February 18

 Sunny today with projected temperatures in the 40s. The snow we had over the last couple of days won't be around long with the temperatures forecast over the next week and the rain.

The first story I saw this morning on the local news aggregator I use described an event at a local church that few knew anything about in a time that seems so remote. In the 1920s the KKK had a powerful presence in the country and in Indiana. The pastor of a local church called a board meeting to consider the request of the KKK to hold a public at the church. The board rejected the request. The author notes that almost nothing about the episode was known. No one wanted to talk about it. The pastor and his family left the area after crosses were burned twice in front of their house. What interests me is how this story was trimmed over time. If history is a story we tell about ourselves that story has been edited continuously with certain events erased and others edited, with the tale of how the events affected people afterward trimmed, glossed, massaged to fit the desired narrative. Think about how many people have been diminished or even erased in the stories we tell, the history we preserve.

If you think the stories we tell ourselves isn't really that important think about Vladimir Putin in Russia and de Santis in Florida. Putin's was in Ukraine is an attempt to restore the story of Russia (USSR) he grew up with when Ukraine was a part of the empire; when there was no country named Ukraine and no people who could be called anything but Russian. He is drawing on a very old playbook in Russian history. The Russian Czars and the leaders of the USSR frequently transported whole populations (those who weren't killed) to distant locations and forbade the speaking of languages that tied a subject population to any other story or identity. Ron de Santis is doing something similar here without the military force. If you think not, ask yourself why only the African American History AP course was challenged as "woke" and "without educational value?" Why not French Language and Culture? Why not German Language and Culture? Why not Japanese Language and Culture? Could it be because the history he wants to erase is any which says racial minorities, religious minorities and women played only a secondary role in the history of the U.S.

Best argument against relaxing child labor laws. The fines were not nearly enough.

Best argument against privatizing any part of Social Security. What goes up often comes down and sometimes disastrously. And to argue that over an extended time the market goes up doesn't negate the possibility that any downturn will affect people who won't have the time to recoup. Just ask the 40 and 50 year-old workers  who watched their retirement accounts evaporate during the 2008-9 downturn.