Bad Faith Commentary on Ocasio-Cortez

I generally avoid reading the comments on widely-distributed public posts. The viciousness and stupidity that pop up so quickly are discouraging to me.

Some of it, though, is intentional trolling.

This week Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez correctly named the concentration camps in which our government keeps asylum seekers. Suddenly actual antisemites were pretending deep concern that she was diminishing the horror of the Nazi holocaust. People who would rather see me dead wanted me to denounce AO-C because she said “concentration camp” without CBP gassing people to death en masse.

Now I see this same type of trolling in the comments on an Ocasio-Cortez fundraising post. She notes - accurately - that most Representatives have to spent the majority of their working hours phoning deep-pocket donors, begging for campaign contributions, instead of doing the people’s business, ie actually going to Congressional meetings. She explains that her ability to work on legislation and to skip the phone solicitations in her party’s call center is dependent on small-dollar online donations. She asks that the reader click a link to make one of those donations.

Most of the comments on this post were positive. It’s still Facebook so I have to wonder how many of these people think they are contributing when they reply with some equivalent of “You go, girl” instead of clicking the link and sending $5, but, oh well. It was the trolls that caught my eye.
The clever ones didn’t go directly for her and identify themselves as enemies. One angrily demanded to know why we shou politicians who spend all their time fundraising. When people pointed out that this was EXACTLY THE POINT of AO-C’s post, the troll just kept doubling down. I sincerely hope that nobody is that obtuse. She was intentionally creating a false equivalence between AO-C and establishment politicians at the same time as discouraging participation in the process.

Then there are the people complaining that she is fighting against Joe Biden instead of against Donald Trump. That is transparently false. So I ask, “Who is served by that lie?” The answer is: So many people. Establishment Democrats who don’t want to be accountable for their complicity with monopoly capitalism. Republicans who like seeing their adversaries fighting one another. Foreign adversaries (Russia) who work to disrupt out electoral process. Foreign allies (Israel) who work to obscure their reliance on US military support. The truth is that Representative Ocasio-Cortez has worked hard to support Speaker Pelosi despite her waffling on important issues like immigration, the climate crisis, and the lawless Trump Administration. So have Representatives Omar, Tlaib, and Pressley.

But the aim of trolls is not to challenge our biases. It’s not even to spread lies. The aim of trolls is to make us suspicious and cynical. The aim of trolls is to get us bickering with each other. The aim of trolls is to discourage us.

Don’t give in to trolls.

No Excuses

Six years ago my friend got a phone call from the highly-regarded, “no-excuses” charter school her son attended. He was scheduled to get on a plane the next day with his abuela to spend the summer visiting the country of her birth. The school, though, said that if he did not attend and pass summer school he would have to repeat sixth grade.

His mom canceled his flight. Grandma went without him. He attended summer school and passed. But in late August the school phoned again. This time they said that he would be promoted to seventh grade ONLY IF HE TRANSFERRED to another school!

Why were they so anxious to force him out? What was the character flaw that made him undesirable to that community?

Empathy.

His sin was empathy.

In “no-excuses” schools, children are supposed to keep their eyes on their teacher. When that teacher berates a classmate, the children are not supposed to look at their friend to see how they are taking it. Compliments? Likewise. The same with discussions that have personal subtexts for some kids. All this “focus” was beyond a boy who cared so deeply about his peers. His eyes strayed from his teachers. He checked in constantly with his classmates. He was repeatedly disciplined for it. Now the school administrators made it clear that they wanted him to leave.

He did.

He found a place in a public school downtown, one that values children, not data.

Friday was his graduation. Each senior was called up to receive their diploma by a teacher who knew them well and who said a few words about them. We heard about original research in neuroscience. We heard about leadership on the soccer pitch. We heard about musicianship and mathematical imagination and poetry. We did not hear about anybody’s GPA or their AP exam scores.

When my friend’s son was called to get his diploma his teacher choked up. He wept and said someday he hopes to have a son  with this boy’s empathy.

His empathy.

Six years after being virtually expelled from the first school for empathy, the entire student body of the second - along with their parents and teachers- applauded and roared their approval for him and for his empathy.

Which school would you prefer for your child? 

I know my answer.

More DNA Commerce!

AncestryDNA sent me an email today urging me to get the DNA of "my entire biological family" tested. Following the link I got a bold-face question: "How Many DNA Tests Does One Family Need?" along with a question to answer that question: "How many people are in your family?"

A couple of years ago my brother gave me a DNA test kit as a gift. This is a commercial transaction, not a scientific one; AncestryDNA is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ancestry LLC, a for-profit entity based in Lehi, Utah. So what was exchanged in this transaction?

AncestryDNA got whatever money my brother gave them along with my entire genome to add to their database of 15 million people.

I got the earth-shattering news that I am an Ashkenazic Jew. (Irony alert: I may have always known that.)

Presumably there are some limits to people's curiosity about their ethnic origins and molecular genealogy companies are concerned about what those limits mean to their bottom lines. Presumably whatever schemes these companies have for monetizing our genomes can be better served with more data from more people. So it makes good sense to me that they would urge us to get tests done on every single member of our families: more short-term payments and more data in their proprietary data bases.

But what exactly are they selling me? Will I learn with scientific certainty that I have my uncle's eyes? (Irony alert: I may have always known that.) Will my brother be a member of a different ethnic group? Will I need to join a synagogue?

I do not want to belittle the benefits of DNA tests for curious adoptees. I don't share their experience and - for them - the more data out there the better. I do want to question the motives of for-profit molecular DNA companies. I do want to question their outsized scientific claims.