyism show.

As central to our sick society as these are, I don’t want to talk about history, colonialism, capitalism, or white supremacy today. We know these are the root causes of so many of our ills. I would rather talk about the blatant impunity and injustice which occur daily in our courts and which have culminated with the rigged Senate trial of Donald John Trump on February 5th, 2020. And though there are four centuries of our history to consider, let me simply point to events that have occured in my own lifetime.

In 1955, Emmett Till was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, when he was lynched and his body discovered three days later in the Tallahatchie River. The identities of his killers and the ringleaders of his lynching were never in doubt. Roy Bryant and J.W. Millam were arrested. But an all-white jury found them not guilty.

In 1963 Medgar Evers was murdered in his driveway by Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the White Citizens Council in Jackson, Mississippi. In 1964 an all-white jury somehow could not reach a verdict. It took thirty years of fighting by Evers’ family, and finally his exhumation for additional evidence, to reopen the case against De La Beckwith.

In 1964 Ku Klux Klan “Kleagle” Edgar Ray Killen participated in the murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. When Killen was finally arrested, an all-white jury refused to convict a “preacher.” Twenty years later Killen was again charged with murder, but a mostly-white jury again refused to hold him directly accountable for the murders, instead convicting him on lesser conspiracy charges.

The War in Vietnam slaughtered up to two million Vietnamese and left behind birth defects from Agent Orange and ruined bodies from land mines long after the U.S. beat a hasty exit from Saigon. But it was the My Lai massacre in 1968 that indicted the American justice system that failed to prosecute it and the government officials who covered it up. Hundreds of civilians — the US said 347, the Vietnamese government counted 504 — were raped, bayoneted, and shot execution-style, including children, and left in ditches full of blood. Only one platoon member was ever convicted. William Calley was sentenced to just three years of prison, but Richard Nixon ordered this commuted to house arrest. The matter was quietly closed. We have a long history of impunity for war crimes going back to the nation’s founding.

Tens of thousands of black people were lynched from Reconstruction through Jim Crow, and one would have thought this gruesome chapter of our history was over. But it doesn’t take much to revert to barbarism in this country. A case in point was the lynchings of African Americans immediately following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In 2019 The Nation and ProPublica reported on a significant number of unsolved homicides of black people in Algiers Point and elsewhere, and of the emergence of white supremacist militias that had organized the killings. After the articles were published, New Orleans Police Superintendent Warren Riley said he’d “look into” it.

Most of us will not forget the name Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager who in 2012 was shot after punching George Zimmerman, who had been harrassing and following him. Zimmerman’s lawyers had planned to defend their client on the basis of so-called “stand your ground” laws, and the case was under intense public scrutiny. Alan Dershowitz — that Dershowitz — attacked Florida’s State Attorney Angela Corey for even daring to prosecute Zimmerman. In the end a Florida jury let Zimmerman walk.

In 2013, when rich white boy Ethan Couch crammed seven of his friends into his hot red pickup truck and then totaled it, killing four of them, Couch’s defense lawyer claimed he was a victim of “affluenza” — a word the lawyer said described the coddled teen’s irresponsibility resulting from his family wealth. Even though Couch had a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit and had killed four people, the defense strategy worked. Couch was released on probation — until he fled to Mexico with his mommy.

And who can forget former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, who murdered Michael Brown in 2014 and was never prosecuted? This was a case that launched the Black Lives Movement — a fight against precisely the sort of impunity I’ve been enumerating.

Or Stanford swimmer Brock Allen Turner, who in 2015 was discovered by two graduate students in the process of raping a woman behind a fraternity house dumpster. Turner’s lawyer wrote that “he is fundamentally a good young man” and Turner’s father argued it was unfair that he should go to prison for “20 minutes of action” by his rapist child. The Golden Boy was given six months in jail by Judge Aaron Persky.

Or the refusal to prosecute Baltimore police officers for the 2015 death of Freddie Gray, who died an excruciating death in the back of a police van. Not even Obama’s Justice Department found sufficient grounds to charge any of the officers with civil rights violations. In fact, a 2016 national study which examined civil rights violations of 21,000 policemen found that only 3% were ever convicted of crimes against the public.

In 2018 Georgia white supremacist William Christopher Gibbs showed up at an emergency room afraid he had exposed himself to ricin, and he and his car tested positive for the deadly agent. But prosecutors refused to charge Gibbs with domestic terrorism, cititing “technical” reasons they couldn’t charge a white terrorist. To this day, the U.S. government is largely unwilling to admit any danger to society of white supremacists.

Each year roughly one thousand people are shot by police, most of them people of color and many of them unarmed. But 98% of the officers are never charged for murder and police frequently claim “reasonable” fear for their safety as a justification for killing an unarmed civilian. I find it ironic that police can claim “I feared for my life” — and White America believes them — while any refugee seeking asylum because “I feared for my life” is regarded as a liar.

When Brett Kavanaugh appeared before a Senate confirmation committee in 2018, witnesses cited his sexual predation as a teenager as a reason he was unfit for the Supreme Court. Yet the Senate — as it was when Anita Hill had made similar charges about Clarence Thomas — was not disturbed by any of the allegations. Michelle Goldberg wrote in the New York Times, “Boys will be Supreme Court Justices,” and she was right. Rebecca Solnit wrote that the old white men of America simply don’t want to know, and she was also right.

American Justice may be blind — but it is wilfully so. Our entire legal system, from top to bottom, is nothing more than concierge service for rich and powerful, mainly white, men.

And how is a system of impunity possible without pardons?

In 2019 Donald Trump pardoned SEAL commander “Eddie” Gallagher and promoted him. Members of Gallagher’s platoon, SEAL Team 7, claimed he had killed innocent civilians and murdered an unconscious prisoner, then posed for pictures with the corpse. One platoon member who testified said of Gallagher, “The guy is freaking evil.” According to testimony, when the SEALs captured an injured ISIS fighter Gallagher began stabbing him in the neck. Another platoon member turned off his helmet cam right before the fighter died. Besides Gallagher, Trump also pardoned convicted civil rights abuser Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Dinesh D’Souza, who was convicted of federal campaign violations.

We say we are a “nation of laws” — for some — but in an oligarchy, a kleptocracy, or a kakistocracy the usual rules of law don’t apply to men with high-level connections. Whatever we call this system, let’s not call it a “democracy.”

The 2008 financial crisis was another example of the American justice system revealing itself as an agent of impunity for financial criminality. In 2014 — six years after the financial crash — ProPublica and the New York Times reported that the only Wall Street executive to ever be prosecuted as a result of the crisis was Kareem Serageldin. Meanwhile, there are people still serving life sentences for marijuania possession in prisons all over the United States. To add insult to injury, rather than hold Wall Street accountable for its losses, a bipartisan group of rich and powerful men decided to make citizens cough up the almost two trillion dollars necessary to bail them out.

Last week a friend sent me a piece by Andy Borowitz from the New Yorker — “El Chapo outraged that his trial included witnesses.” It was funny at the time. Or would have been if it hadn’t so painfully highlighted the hollowness of the culture of impunity we mistakenly call “democracy.”

So let us not weep. Democracy did not die today. We never had it in the first place.