Andrew Sullivan’s latest column (click on screenshot below) won’t surprise anyone who has seen him diagnose Trump as mentally ill over the last few months, a diagnosis only confirmed with this week’s insanity. But I haven’t seen Sullivan go after the Republican Party in such strong terms as the ones below. I guess you might still call him a conservative, but there’s no way he’ll tolerate the label “Republican”:

Fur hat Viking Man will carry that stigma with him the rest of his life:

An excerpt:

There is a temptation to believe that this is finally over. But for as long as this man exercises the powers of the presidency, it isn’t. He has used the power of the pardon these past few years to obstruct justice, to prevent vital testimony in a legitimate investigation, and to reward friends and relatives. In recent weeks, we’ve been told, he has also discussed the possibility of a proactive pardon for himself and his own family that will only cement his legacy of a presidency beyond the reach of any checks and balances. The next ten days, as he is cornered, are among the most dangerous. He could do anything. I favor a second impeachment, swiftly executed. The goal at this point is to get him out of there before he does even more damage, to keep him on the defensive, and to bar him from running for office ever again. This is where we are.

It pains me to say it, but this week was, in many ways, the essence of American “conservatism” in 2021. It has morphed from a politics to a theological movement to a personality cult. It is a threat to the very foundations of liberal democracy. It is nihilist, performative, incoherent and bristling with the certainty of fundamentalists and the corruption of grifters. It has destroyed this country’s fiscal standing, wrecked this country’s international reputation, trashed the norms and practices of liberal democracy, perverted the rule of law, accelerated climate change, and now physically vandalized the most sacred civil place in America.

And for what? Ratings? Soaring and destabilizing inequality? A national debt previously unthinkable in peacetime? Thousands and thousands of viral deaths that might have been prevented by the simple act of a president wearing a mask in public and urging others to do the same? The eradication of a shared concept of truth? The embrace of Kim Jong Un? The delegitimization of the entire press? The rehabilitation of Putin? The wet dreams of Netanyahu? Or the acceleration of Iran’s nuclear bomb? Pick one or all of them. The last two Republican presidents have ended their terms with the country in ruins. We cannot afford another one until the GOP is razed and rebuilt as a viable, democratic party.

“Remember this day!” Trump declared even after the disgrace had happened. And we will, we will. It exposed the GOP for what it is. These were not fringe loonies. Even after the sacking of the Capitol, a majority of House Republicans voted to endorse the insane conspiracy theories of the seditionists and not to certify a legitimate and fair election. In a snap YouGov poll, a plurality of Republicans backed a violent assault to reverse an election result. A party that does this is not fit to exist in a liberal democracy.

Unfortunately, Sullivan, whose gone farther than any self-styled conservative to call out Trump as deranged, has himself been excoriated for accusing the Left of driving people towards Trump, an accusation that in fact has some merit. Of course the Democrats are not responsible for Trump’s insanity and his foul deeds, but they may have swelled the ranks of his minions, (though probably not the ones who invaded the Capitol).

Here’s the paragraph that got Sullivan in trouble with the Left. But he’s been saying this for a long time, and I’ve expounded a somewhat tamer version. Perhaps it’s a sign of the suddenly unleashed nastiness among some on the Left that something like the two sentences I’ve put in bold would be controversial:

My first desperate hope with this administration was that it would plummet so far in popularity so quickly it would cause a revolt within the GOP. Trump’s demagogic genius, the left’s radicalization, and the pull of tribalism soon put an end to that delusional hope. My second was a thorough repudiation of the GOP as well as Trump this past political cycle in what I hoped would be a landslide Democratic victory. The rhetoric of the far left and the burning of American cities last summer scotched that one, as the Congressional tally shows. So my third is simply that we will soon begin to treat these past four years as the quintessential cautionary tale in the narrative of America. In the future, if a president refuses to be accountable to Congress in any way, or obstructs justice or tells massive lies, or refuses to concede an election, he or she will be instantly stigmatized as being a version of Trump.

Finally, Sullivan has a gold mine of quotes this week. Here are but a few. The first one makes me gag every time I hear it.

“We love you. You are very special,” – Trump, in a taped statement addressing the seditionists who attacked the Capitol.

“It turns out telling voters the election is rigged is not a good way to turn out your voters,” – Mitt Romney, on the Democratic triumph in Georgia.

“It is a sickening and heartbreaking sight. This is how election results are disputed in a banana republic — not our democratic republic,” – George W. Bush.

“Today, the United States Capitol — the world’s greatest symbol of self-government — was ransacked while the leader of the free world cowered behind his keyboard — tweeting against his Vice President for fulfilling the duties of his oath to the Constitution,” – Republican Senator Ben Sasse.

“Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence,” – Nikole Hannah-Jones, on the rioting and looting this past summer.

“Right now, Republican leaders have a choice made clear in the desecrated chambers of democracy. They can continue down this road and keep stoking the raging fires. Or they can choose reality and take the first steps toward extinguishing the flames. They can choose America,” – Barack Obama.

And I love this one:

“The other day, because this is America, the 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else’s cotton went to the polls and picked her youngest son to be a United States senator,” – Raphael Warnock, the first black senator from Georgia.

I’m still hopeful that Republicans can choose America, but I don’t really expect it. But look: we have a Democratic House, Senate, President, and Vice-President. We have several effective vaccines against Covid-19. Things are a hell of a lot better than they were 9 months ago. Will there be any more monkey business from Trump before January 20?  A lot of people say “of course,” but I’ll stick my neck out and aver that he’s has been thoroughly chastened, and, demented as he is, will keep a low profile until he’s out of the White House.

Last week we had a little “accident” at my university. Due to a misstep somewhere, some biology graduate students got their Covid-19 vaccinations before healthcare workers at the hospital. These students had nothing to do with clinical research, but apparently got their jab tickets because they are, like me, part of the Biological Science Division, which includes the University hospital that is currently scheduling shots for its own workers. I suspect that someone messed up the scheduling.

This distressed me quite a bit, as I’m waiting patiently in line for my jab, and feel that healthcare workers should certainly get the first shots (they haven’t finished yet). But some of the students, surely knowing this was an error, ran over immediately and got their shots. (Others realized the potential error and made inquiries.) That, of course, means that a second dose had to be reserved for their second shot, and that some essential healthcare workers had to wait.  I’ve let the powers-that-be know about the error so this won’t happen again. (It was surely a mistake, and these things will happen.)

In fact, this kind of error happened in another U.S. hospital last week (it was on the news; I can’t remember where), and caused a huge furor. Those people who want the shots—and thankfully their numbers are growing—are rightfully incensed by “line jumping”. I suspect that if rich people could pay to get vaccinated early, it would create huge turmoil, and rightly so. After all, is a rich person’s life worth more than a poor one’s? Not in my book. But according to LA Magazine, the wealthy are already angling to get early jabs.

But regardless of existing ordering, the question of whose lives are worth more is the real topic of this discussion, moderated by the New York Times‘s Emily Bazelon with a good lineup of participants. As I discussed the other day, the CDC originally wanted to vaccinate essential non-healthcare workers before older people—even though their models showed that this ordering would lead to more deaths than the reverse ordering—because the second group was “whiter”. That’s been changed, but race is also a central issue in this discussion. Click on the screenshot to read it:

Here’s the lineup, which is a good group:

The Panelists

Ngozi Ezike, an internist and pediatrician, is the director of the Illinois Department of Public Health. She previously worked for 15 years in the Cook County health system, where she delivered inpatient and outpatient care and directed medical services at the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center.

Gregg Gonsalves is a professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health and an AIDS and global health activist. He is also a 2018 MacArthur Fellow.

Juliette Kayyem is a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, where she is the faculty chairwoman of the Security and Global Health program, and a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security. She is advising a number of public and private entities on pandemic response and vaccine distribution.

Siddhartha Mukherjee is a professor of medicine at Columbia University and a cancer physician and researcher. He is the author of “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer,” which was the winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction. He is a founder of a vaccine-delivery platform called Othena.

Peter Singer is a bioethics professor at Princeton, author of “The Life You Can Save” and founder of the charity of the same name. His most recent book is “Why Vegan?”

Emily Bazelon, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, moderated the discussion, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, with material added from follow-up interviews.

I’m not going to reprise the whole long exchange, but just mention a few high points.

What surprised me is that race, though the first thing Bazelon brought up (this is, of course, the NYT), wasn’t an element of dissent. Everyone agreed that since people of color have a higher risk of dying from the virus, they should, as Singer said get the first jabs, though he notes the unethicality of the CDC’s original recommendation:

Peter Singer: It makes sense to protect those who are most vulnerable, whether the vulnerability is social or health-related. So if the evidence indicates that Black, Latino or Native American people have a higher risk of dying from the virus, they should be offered the vaccine ahead of others of the same age who are at lower risk because they are white or Asian. But a document that was circulated in November to A.C.I.P., the C.D.C. panel, suggested that the fact that racial and ethnic minorities are underrepresented among those older than 65 is a reason for giving lower priority to that age group as a whole and instead vaccinating more than 100 million “essential workers” ahead of them. The effect would be that more people over all would die — and also that more members of racial and ethnic minorities would die, because the higher fatality rate in older people would outweigh their lower share of representation in that age group. That’s absurd. Equity for disadvantaged minorities can’t tell us to distribute vaccines in a manner that will mean more deaths in those communities themselves.

In fact, I found the whole discussion much less engaging than I thought it would be—except for Singer’s comments. He’s always provocative, and though I’m initially shocked by some of his views about ethics, like recommending euthanasia for terminally deformed or sick newborns, I usually come around to his way of thinking. And so he makes a statement that may shock people, but has some merit:

Singer: The objective that we should aim for is to reduce years of life lost. I know a lot of people are talking just about saving lives. But I do think that it’s different whether somebody dies at 90 or 50 or a younger age still. So, in my view, that’s what we should be looking at.

. . . The basis for the British government’s plan is, of course, to treat those who are at the highest risk of dying and thus to minimize the number of deaths. But it is also important to consider what your life would be like if you don’t die.

It might still be that we should protect 90-year-olds first, based on data suggesting that 90-plus are at eight times the risk of dying from the virus as people around 70, whereas their life-expectancy difference is roughly something like four and a half years as against 15 years for 70-year-olds. If that’s correct, then the higher risk to the 90-year-olds outweighs the difference in life expectancy.

He also suggests that older people without the ability to give consent, like those with dementia, might not be vaccinated, arguing that “many doctors tell me that when patients have severe dementia, they do not treat conditions like pneumonia. Even though you could treat it with antibiotics relatively simply, they say, there’s a time to let a patient go.” (He also says that families should of course be consulted.)

Mukherjee seems to spend a fair amount of his discussion promoting his vaccine-delivery platform (see description above). If he doesn’t profit from the platform, that’s fine, but if he does (and the platform’s website and this interview suggest that it’s part of his own company, Cura), statements like the following seem self-promoting:

Mukherjee: When you talk about trucks breaking down, that’s one problem. There’s a second, equally important but I think neglected logistical problem, which a company I co-founded, Othena, is trying to solve. The Pfizer and the Moderna vaccines require booster shots. They need to be tracked, and they need monitoring and auditing. What’s the reminder system for telling you to come back for your second dose and for tracking which populations are getting the vaccine? This is a data-management challenge. We are piloting Othena software to address this issue in Orange County and other places in the country.

Current software systems are not patient-based, and vaccination will only be scalable if patients can manage their own vaccination.

He repeats this emphasis, but I’ll move on.

Two other matters in the exchange are worth considering. First, there’s the fact that areas like the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and Europe are clearly getting priority for the vaccines, even though places like Brazil are severely afflicted, and African countries might soon be in the same situation. (I heard on the news last night that New Zealand has ordered enough vaccine to do its entire population more than four times over!) Is that ethical? Why should any countries get priority over others, much less reserve excess vaccine? I haven’t thought much about this, but offer it for your consideration.

And there’s the issue of patent-breaking—of poorer countries stealing the patents on vaccines to help their residents, as (says Mukherjee) India did with anti-retroviral drugs during the AIDS crisis. To me, if it saves lives, it’s worth considering, and perhaps companies shouldn’t go after patent-breakers so long as the stolen vaccines are good ones.

As for the ordering, I’m happy with where it is, and if they decide to vaccinate bartenders or truck drivers before me, well, so be it. This is a complicated process, and different states will have different priorities. It turns out that American states do have considerable leeway about the order of vaccination, and I haven’t paid much attention to the variation: I just watch the news and have registered at the hospital here to be informed when my number is up.

And about jumping the queue with money, here’s part of that discussion:

Mukherjee: Peter, what if you could jump the queue, and get 10 doses of vaccine for your friends and family, if you contribute 5,000 or 10,000 or 500,000 doses for the Global South. Would you be open to such an option?

Singer: Yes, I would be, I think. Clearly, for a utilitarian like me, the benefits greatly outweigh the costs.

Gonsalves: It won’t happen. But there will be huge numbers of rich people who will jump the line for the vaccine and not give anything back.

I don’t see how rich people can jump the line given the guidelines, but Gonsalves is sure that will happen. If it does, it will really piss people off. After all, this isn’t a queue to get into the movies or buy toilet paper, but one that can affect your chance of dying.

It’s bad enough that venues like NBC News and the New York Times publish news—without caveats—stating that Jesus was not only a real person, but did the deeds and said the words described in Scripture. Now The Guardian has published a longish piece in which five astrologers predict what will happen after the pandemic begins to abate. Not only that, but they add no caveats about astrology being bogus, and in fact make statements that there might be something to it.  Is this the kind of “post-truth” journalism that we can expect now? Click on the screenshot to read:

I’ll give a few “predictions” from the astrologers, which of course are so bland and anodyne that anybody could make them, but first I want to show the statements made by the author, freelance journalist Deborah Linton.  These might lead the reader to believe that there’s something meaningful in telling the future using stars and planets, crystals, or tarot cards.  Linton’s own quotes are indented (emphases are mine):

This age of uncertainty has been a boon for crystal ball gazers. From New York to New Delhi, fortune-tellers have seen spikes in business; in the US, Forbes magazine reported a 136% rise in people seeking supernatural readings. In societies where religious belief is dwindling, and trust in the establishment under threat, the idea of looking elsewhere for guidance – to the stars or beyond, if you believe in a beyond – has made a kind of sense.

Millennials and Gen Z-ers are increasingly likely to livestream YouTube mediums, receive daily tarot readings via their Instagram feeds, or consume online horoscopes. The logic of astrology appeals to a modern desire for answers, while the magic of tarot is now available in “hip hop”, “modern love” and “bad bitches” themed card decks for sale online. In the US, the psychic services industry as a whole – which includes astrology, mediumship, palmistry, aura-reading and tarot – was valued at $2.2bn in 2018 (a 52% rise on 2005). Some celebrities consult spiritual healers just as they do therapists or nutritionists.

LOGIC OF ASTROLOGY? What does that mean?

When introducing psychic Dale Spencer Weeks, Linton says this:

Dale Spencer Weeks has practised as a psychic numerologist and seer for nine years, reading the numerical energy of people and events by studying patterns between numbers and physical or emotional states. He is clairvoyant and clairaudient. Requests for his readings have increased by two-thirds this year, including 30-40% more men than usual; most are looking for guidance with jobs or relationships.

“Clairvoyance” as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary in this sense is “Having or exercising the faculty of clairvoyance; pertaining to clairvoyance.” And “clairvoyance” means ” A supposed faculty attributed to certain persons, or to persons under certain mesmeric conditions, consisting in the mental perception of objects at a distance or concealed from sight.”

At least the OED says it’s a supposed faculty, implying doubt. Linton implies no doubt, either, when introducing Champion Psychic June Field, winner of the International Battle of the Psychics):

June Field was voted the world’s greatest psychic medium, beating 70,000 others in International Battle Of The Psychics, a European X-Factor style TV show, in 2013. Based in Dundee, she has been clairvoyant, clairaudient and clairsentient (seeing, hearing and feeling spirits) since childhood and makes predictions based on psychic intuition.

Balderdash! Where’s James Randi when we need him?  He’d be good at judging a Battle of the Psychics!  Anyway, Linton’s piece is not just one of those short newspaper columns that people peruse for amusement, though I suspect most are looking for a teeny hint about the future. No, Linton wrote a long article full of predictions from psychics. Here are just three. Really prescient, these charlatans! And if you think it’s all just fun, remember what Linton said above: Americans spend $2.2 billion per year trying to suss out the future from frauds.

June Field:

These next 12 months are a stepping stone to something better. We’ve done a lot of transitioning and 2021 is a time for re-educating and adjusting to a new reality. It is a year of healing and rebuilding.

People are in denial about the virus and that causes friction. People will continue to be afraid, and the return to normality will run into 2022.

That’s not hard to guess!

Here’s Dale Spencer-Weeks, a “psychic numerologist”:

I get different feelings or vibrations from each number. In 2020, the earth has been walking through a four vibration – the number of shelter, rules, law and governments. It is the number of determination, reassessing, cause and effect, so the solid, pure vibrations of 2+0+2+0 were going to be intense.

We are entering a solid “five” year (2+0+2+1). If 2020 has been about building a rocket ship, I liken 2021 to that ship taking off. Five’s energy is mercurial, like pumping 1,000 vaults through 100-vault wires. It’s going to be a huge year of change.

Weather events will be intense: storms and hurricanes. There will also be political unrest and missiles will fly. The world is going through a period of transformation and the vibe of 2021 is about expression and looking for freedom.

And some hope from Tarot reader Tatianna Morales, who answers some questions:

2. What does the energy of 2021 hold for the collective?

Card: The Page of Swords. This card brings innovative solutions and ideas. It also asks you to think intellectually, not emotionally. It speaks about radical truths being revealed in society – the kind that rock the boat. It brings an energy of busyness, of research and strategy in 2021. It asks that if you are inspired to take up new studies, hobbies or find new income streams, you take action. It talks about unexpected assistance from government. It speaks to the economy, where communication, virtually, and in the arts, will take the lead.

3. Do we see the solution to Covid-19 arriving in the first quarter of 2021?

Card: The Magician. This speaks of commanding solutions. It is the energy of those who are relentless in their pursuit of solutions, of resourcefulness, cleverness. The answer is, “Absolutely, yes.”

Wow—that last one was hard, especially since we already know there are two vaccines going into people’s arms. As for #2, well, that’s just nebulously dumb.

If you want to test these people, ask them to pick stocks and then compare their records to those of brokers. Ten to one they don’t do any better.

Why is the Guardian publishing this drivel? I stopped paying attention to the British version of HuffPost a while back, though sometimes a reader calls my attention to a half-decent article. But it’s really no surprise that they’re publishing this stuff in light of the paper’s penurious state.  As reader Barry wrote when sending me this link,

When I clicked on the article, this appeared at the bottom as an enticement to subscribe: “Our journalism fights for truth and holds power to account.” Sounds great. So why is the paper publishing tripe like this?

It’s because they’re fighting not for truth, but for clicks.

Christmas is a good time for us to note that the mainstream media still buys the existence of Jesus as real and divine: it’s just a given, often presented as lock, stock, and barrel. In an age of increasing disbelief, the media still has no shame in presenting the Christmas Story not as a mere metaphor, but literally true.  The stuff about the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter being, perhaps, that ancient “star of Bethlehem” was one example of this palaver.

How else can one understand a New York Times op-ed claiming that Jesus was a radical who cared for the marginalized—a piece lacking any caveats from the paper? If the piece came from the pen of Trump instead of a Christian journalist (unlikely, of course), there would surely be a note underneath saying something like, “The events recounted in this editorial have no basis in fact.”

But read the following for yourself, and if you find it paywalled, a judicious inquiry will yield the piece.  The author, Peter Wehner, is a writer (he wrote speeches for three Presidents), and also a religionist, for, as Wikipedia says, he’s also “a vice president and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), a conservative think tank, and a fellow at the Trinity Forum, a non-profit Christian organization.

Jesus was not only radical, says Wehner, but was inclusive as well:

Even given the crazy things protestors these days are demanding in the name of social justice, this one stood out as especially bizarre. In fact, when I saw the headline I thought it was some kind of Onion parody. But no, it’s in The Nation, and it’s by an academic and writer named Brandon Hasbrouck, who is not a Titania McGrath clone but an assistant professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law. (Curiously, and unlike most other professors in his school, he doesn’t have a webpage of his own, but you can get more info about him here.)

Hasbrouck is black, and suggests in this article, well, you can read the thesis for yourself (click on the screenshot):

Hasbrouck sees the electoral college as racist, an institution whose structure disenfranchises black people, ergo making “black votes in this country worth less than white votes”:

Black votes in this country are worth less than white votes. Joe Biden won the Electoral College because Black voters in Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia turned out in significant numbers. But even with overwhelming Black support—94 percent of Detroit voted for Biden!—the outcomes in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania were worryingly close.

I think his view is that if black votes counted twice, Biden (and all Democrats) would win more often, and racial justice would be imminent. He doesn’t say that explicitly, but his claim that black people gave Joe Biden the Presidency is a little extreme. In fact, Phil Zuckerman, in another piece I’ll discuss this week, argues that it’s the “nones” (the nonreligious) who may have handed the presidency to Biden. Actually, any group who would have changed the election had they voted the other way could be deemed responsible (or “praiseworthy,” in the case of Biden).

But back to the Electoral College. I do oppose it, for there’s simply no good reason to retain an antiquated system designed to effect a compromise between the popular vote and the Congressional vote (i.e., the “smart folk” in Congress should have more of a say) . Those days are gone now, and everyone’s vote should count the same as everyone else’s. Governmental elections on every level should be determined by majority vote. That said, I’m not sure Hasbrouck is right when he says this:

One core problem is the Electoral College. Wyoming, which has just 580,000 residents and is 93 percent white, gets three electors because of its two senators and one representative in the House. By comparison, Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District—which includes Atlanta, has 710,000 residents, and is 58 percent Black—has no dedicated electors or senators and can only occasionally overcome the mostly white and conservative votes from elsewhere in the state. This devaluation of Black votes allows our political system to ignore Black lives, and the consequences are devastating. Unequal representation has led to unequal health care outcomes, which the Covid-19 pandemic has only worsened. Without sufficient voting power, Black communities receive substandard education, and politicians are free to appoint judges who sanction mass incarceration, abusive policing, and electoral disenfranchisement.

And the statement below is certainly contentious, with only one reference to back it up, with that reference not really backing Hasbrouck’s implication that the Electoral College was set solely to favor slave states. Many would argue that, as I said, the Electoral College was set up by the Founders to allow Congress to have a say in the election along with the people.

This is all by design. The Constitution’s framers set up the Electoral College to protect the interests of slave states. Along with the Senate, the Electoral College was critical in the endurance of slavery and its continuation by other means. Abolishing this system would mean that ballots cast by Black voters—or any voters, for that matter—would count the same.

Yes, the system should be abolished because it no longer makes sense; we’re a democracy, and privileging “electors” is wrong. But in fact ballots cast by black voters do count the same as ballots cast by white voters: nobody knows the race of anybody who voted when those votes are counted.

At any rate, Hasbrouck wants the ballots of black people to count double, as a form of reparations:

But there’s another way to undo the damage of the Electoral College and other structurally racist political institutions: We can implement vote reparations by double-counting ballots cast by all Black residents. The poisonous legacy of slavery applies to Black people regardless of when we or our ancestors arrived in this country. Vote reparations should also extend to Native Americans.

. . . . One of the largest objections to monetary reparations is the impracticality of implementing them on a scale that would meaningfully address the injustices. Vote reparations, in contrast, would be a simple, low-cost way to begin to make amends.

The salutary results—racial justice:

Vote reparations would create possibilities to build what W.E.B. Du Bois called “abolition democracy,” or the practice of achieving a racially just society. Abolition democracy invites us to engage with abolition not as a finite goal but as a radical process of challenging injustices wherever and in whatever form they might appear. Vote reparations would empower us to replace oppressive institutions with life-affirming structures of economic, social, and political equality. And if our elected representatives did not prioritize this transformational work, we could vote them out.

Because white votes currently count more than Black ones, double-counting Black votes would restore electoral balance. Vote reparations would be a giant step toward remedying our nation’s long history of denying and devaluing Black votes. To address systemic racism, we must transform how we choose our government. Even if vote reparations aren’t instituted, Black voters will keep tirelessly dragging our states toward a more perfect union. But just imagine our country if our votes counted twice.

Again, I deny the contention that white votes currently count more than black ones. A black resident of Chicago or Atlanta or Detroit has a vote that counts as much as a white one. The Electoral College, as we saw in the penultimate election, can allow someone to be elected President who hasn’t won the popular vote, but that doesn’t mean that black votes count less than white ones. It means the Electoral College needs to be abolished.

But this suggestion brings up far, far more problems than it solves, even if it did solve any:

1.) Having some people’s votes count more than others is fundamentally inimical to a democracy, and people wouldn’t stand for it. This is especially true when you count black and Native American votes twice as much as “white” votes. That is a huge differential between people who are supposed to be equal.  If you want to exacerbate friction between races, this is the way to do it. But you want to fix the problem of representation, get rid of the Electoral College, which is much easier.

2.) How long are these “vote reparations” supposed to last? Forever, or for a finite time? If the latter, what criteria do we use to determine when to stop counting votes differentially on a racial basis?

3.) What about Hispanic votes? I suppose you can make the same case for these, so should their votes count twice?

4.) Most people counted as “black” in America have an average of 20% genes from whites, and many are half black or have an even a smaller fraction of African ancestry. How do you determine who counts as “black” under this system so that they get two votes instead of one? And, to be a bit snarky, does Elizabeth Warren get two votes?

I suspect that what Hasbrouck really wants is what Titania McGrath suggested when she put up the tweet that called this ludicrous proposal to my attention:

Double-counting black votes is the ONLY way to overcome racism.

So long as this doesn’t apply to those black people who voted for Trump, who are clearly white-adjacent scumbags that won’t do what they’re told.https://t.co/fSa73XS8FI

— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) December 20, 2020

There are good ways and bad ways to make reparations for the shameful history of blacks in America. Affirmative action is one, and, even better, we should invest a lot of money and effort in the infrastructure of black communities, in particular schools. Although I favor affirmative action, it’s a deeply imperfect way to make up for inequalities that begin a long time before students ever get to college. And it does nothing to fix the problem of unequal starting lines.

Giving out checks as reparations, as some have suggested, won’t do squat to bring equality. But the worst suggestion of all is counting votes differently based on the voter’s race. I’m actually surprised that The Nation published this piece. Quite frankly, it’s not only unworkable, but unhinged.