Fraser Sherman's Blog

The Amateur Athletic Union was enmeshed in a child sex-abuse scandal 15 years ago. It pledged to put reforms in place but according to Pro Publica did jack shit. You will be shocked, shocked to learn that they have suffered multiple scandals since. They’ve also become a haven for coaches kicked out by other organizations with tougher standards.

While I’m not an anarchist, I do believe this shows the fatal flaw in all organizations of any sort: organization corrupts. People worry about protecting the organization’s reputation; protecting who counts as One of Us over justice for One of Not Us; protecting their own status in the organization (why risk your job by making waves? Maybe he won’t grab any more underage girls!); and ensuring the organization can keep growing. Colleges cover up rapes so that nobody worries about sending their daughters there; evangelical anti-slavery churches in colonial America dropped their principles because they couldn’t grow in the South if they were abolitionist. The Army covers up friendly fire incidents rather than admit to a massive screw-up. I’m not an anarchist but I do think this is a major problem.

And that’s bad because busting individual sexual harassers or office rapists isn’t enough. If the system didn’t spot them or stop them, the people in charge need to figure out what went wrong. Then they need to fix whatever it is. Organizations typically hate to do that.

2)”I know this is last week’s prompt but my personal Rushmore tweet was that guy who said we should solve loneliness and climate change by abolishing washing machines and having women go back to laundering clothes by hand down at the village riverbank” — Gwen Snyder on BlueSky (I believe a “Rushmore tweet” is a really extreme online take).

Well that makes perfect sense ,… oh wait, no it doesn’t. Wouldn’t it be just as practical to, say, abolish home washing machines and make the women hang out at the laundromat? More togetherness, less work. Or hey, here’s a thought — why shouldn’t men do the laundry? After all, aren’t we suffering a male loneliness epidemic?

This puts me in mind of Kristin Kobes DuMez’ discussion of community and nostalgia for the same: “here we learn that divisions of work and authority are necessary for community. Again, a question of agency. Who divides work, who assigns authority? Who wields power, and to what ends? What check is there on that power, besides a self-avowed commitment to ‘virtue’ and ‘self-restraint’ —terms that are much more slippery in practice than in theory?” To put it another way, where are the women? What’s their role? Do they make decisions? Paul Deneen, whom she was critiquing at the link, seems to think women were better off when patriarchal society clearly defined and limited their roles.

I’m guessing Snyder’s “Rushmore tweet” dude would agree.

3)Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff made the point recently that in a time of war, the Toddler’s only interests are “to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace, gifted by the Emir of Qatar.” “Natalie” meaning Natalie Harp a Toddler aide who’s become his closest, most devoted suckup, staying close to him for a year despite not having a security clearance (she’s finally received one). She is, to put it mildly, obsessively devoted. And he likes her because she’s his human woobie: she gushes with admiration, shows him favorable news stories and unreliable polls, gives him the constant adoration he needs to feel alive. “Those occasional cabinet meetings in which everyone tells Trump how blessed and honored they are to be working in his service aren’t enough; he needs that validation on 24-7 IV drip” Apparently Scott Bessent fawning on him isn’t as cool as having a pretty young thing do it.

Republicans are seething in faux outrage, claiming Ossoff was sullying Harp’s virtue by implying she’s the Toddler’s mistress. I think that’s bollocks: he’s clearly saying the Toddler is falling down on the job. I’m not sure if they’re screaming about S-E-X because that’s the accusation they’d fling at a woman in her place or because they think the two of them banging looks less embarrassing than a doddering old fart charmed by a cute young woman and using her as his “emotional support aide.” However Republicans often get attention by whining that Dems aren’t being civil while getting a free pass on things like the White House mouthing off about Ossoff (details at some of the link). The press shouldn’t fall for it; Dems definitely shouldn’t back off.

It’s also important because, as Jamie Bouie says in his newsletter (no link, sorry), she ensures he hears only good news, and that’s bad for a leader: “He rejects information that is gathered and collected for the purpose of informing him and is highly reliant, instead, on counsel from people who have no incentive to contradict him and every incentive to tell him what he wants to hear or what they want him to hear. Trump has dismantled every institutional structure designed to curb the worst aspects of the presidency — a tendency toward isolation and groupthink — and has instead sunk deeper into his own propaganda and invented reality … Accordingly, Trump has neither avoided disaster nor managed to put the country on stable footing. Instead, he is carelessly careening toward catastrophe. So far, it’s only been a matter of luck that we haven’t crashed.” Though here’s a counter-argument that Harp is only a symptom.

Oh, and here’s a look at the Toddler, Harp and the rest of his cabinet, busily spreading lies in real time.

Now I’m seeing Democrats argue that criticizing Harp is counter-productive — she’s just a misguided woman brought up in a conservative household, trained to look up to men as gods. We’re being … mean when we attack her (which as noted above is not what Ossoff was doing). Sorry, but Harp is 35 years old, she is on the government payroll, she’s the aides who creates the Toddler’s hatemongering AI slop such as depicting the Obamas as apes. She does not get a pass.

4)If the Democrats do well in November, one of the things they’ll have to be prepared for is the Very Serious People in the party and the media trying to set limits on what Dems can do (see “Attacking Ms. Harp is just too mean!”). We’re already seeing that regarding Ossoff’s attack on the Toddler: according to Politico, if he’s too successful that’s bad news for Democrats. Digby spots Dems already warning too much focus on the Toddler is also bad for Democrats. If that’s just a strategic decision, fine; if it means “well, we won, let’s look forward and not backwards, let’s not make any big, sweeping changes” — not so good. Hakeem Jeffries has already said he’s not a fan of Medicare for All, and now he’s meeting with Jared Kushner to find areas where Dems and the Toddler can work together. As Canada could tell them, there are none.

Paul Waldman points out that as soon as Democrats regain any power in the government, the deficit will become the biggest issue of the day: Very Serious political reporters who never demanded how the Toddler was going to pay for redesigning our aircraft carriers will ask how the Dems are going to balance the budget and how can they possibly suggest Medicare for All (or whatever) when we’re in the red? Republicans, of course, will suddenly discover the joys of slashing the budget. Paul Krugman adds more. I’ve seen the Overton Window shift this way repeatedly; Dems need to learn to push back. And point out that contrary to the fantasy Republicans in pundits’ heads, the Republicans are lousy at managing the budget.

As Heather Delaney Reese says, “When this chapter of American history is finally over, when the investigations begin, and the consequences come, we cannot just go back to life as normal. We cannot pretend this was a passing storm, or that they were simply following the regulatory process, or that they somehow didn’t understand who they were standing beside and what he was doing to this country. They knew. They could see exactly what the rest of us could see, and they made their choice anyway.

And we need to remember that choice. We need to hold every single one of them accountable, so that the next time someone like Donald Trump tries to take this country, the people deciding whether to help him know there will be a price for doing it. Because if there is no consequence for standing in the Roosevelt Room and praising a man while he dismantles our democracy, then we are not just allowing this group of enablers to escape accountability. We are teaching the next group that enabling authoritarianism is profitable, and that when it is all over, they can simply walk away with the money and pretend they had nothing to do with it.”

I met that quote in historian Kevin Leman’s post about the end of the Reconstruction era. Douglass: “You want to know whether the hour is one of hope or despair. I have no time to answer this solemn inquiry at length or as it deserves, and will content myself with giving you the assurance of my belief. I think the situation is serious but it is not hopeless. On the contrary, there are many encouraging signs in the moral skies. l have seen many dark hours and have yet never despaired of the colored man’s future. There is no time in our history that I would prefer to the present.”

I’m quoting that not to hand-wave the massive problems that the Toddler and the Republican Party have inflicted on us (and it’s not like we didn’t have problems before). The situation is serious .. but it’s not hopeless. And if Douglass could preach that message, in a very dark time for black America, giving up hope now is not the way. The road is slow, we don’t know the path and it might end up going nowhere good. Even so. In that spirit, some good news and some good quotes:

Here’s a win: “Back in 2020, after George Floyd’s murder, the school board voted to rename Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby-Lee Elementary School. They became Mountain View High School and Honey Run Elementary respectively. Four years later a newly elected board reversed that decision and brought the Confederate names back. They never really explained why.

When the case went to trial, the 2024 board members simply refused to testify about their motives, hiding behind legislative privilege. Urbanski saw right through this move. He emphasized that this case was unusual because the students were not trying to erase names that had been in place for decades. They were challenging a board’s decision to undo its own predecessor’s work, a predecessor that had already admitted the original names were discriminatory.”

The Toddler doesn’t want to admit it but crime is at record lows.

Anti-Muslim bigot Andy Ogles lost his re-election primary.

“Every time someone tries to sell you on the idea that there is something we can do, without cost, that harms other people, realize that they are lying to you.” — from a Courtney Milan thread about why violence is a bad solution.

A Texas educator lost a shot at high school principal gig after calling ICE on a graduation ceremony.

Firing people for the non-crime of criticizing the late Charlie Kirk has proven a costly mistake.

As this blog post says, I’m inclined to think of the ratcheting of Republican crazy only getting worse, never better. At the link, Wyoming says otherwise.

I’ve also seen a surprising number of left-wing blog posts the past year every time a Toddler-backed candidate wins — OMG, it’s still his party, other Republicans only live in it! Which ignores the long history of many of his picks failing to win — a pattern reconfirmed in this year’s primaries.

By missing a court deadline, the administration is now required to wipe out 170,000 student loans.

Inspiration: “The Second Reconstruction of the King Years may have ended, but we do not and cannot yet know the rest of the story or how what new “endings” and new beginnings are yet to come. It’s tempting, and depressing, to assume that the story of the Second Reconstruction will parallel the story of the first for another generation. The parallels, so far, are dismayingly close, with the federal government and the Supreme Court playing the same role they played the first time around, abandoning and betraying the promise of full democracy. But that doesn’t mean we’re doomed to generations of the new Plessy regime that John Roberts and Sam Alito dream of imposing. We are here, and here is Not Good. But here is not the end of the story. If we forget that, they win.”

“As much as we humans may be utterly dependent on saving grace, we also seem to require some measure of saving face. The ability to tell yourself that — whatever else you misunderstood or voted for or identified with or otherwise got terribly, horribly wrong — you at least were “unequivocally opposed” to this facility, for whatever reason, is the kind of face-saving knowledge that sometimes makes redemption seem more like a possibility that you might survive and, thus, more like a possibility that you might consider choosing.” — from a post about using practical arguments against ICE (or whatever) rather than ethical ones.

“When you do not choose a side, one tends to get chosen for you.”

“That is the invitation of the world that we are called to be a part of, to help create. To do it as a part of the life of this community, part of the larger community that we are a part of. To use our gifts in whatever way God has called us, to use them to care for those around us. It’s not a world where we will be particularly welcomed well, where compassion, joy, kindness, treating everybody as if they deserve health and shelter and education. That is a world that challenges the way power works around us, but it is the world that we are invited to be a part of.”

And here’s a post of mine from right after the Toddler took office again, with more inspiration in it.

In 2020 and 2021, Tina Peters was an election-denying Colorado election official. She broke the law by plotting to tamper with election machines. She was convicted, jailed, then recently pardoned by Colorado governor Jared Polis. He’s a Democrat but he apparently wanted to make the Toddler happy.

The Toddler is not happy: his administration recently yanked hundreds in millions in grants for Colorado to retaliate over Peters’ conviction. Which is the way it always works with the current president: he’s a double-crossing rat and even f you give him exactly what he wants — well, once he’s got what he wanted, he’ll want more.

That makes capitulating to the Toddler a sucker bet, particularly when he’s not invincible: Harvard beat back a recent lawsuit over alleged antisemitism, which makes the universities that collaborate that much more contemptible. They could have fought; they could have won. So could many others who’ve rolled over and provided the Toddler with whatever he was demanding: anti-trans measures, an end to DEI policies, etc. Consistently they took what they imagined would be the easy route. Buy him off. Humor him. Tell him whatever will make him happy. Vote for horrible cabinet officials such as Pete Hegseth, Todd Blanche and RFK Jr. Contrary to Elon Musk’s misogynist bullshit, big strong men don’t have some special ability to go against the consensus.

For some of them, it probably feels easy because their commitment to the principles at stake — equality, diversity, free speech, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights — is paper thin. Even so, as No More Mr. Nice Blog says, lots of these people have the money and resources to stand up to the Toddler.

Case in point, Jeanine Pirro is a US attorney who chose to file bullshit lawsuits against people who did not vandalize the Toddler’s precious reflecting pool. Sure, the Toddler telling himself that it was sabotage, not that he handed out a sweetheart contract to someone with no experience make him feel better (admitting he screwed up would hurt his snowflake fee-fees). Pirro had to know the case was bullshit; if she had any principles she sold them out, shitting on an innocent man to pacify the Toddler. As NMMNB says, she’s worth $11 million, she’s 75 years old. She can retire and live comfortably. Most of our senators are billionaires; they could retire too instead of catering to a senile lunatic’s whims. Jeff Bezos is a bazillionaire yet he’s following up the money-losing Melania documentary with a documentary streaming series.

NMMNB’s explanation: “Te world is run by people who aren’t merely ambitious — they can’t seem to turn off their ambition. They succeed at a level 99% of us will never attain and they still can’t stop. And because you have to please people more powerful than yourself even when you’re near the top, and because most of those people are colossal assholes, that means the people near the top still need to abase themselves, out of their compulsive desire to remain near the top.

Which leads to what I call the Fuck-You Money Paradox. Ordinary people, when they imagine being rich, think wealth would give them the clout to say “Fuck you” to anyone who wanted them to do something they didn’t want to do. But, paradoxically, the people who are ambitious enough to attain elite status manage to do it because they’re addicted to pursuing and attaining elite status — and because they’re addicted, they’ll never do anything to put that status at risk. So people at or near the top are precisely the ones who’ll never say “Fuck you” to anyone who might put even a tiny amount of their money or status at risk. In other words, the people who obtain “Fuck you” money or status would never use it as “Fuck you” money or status.”

It’s the same point I made last year: the mindset required to make $10 million is a mindset that never thinks $10 million is enough (more here). If you have to lie, cheat or steal or kowtow to someone in power to get that $10 million, or $10 billion for that matter — well, maybe you’re skating on the thin edge of ethics but you’ve got to have it, dammit! Our senators don’t want to lose the attention and status they get by hanging onto their position in congress; men wealthy enough to attract or pay for all the women they wanted still visited Jeffrey Epstein’s island. Or consider the White House press corps: no matter how much the Toddler belittles and insults women reporters, they say nothing. Piss the Toddler off, you might lose access and there goes your status in the profession.

As C.S. Lewis puts it, “you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world.” For some people, no amount of fuck-you money will compensate for that.