The Roadside Twang

Will you 

For just once 

Give a glance 

And a coin 

To the Roadside twang? 

 

To give is to rejuvenate. 

 

Happiness is in giving 

With a little effort 

You might even 

Become happy. 

 

The music and the singing 

Is but bonus 

Roadside singing 

Is a stage all its own. 

 

The wisdom of small giving 

Is within your reach 

For it is a road 

Open to the public.

 

Coronavirus News (295)

She’s Evangelical, ‘Pro-Life’ and Voting for Biden Billy Graham’s granddaughter says, “This president doesn’t represent our faith.” .......... For most of her life, she voted Republican. Yet this year, she is voting for Joe Biden ........ “The Jesus we serve promotes kindness, dignity, humility, and this president doesn’t represent our faith,” Duford said. .......... About eight of 10 white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in 2016, and polling suggests that the great majority will vote for him again in 2020. ......... The Rev. John Huffman, who once was President Richard Nixon’s pastor, said he has voted Republican all his life but has now joined a group called Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden. He said he prays for Trump but sees him as “an immoral, amoral sociopathic liar who functions from a core of insecure malignant narcissism.” ..............  A huge obstacle for many evangelicals considering a vote for Democrats is abortion policy. So a particularly important part of the upheaval now underway within evangelical ranks is a move to redefine “pro-life” to apply to more than fetuses. ..............   I equally wish the Republican Party would place a greater value on life outside the womb. ........... as a practical matter, abortion rates fall more during Democratic administrations than Republican ones ...........   one of the most effective strategies to reduce abortion numbers is to provide comprehensive sex education and family planning ......... Evangelical churches, she said, have mistakenly pursued a harmful “strategy of political gain in Jesus’s name.” ........  Describing family separation at the border, environmental degradation, denial of health care to the poor, she added, “These are not pro-life policies.” ........... “This is a vote for the soul of the nation,” he added. “I’ve never seen an existential threat like this in my 66 years of living.” “This is not about partisan politics,” he said. “It’s about truly choosing life.” 

U.S. Foreign Policy Never Recovered From the War on Terror Only a Reckoning With the Disastrous Legacy of 9/11 Can Heal the United States ..........  With the declaration of its global “war on terror” after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States went abroad in search of monsters and ended up midwifing new ones—from terrorist groups such as the Islamic State (or ISIS), born in the prisons of U.S.-occupied Iraq; to destabilization and deepening sectarianism across the Middle East; to racist authoritarian movements in Europe and in the United States that feed—and feed off of—the fear of refugees fleeing those regional conflicts......... Advocates of the war on terror believed that nationalist chauvinism, which sometimes travels under the name “American exceptionalism,” could be stoked at a controlled burn to sustain American hegemony. Instead, and predictably, toxic ultranationalism burned out of control. Today, the greatest security threat to the United States comes not from any terrorist group, or from any great power, but from domestic political dysfunction. ...........  The election of Donald Trump as president was a product and accelerant of that dysfunction—but not its cause. The environment for his political rise was prepared over a decade and a half of xenophobic, messianic Washington warmongering, with roots going back into centuries of white supremacist politics. .........  the consequences of U.S. antiterrorism policy since 9/11: surveillance, detention, torture, extrajudicial killing, the use of manned and unmanned airstrikes, and partnerships with repressive regimes. .................  minority communities that have experienced the most severe domestic effects of U.S. antiterrorism policies, and civilians in countries where the United States has waged war. ......... militarism abroad and racial and economic inequality at home are mutually reinforcing ...........  (The absurdly militarized police response to the recent racial justice protests offers one vivid illustration.) ..................  especially as the Washington herd turns its attention farther east and girds for a new great-power conflict with China. ............. The United States has conducted combat operations in 24 different countries since 2001 and remains officially at war in at least seven. ..............   the number of Sunni Islamist militants around the world almost quadrupled between 2001 and 2018. ......... the taxpayer bill for post-9/11 U.S. wars at almost $6 trillion ..........  2.77 million service members had served 5.4 million deployments since 9/11. More than 60,000 service members have been killed. Many more have come home with permanent, life-altering injuries. Eighty-three percent of post-9/11 veterans report living with post-traumatic stress disorder. The country thanks its troops for their service but continues to send them on multiple deployments in wars with no clear purpose or strategy for victory. ............  The war on terror became a route through which open racism was smuggled back into mainstream U.S. politics. ................ as if Western Christian societies hadn’t just produced two world wars and the Holocaust within the span of a century. ..............  The United States had securitized its immigration policy after 9/11, viewing many who came seeking refuge from oppression or simply the opportunity for a better life as potential terrorists. ............   Today, Guantánamo Bay prison remains open, and the former head of a CIA torture prison heads the CIA. ............  the commission should be created through congressional legislation and comprise not only respected former officials but members of impacted communities and civil society experts in relevant fields, including human rights, international law, and foreign policy. The commission must be independent and free of political pressure and given access to all information, classified and unclassified, relevant to U.S. policies and practices undertaken since 9/11. ...............   It should hear from communities abroad who have lived amid the chaos and violence of U.S. military interventions. ...........  A genuine reckoning with the post-9/11 period would spur not a U.S. withdrawal from the world but rather deeper engagement with it. The main challenges of today—the coronavirus pandemic and climate change foremost among them—are shared. The United States must commit to a sustained multilateral approach to meet these challenges, rather than continuing to unilaterally abrogate and undermine the very norms and conventions that it helped to establish. ...................  A review of post-9/11 antiterrorism policy would help expose the folly of seeking security through repression, whether at home or abroad. ........ the people of the Middle East made clear what they want during the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011–12: economic opportunities, governments that work for them instead of small cabals of self-dealing elites, more political freedom. ................ A genuine accounting for the war on terror and its unintended consequences should engender a strong sense of humility about the United States’ ability to produce grand transformations, especially through military force. The United States has neither the ability nor the right to change other countries’ governments, but it can embrace an ethic of solidarity and use its considerable diplomatic and economic power to defend the rights and freedom of people in other countries who are working for positive change. 

The Philosophy That Makes Amy Coney Barrett So Dangerous Do we really want our rights to be determined by the understandings of centuries ago?  .............  In 1987, Robert Bork was denied confirmation to the Supreme Court because his originalist beliefs were deemed a serious threat to constitutional rights. ..........  Early in the 19th century, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that “we must never forget that it is a Constitution we are expounding,” a Constitution “meant to be adapted and endure for ages to come.” ........... the many instances where James Madison and Alexander Hamilton disagreed about such fundamental questions as whether the president possesses any inherent powers. ..............   what often is overlooked is that conservative justices ignore original meaning when it does not serve their purpose.  

Pete Buttigieg Dropped Out of the Presidential Race and Wrote a Best Seller  converted a guest room into a study. Then he woke up early every morning and got to work, snacking on peanuts and almonds ..........  the “deadline energy” of his kamikaze literary endeavor .........  masked, standing behind plexiglass, teaching a course on trust in politics to 19 undergraduates at the University of Notre Dame.

A New Life of Malcolm X Brimming With Detail, Insight and Feeling a family history of American racial terror that preceded his birth in 1925. Malcolm’s middle-class parents moved several times, often into neighborhoods they knew were hostile, confronting the Ku Klux Klan, local officials and bigoted employers. His father, Earl Little, died when Malcolm (born Malcolm Little) was 6, the victim of a streetcar accident that Malcolm later suspected was a cover-up for the work of a racist mob. ............  His mother, Louise, kept the family together as long as she could, but eventually succumbed to poverty and mental illness. Malcolm, then 13, and his seven siblings were scattered into foster care and other arrangements. ...................  They could not nurture Malcolm through childhood, but they steeled him with the truth: He owed white people nothing. Not deference, or trust, or gratitude for whatever comfort he might find in life. Malcolm’s character and beliefs changed over the years. Defiance of white supremacy was his essence. ..................  Though he was rarely violent, Malcolm was embedded in a social network of thieves, drug dealers, racketeers and prostitutes as he split his late teenage years between Boston and New York City. His tragic and frequently despicable behavior marked him for early imprisonment, if not death. ............. Incarceration at 20 was the pivot of Malcolm’s life. He accepted the teachings of the Nation of Islam while behind bars .............  He quickly became the group’s most effective and recognizable spokesman, with fierce criticism of white America and a gospel of Black self-respect. Malcolm’s political celebrity and unapologetic approach ultimately turned the leadership of the Nation of Islam against him, and Muhammad gave the assassination order that led to Malcolm’s killing. ........ a bizarre arranged meeting between Malcolm and the leadership of the Ku Klux Klan in Atlanta in 1961. Muhammad sent Malcolm and his colleague Jeremiah X to attend the meeting on behalf of the Nation of Islam, and Malcolm never forgave him. ...........  account of Malcolm’s assassination at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. ......... the possible involvement of the F.B.I. and New York City police. .........    devastated by the indignity and simplicity of the killing. Malcolm knew he was in danger and did little to protect himself. ..........  and begun experimenting with new tools for a global, human-rights-based movement for Black liberation. He was forceful, fine and weary, but not finished. And then three men rushed the stage, bullets ripped through Malcolm’s flesh and he bled to death on the floor. ............... his charisma is undeniable. His heroism grew from his courage, but also from his delight in his Blackness and his cause. .......... America has never been a nation of laws for Black people, he said. A country that is conditionally lawful is not lawful at all. It is weak, and will eventually be exposed, no matter how much wealth and military power it amasses. And in such a country, he wondered, what good is it for Black people to ask for trim legal solutions to police violence, electoral theft, segregation and poverty? ............... Malcolm’s inheritance in the Black Lives Matter movement. Black Lives Matter isn’t asking for anything. Like Malcolm, it demands everything that Black people deserve, by any means necessary. ...........  We will exceed even Malcolm’s wildest dreams.