Your new 5-minute Thanksgiving green beans (and the most heartwarming holiday story I’ve ever heard)

Every week in Genius Recipes — often with your help! — Food52 Founding Editor and lifelong Genius-hunter Kristen Miglore is unearthing recipes that will change the way you cook.

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These undemanding green beans have so much to offer our dinners — anytime, but doubly so at a holiday feast: They’re a little creamy yet vibrantly green, deeply savory yet superfast to make, and so make-ahead-friendly that they require no more than five minutes in a single skillet before dinnertime, leaving the oven free for roast beasts and pies and whatever other casseroles you want to jigsaw in there.

But what really got me was the milk.

The original recipe, from the chef and historian Dr. Maricel Presilla, calls for dairy milk, but she would encourage us to use all sorts, from almond to coconut to Lactaid to A2.

Maricel first encountered this technique in the kitchen of an octogenarian family friend named Angelica Laperira in the town of Remolino in Colombia, early in the 30-plus years Maricel spent traveling and researching for her cookbook opus, Gran Cocina Latina. “The beans are so green, they have a crunch, and the milk is like a beautiful blanket that does not overwhelm,” Maricel told me in this week’s episode of The Genius Recipe Tapes (1).

She was delighted to see the care Angelica put into blanching green beans to harness their bright color and crunch — not common in Latin American green bean dishes, but dating back in Angelica’s family to at least the 19th century. And at once, Maricel could see how this simple dish illustrated the deep roots of Latin American cooking — both the green beans that were indigenous to the Americas, and the medieval technique of cooking in milk, still seen in everything from milky soups like changua in Colombia and pisca andina in Venezuela, to the cheesy papas chorreadas served alongside meaty dishes at restaurants in Bogotá.

Angelica’s care and technique also happen to make the recipe ideal for making ahead, for a small gathering all the way up to restaurant-scale. The green beans can be trimmed and blanched in batches earlier in the week. Even the sofrito — in this instance, a deeply savory, three-allium base of white onion, scallion, and garlic — can be prepped ahead, too.

And then, whenever you’re ready to serve — you’re nudging people toward the table, someone is carving the roast beast — you quickly sizzle the sofrito, tumble in your blanched beans, and don’tmake a flour-thickened cream sauce or track down a can of cream of mushroom soup or do any other backflips. Instead, open the fridge and splash in some milk to bubble down and carry the sofrito into a very light, very flavorful swaddle to hug the beans.

So many other cookbooks and teachers have trained me to fear letting milk boil, and it turns out I really shouldn’t. For one thing, milk is much more stable than I’d ever given it credit for. As you can see in the video above, you can let milk simmer for a good while without it breaking, as long as there isn’t a strong acid present (then, it’s definitely turning to cheese). And for another, even if it did boil to its breaking point — what could be wrong with cheese? Curds are delicious. Whey is delicious. “I’m not afraid with milk,” Maricel told me.

With this freedom, thanks to Maricel and Angelica, the joys of creamy sauces no longer require commitment or heft. They can happen anytime — Thanksgiving or tonight — and be as light and flavorful as we want them to be.

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Recipe: Habichuelas Guisadas al Estilo de la Costa (Colombian-Style Green Beans Cooked in Milk) from Maricel Presilla

Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 20 minutes
Serves: 4

Ingredients:

3 teaspoons salt
1 pound green beans, trimmed
4 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 small white onion (about 5 ounces), finely chopped (about 1 cup)
2 scallions, white and some green parts, finely chopped
1/2 cup whole milk

Directions:

Bring 3 quarts of water to a boil in a large pot. Add 2 teaspoons salt, then add the beans and cook for 2 to 3 minutes. Drain and plunge into a bowl of ice water to cool, then drain again and set aside.
Crush the garlic and remaining 1 teaspoon salt to a paste with a mortar and pestle; set aside.
Heat the oil in a 12-inch skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and scallions and sauté until soft, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and sauté for about 2 minutes.
Stir in the green beans and milk, bring to a boil over high heat, and cook until the sauce thickens, about 2 minutes. Transfer to a serving bowl and bring to the table immediately.

(1) For those of us in need of a pick-me-up, Maricel also told me the most heartwarming holiday love story I’ve ever heard (starring her husband Alejandro, below) in this week’s episode of The Genius Recipe Tapes — I highly recommend giving it a listen.

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A COVID head-scratcher: Why lice lurk despite physical distancing

The Marker family opened their door on a recent evening to a woman dressed in purple, with a military attitude to cleanliness.

Linda Holmes, who has worked as a technician with LiceDoctors for five years, came straight from her day job at a hospital after she got the call from a dispatcher that the Marker family needed her ASAP.

According to those in the world of professional nitpicking, Pediculus humanus capitis, the much-scorned head louse, has returned.

“It’s definitely back,” said Kelli Boswell, owner of Lice & Easy, a boutique where people in the Denver area can get deloused, a process that can range from minutes to hours depending on the method and the infestation. “It’s a sign that things are coming back to normal.”

Colds and more serious bugs like respiratory syncytial virus, better known by the shorthand RSV, are also back. That may leave some to wonder: With all the COVID prevention measures in place, how are kids sharing these things?

Like the coronavirus, all these bugs depend on human sociability. Unfortunately, the measures that many reopened schools have taken to prevent the transmission of COVID-19 — masks, hand-washing, vaccination — do little to deter the spread of the head louse. However, physical distancing, such as spacing desks 3 feet apart, should be helping, if it’s actually happening.

Lice are, in theory, harder to spread than the SARS-CoV-2 virus because proximity alone isn’t enough: They usually need head-to-head contact. If a kid gets lice, odds are it means that kid spent some quality time close enough to another kid for the parasite to make its move. (Researchers tend to agree that transmission via inanimate objects like combs and hats is minimal.)

The head louse is not known for its fortitude or athletic prowess. It’s basically the couch potato of pests. Adults can’t survive more than a day or two without snacking on blood. Their eggs can’t hatch without the warmth of a human head, and will die within about a week if not in those cozy conditions. The bugs can’t jump or fly — only crawl. The one thing going for the head louse is its highly specialized claws, evolved to grasp human hair.

Unlike the body louse, the head louse isn’t known to spread disease. An infestation doesn’t indicate anything about a person’s hygiene. (In fact, the lore of delousers says that the bugs prefer clean hair because it’s more grabbable.) And despite common misconceptions, they can colonize people of all ages, races and ethnicities.

COVID lockdowns were not great from a louse-world-domination standpoint. But the critters have been bonding with us for tens of thousands of years. A little lockdown wasn’t going to end the romance.

Federico Galassi, a researcher with Argentina’s Pest and Insecticide Research Center, found that strict early COVID lockdowns did, indeed, lead to a decline in head lice among kids in Buenos Aires, but the bugs came nowhere close to being eliminated. His study found prevalence dropped from about 70% to about 44%.

And one thing is clear: When people shut their doors and hunkered down in early lockdowns, the lice were right there hunkered down with us. When SaLeah Snelling reopened the doors of her Lice Clinics of America salon in Boise, Idaho, in May, she said, “the cases of head lice were heavier than we’ve ever seen.” And it wasn’t just one or two people in the household with lice, but the entire household.

Now, Galassi and American louse workers say, infestation rates are back to pre-lockdown norms, despite school COVID protections.

Nix, a brand of anti-louse products, publishes a map that claims lice are bad right now in Houston, most of Alabama and New Mexico, plus Tulsa, Oklahoma. The map directs people to locations that carry its products since many parents use a DIY approach once they spy the critter on a child’s head.

Richard Pollack, chief scientific officer with pro-bono pest-identification service IdentifyUS, said most claims about louse prevalence are “marketing nonsense” from a largely unregulated industry focused on apparent infestations that often turn out to be just dandruff, glitter, hair spray, grass-dwelling springtail insects, innocuous fungus or even cookie crumbs.

It’s possible that the recent increase in business for professional nitpickery suggests that people are now comfortable seeking help outside the home rather than its being a sign of a surge in the bugs.

While little research exists to confirm whether there is a rise in lice, Boswell, Pollack and even the National Association of School Nurses agree: The bugs aren’t likely spreading in the classroom because in-school louse transmission is considered rare. Instead, Boswell said, it’s more likely that as other activities resumed — sleepovers, play dates, summer camp, family gatherings — the bugs prospered once more.

Pollack once wrote in a presentation slide, “Head lice indicate that the child has friends.” Preschoolers tend to get the infestations the most “because they’re more cuddly,” said Julia Wilson, co-owner of Rocky Mountain Lice Removal in Lafayette, Colorado. But she has also noticed a rise among teenagers, which she ascribes to taking selfies with pals.

“You say to them, ‘Have you touched heads?’ and the teenager’s like, ‘No, never,'” said Wilson. “And then all of a sudden, they’re literally taking a selfie photo with their friends.”

The Marker family isn’t sure where third grader Huntley’s lice originated. Perhaps a close friend or her dance team? The Markers spent more than $200 to get the four-person household checked — eyebrows and Dad’s beard included. Her dad and her preschool-aged brother were free of nits. But Holmes did find a couple of nits on Huntley’s mom, Paris.

“You can just burn my whole head right now,” said Paris.

After combing each head carefully, Holmes ended the session by hugging her customers goodbye, proof that she trusts her work.

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The Rittenhouse syndrome: Has America crossed the Rubicon?

Although I participated in the countercultural “revolutions,” antiwar protests and racial conflicts of the 1960s, it wasn’t until August 2016 that I had my first truly unnerving intimations of a full-blown American civil war: Then-presidential candidate Donald Trump told a rally that if Hillary Clinton “gets to pick her judges, judicial appointments, nothing you can do, folks. Although, the Second Amendment people — maybe there is. I don’t know.”

By June 1, 2020, Trump’s seeming afterthought about “Second Amendment people” had metastasized into something truly scary. He and combat-fatigues-clad Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, along with Attorney General William Barr, strode from the White House to Lafayette Park, where a peaceful demonstration had been dispersed brutally by National Guard troops.

Trump’s insistence only days earlier that the U.S. Army itself should be sent against the protesters — a demand echoed by Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton in a now-infamous New York Times op-ed — reminded me of Julius Caesar leading Roman legions illegally across the river Rubicon from Gaul into Italy in 49 B.C. to subdue Rome’s own citizens and, with them, their republic.

Kenosha, Wisconsin’s closest approximation to the Rubicon is the tiny Pike River, which flows from Petrifying Springs into Lake Michigan. Its closest approximation to a military crackdown was the police mobilization against violent protests after a police officer shot and paralyzed an unarmed young Black man in August of last year. Those police failed to challenge Kyle Rittenhouse, the illegally armed, 17-year-old “Second Amendment person” who shot three men, killing two of them.

And when a Kenosha County jury failed to convict Rittenhouse on even a misdemeanor, sending what the parents of Anthony Huber — one of the men Rittenhouse killed — characterized as “the unacceptable message that armed civilians can show up in any town, incite violence, and then use the danger they have created to justify shooting people in the street,” I couldn’t help but wonder what, if anything, will stop armed “Second Amendment people” from showing up near polling places a year from now, as a Republican National Ballot Security Task Force has done intermittently since 1981, although without brandishing guns.

More unnervingly and urgently, I wonder why a jury of ordinary citizens, along with thousands of others who approved and even celebrated the Rittenhouse verdict are walking themselves across a Rubicon to deliver the message I’ve just cited, even though they haven’t been “demagogued” into doing it by a Caesar or driven to do it by a military force.

New York Times columnist Charles Blow has noted that Rittenhouse was the same age as Trayvon Martin, the unarmed Black youth shot dead in Florida by George Zimmerman, who considered himself a “protector” of his neighborhood and who was acquitted of murder. Blow notes that although Trayvon Martin “was thugified” by Zimmerman and the judicial process, Rittenhouse was “infantilized” by the defense argument that a 17-year-old may be excused for misjudging dangers that he himself has provoked illegally. It’s hard to imagine a similar jury accepting similar excuses for a young Black man with an assault rifle, even if he never fired it.

I’ve contended for years that swift, dark undercurrents are degrading and stupefying Americans in ways that most of us try not to acknowledge. More of us than ever before are normalizing our adaptations to daily variants of force and fraud in the commercial groping and goosing of our private lives and public spaces; in nihilistic entertainment that fetishizes violence without context and sex without attachment; in the “gladiatorizing” and corruption of sports; in home-security precautions against the prospect of armed invasion; in casino-like financing of unproductive economic activities, such as the predatory lending that tricks millions out of their homes; and in a huge, ever-expanding prison industry created to deter or punish the broken, violent victims of all these come-ons, even as schools in the “nicest,” “safest,” neighborhoods operate in fear of gunmen who, from Columbine to Sandy Hook and beyond, have been students or residents there themselves.

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Stressed by this republican derangement, millions are spending billions on palliatives, medications, addictions and even surveillance designed to protect them from themselves. All those vials, syringes, home-security systems and shootings reflect the insinuation of what Edward Gibbon, the historian of ancient Rome, called “a slow and secret poison into the vitals of the empire” until Roman citizens “no longer possessed that public courage which is nourished by the love of independence, the sense of national honour, the presence of danger, and the habit of command. They received laws and governors from the will of their sovereign, and trusted for their defence to a mercenary army.”

Is it really so surprising that some of the stressed and dispossessed, too ill to bear their sicknesses or their cures, demand to be lied to instead, with simple but compelling fantasies that direct them toward saviors and scapegoats — into cries for a strongman to lead them across a Rubicon and for “Second Amendment people” to take our streets?

Beltway media’s moronic coverage of Build Back Better is cheating the nation

We’re making progress, but it’s hard to discern because the reporters covering Washington are so often insular, so inside-the-Beltway, that they have no sense of the historic moment.

There is seismic change all around, yet they’re absorbed in the practiced ritual of breathlessly tracking who is up and who is down, because the superficial power tick-tock is what they fixate on. This makes much of our national political reporting disconnected from the rest of the country, which is still in the throes of a pandemic that’s on its way to killing a million people, a death toll increased by the government’s failed response.

On Friday, several hours after the longest partial lunar eclipse in 580 years, a woman became president of the United States, albeit unofficially and only briefly.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ 85-minute reign started when President Biden went under anesthesia for a colonoscopy at 10:10 a.m. and ended at 11:35 a.m. At three hours and 28 minutes, the lunar eclipse lasted longer.

Change often happens in the margins and goes unnoticed.

Right around the time Harris had the launch codes, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi presided over passage in the House of Biden’s $1.8 trillion Build Back Better agenda, easily the most significant domestic legislation since the New Deal.

In hopes of getting the word out, she quickly convened a press conference and was understandably disappointed at how shallow, even moronic, some of the questions were from reporters. At least one of the handful of reporters asking questions appeared more interested in making his colleagues laugh than informing the American people, who have been through an insurrection and a pandemic.

“You used to hold the longest record for the longest floor speech. How do you feel about that being broken?” asked the jokester, referencing the five-hour tirade the night before from Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

“That’s not what we are here to talk about — this is about serious business,” snapped the justifiably agitated speaker, who had just done her part toward delivering universal pre-K, a once-in-a-generation reset on climate change and a realignment of the tax code that uplifts working families by ensuring that the top .01 percent pay their fair share in taxes.

Nobody asked what the legislation would do for the tens of millions of American families that struggle week to week while they perform the essential work that cost tens of thousands their lives.

The questions were either a regurgitation of Republican spin, or inside-baseball tactical queries built around the skeptical spin that House Democrats’ efforts would be kneecapped by the Senate.

Speaker Pelosi turned to Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., chair of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, to make the Democrats’ case and explain just how far along they were toward the finish line.

“The fact of the matter is that over the last few months, particularly in the last few weeks, we have been working with Sens. Manchin and Sinema, but also with the chairs of the committees in the Senate,” Pallone said. “We’ve been basically drilling down by getting Sinema’s input, getting Schumer’s input — so I do believe the drug pricing provision that you see is it. … I guess there could be some changes, but I don’t think they are going to be significant.

“The fact that we have negotiating [prescription drug] pricing and we have savings, as the Congressional Budget Office showed, means this is a provision that saves money and at the same time does a lot in terms of affordability for seniors and others.”

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“The same would be true with methane — Nancy and I and a group went to Glasgow for the Climate Conference and they were taking international action on methane, so we have very important provisions with regards to methane emissions that was worked on with the senators and worked on with House members over the last few weeks,” Pallone said. “This is pretty much it. We are pretty solid at this point and there’s no reason this bill could not come back from the Senate with some minor changes.”

For months, as the landmark bill was being put together, the only story the media wanted to follow was about the internal drama within the Democratic Party around Manchin and Sinema. In the process, the thread of the story that included exactly what was contained in this historic legislation was lost.

Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., chair of the Education and Labor Committee, told reporters he had been working to achieve consensus with his Senate colleagues throughout the process. “We have pretty much agreed with our counterparts in the Senate on child care which will allow parents to go to work,” Scott said. “If you are in a low or moderate [income] situation you can’t go to work [without it.] Pre-K, which is so valuable for education, is universal.”

In the car back from Washington, Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., was clearly energized despite the marathon session. He said that in many ways the Build Back Better deal marked an improvement over FDR’s New Deal, which left out farmworkers and domestic workers of color as part of a deal with Southern Dixiecrats to pass landmark labor protections for everybody else.

Build Back Better will transform jobs in child care and congregate health care settings that have traditionally paid poverty-level wages into living-wage occupations. It provides a pathway of citizenship for the millions of undocumented essential workers who put their health at risk to keep our economy running, making it possible for millions to work from home.

“We know we addressed the inequities here, be they racial or economic — we’ve learned a lot about ourselves if we listen to what we’ve learned,” Pascrell said. “If we don’t, we are going to do the same thing over and over again.”

Pascrell believes that how the bill is paid for is every bit as important as what it’s paying for, because it shifts the tax burden to the country’s highest earners who have seen exponential growth in their wealth during the pandemic. He figures if the government wants workers to return to the workforce, the country’s tax policy should make it worth their while.

“In the last 40 years,” Pascrell said, the heavy tax lift was on Americans who had to “earn a wage to support their family” while shielding those who own assets. “A fair tax system does not soak the rich — I don’t believe in that,” he said. “But you certainly have to have the cojones and finally say, ‘Pay your way.’ Where they have not been paying anything, it’s an insult to the system.”

But the 12-term New Jersey Democrat says he has no illusions about the headwinds his party faces heading into the 2022 midterms, when traditionally the party that holds the White House loses seats in Congress.

“There’s no question in my mind we would lose the election [for the House] if it was tomorrow morning, because of all the gerrymandering that’s going on,” Pascrell said. “But it’s not, and we have a full year to put in place the foundation Joe Biden is trying to build. I am optimistic.”

More on the Build Back Better battle and the Biden agenda:

U.S.-Russia confrontation over Ukraine threatens to become all-out war — but why?

A report in Covert Action Magazine from the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine describes grave fears of a new offensive by Ukrainian government forces, after increased shelling, a drone strike by a Turkish-built drone and an attack on Staromaryevka, a village inside the buffer zone established by the 2014-15 Minsk Accords.

The People’s Republics of Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR), which declared independence in response to the U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014, have once again become flashpoints in the intensifying Cold War between the United States and Russia. The U.S. and NATO appear to be fully supporting a new government offensive against these Russian-backed enclaves, which could quickly escalate into a full-blown international military conflict.

The border between post-coup Ukraine and the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, based on the Minsk Agreements. (Wikipedia)

The last time this area became an international tinderbox was in April, when the anti-Russian government of Ukraine threatened an offensive against Donetsk and Luhansk, and Russia assembled thousands of troops along Ukraine’s eastern border.

On that occasion, Ukraine and NATO blinked and called off the offensive. This time around, Russia has again assembled an estimated 90,000 troops near its border with Ukraine. Will Russia once more deter an escalation of the war, or are Ukraine, the U.S. and NATO seriously preparing to press ahead at the risk of war with Russia?

Since April, the U.S. and its allies have been stepping up their military support for Ukraine. After a March announcement of $125 million in military aid, including armed coastal patrol boats and radar equipment, the U.S. then gave Ukraine another $150 million package in June. This included radar, communications and electronic warfare equipment for the Ukrainian Air Force, bringing total military aid to Ukraine since the U.S.-backed coup in 2014 to $2.5 billion. This latest package appears to include deploying U.S. training personnel to Ukrainian air bases.

Turkey is supplying Ukraine with the same drones it provided to Azerbaijan for its war with Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020. That war killed at least 6,000 people and has recently flared up again, one year after a Russian-brokered ceasefire. Turkish drones wreaked havoc on Armenian troops and civilians alike in Nagorno-Karabakh, and their use in Ukraine would be a horrific escalation of violence against the people of Donetsk and Luhansk.

The ratcheting up of U.S. and NATO support for government forces in Ukraine’s civil war is having ever-worsening diplomatic consequences. At the beginning of October, NATO expelled eight Russian liaison officers from NATO headquarters in Brussels, accusing them of spying. Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, the manager of the 2014 coup in Ukraine, was dispatched to Moscow in October, ostensibly to calm tensions. Nuland failed so spectacularly that, only a week later, Russia ended 30 years of engagement with NATO, and ordered the organization’s office in Moscow closed.

Nuland reportedly tried to reassure Moscow that the U.S. and NATO were still committed to the 2014 and 2015 Minsk Accords on Ukraine, which include a ban on offensive military operations and a promise of greater autonomy for Donetsk and Luhansk within Ukraine. But her assurances were belied by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin when he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Oct. 18, reiterating U.S. support for Ukraine’s future membership in NATO, promising further military support and blaming Russia for “perpetuating the war in Eastern Ukraine.”

More extraordinary, but hopefully more successful, was CIA Director William Burns’s visit to Moscow on Nov. 2 and 3, during which he met with senior Russian military and intelligence officials and spoke by phone with President Vladimir Putin.

A mission like this is not usually part of the CIA director’s duties. But after Biden promised a new era of American diplomacy, his foreign policy team is now widely acknowledged to have instead brought U.S. relations with Russia and China to all-time lows.

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Judging from the March meeting of Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan with Chinese officials in Alaska, Biden’s meeting with Putin in Vienna in June, and Under Secretary Nuland’s recent visit to Moscow, U.S. officials have reduced their encounters with Russian and Chinese officials to mutual recriminations designed for domestic consumption instead of seriously trying to resolve policy differences. In Nuland’s case, she also misled the Russians about the U.S. commitment, or lack of it, to the Minsk Accords. So who could Biden send to Moscow for a serious diplomatic dialogue with the Russians about Ukraine?

In 2002, as Under Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Burns wrote a prescient but unheeded 10-page memo to Secretary of State Colin Powell, warning him of the many ways that a U.S. invasion of Iraq could “unravel” and create a “perfect storm” for American interests. Burns is a career diplomat and a former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, and may be the only member of this administration with the diplomatic skills and experience to actually listen to the Russians and engage seriously with them.

The Russians presumably told Burns what they have said in public: that U.S. policy is in danger of crossing “red lines” that would trigger decisive and irrevocable Russian responses. Russia has long warned that one red line would be NATO membership for Ukraine and/or Georgia.

But there are clearly other red lines in the creeping U.S. and NATO military presence in and around Ukraine and in the increasing U.S. military support for the Ukrainian government forces assaulting Donetsk and Luhansk. Putin has warned against the buildup of NATO’s military infrastructure in Ukraine and has accused both Ukraine and NATO of destabilizing actions, including in the Black Sea.

With Russian troops amassed at Ukraine’s border for a second time this year, a new Ukrainian offensive that threatens the existence of the DPR and LPR would surely cross another red line, while increasing U.S. and NATO military support for Ukraine may be dangerously close to crossing yet another one.

So did Burns come back from Moscow with a clearer picture of exactly what Russia’s red lines are? We had better hope so. Even U.S. military websites acknowledge that U.S. policy in Ukraine is “backfiring.”

Russia expert Andrew Weiss, who worked under Burns at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, acknowledged to Michael Crowley of The New York Times that Russia has “escalation dominance” in Ukraine and that, if push comes to shove, Ukraine is simply more important to Russia than to the U.S. It therefore makes no sense for the U.S. to risk triggering World War III over Ukraine — unless it actually wants to trigger World War III.

During the Cold War, both sides developed clear understandings of each other’s “red lines.” Along with a large helping of dumb luck, we can thank those understandings for our continued existence. What makes today’s world even more dangerous than the world of the 1950s or the 1980s is that recent U.S. leaders have cavalierly jettisoned the bilateral nuclear treaties and vital diplomatic relationships that their grandparents forged to stop the Cold War from turning into a hot one.

Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, with the help of Under Secretary of State Averell Harriman and others, conducted negotiations that spanned two administrations, between 1958 and 1963, to achieve a partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the first in a series of bilateral arms control treaties. By contrast, the only continuity between Trump, Biden and Under Secretary Nuland seems to be a startling lack of imagination that blinds them to any possible future beyond a zero-sum, non-negotiable, yet still unattainable “U.S. über alles” global hegemony.

But Americans should beware of romanticizing the “old” Cold War as a time of peace, simply because we somehow managed to dodge a world-ending nuclear holocaust. U.S. veterans of the wars in Korea and Vietnam know better, as do the people in countries across the global South that became bloody battlefields in the ideological struggle between the United States and the USSR.

Three decades after declaring victory in the Cold War, and after the self-inflicted chaos of the U.S. “war on terror,” U.S. military planners have settled on a new Cold War as the most persuasive pretext to perpetuate their trillion-dollar war machine and their unattainable ambition to dominate the entire planet. Instead of asking the U.S. military to adapt to more new challenges it is clearly not up for, U.S. leaders decided to revert to their old conflict with Russia and China to justify the existence and ridiculous expense of their ineffective but profitable war machine.

But the very nature of a Cold War is that it involves the threat and use of force, overt and covert, to contest the political allegiances and economic structures of countries across the world. In our relief at the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which both Trump and Biden have used to symbolize the “end of endless war,” we should have no illusions that either of them is offering us a new age of peace.

Quite the contrary. What we are watching in Ukraine, Syria, Taiwan and the South China Sea are the opening salvos of an age of more ideological wars that may well be just as futile, deadly and self-defeating as the “war on terror,” and much more dangerous to the United States.

A war with Russia or China would risk escalating into World War III. As Andrew Weiss told the Times on Ukraine, Russia and China would have conventional “escalation dominance,” as well as simply more at stake in wars on their own borders than the U.S. does.

So what would the U.S. do if it were losing a major war with Russia or China? U.S. nuclear weapons policy has always kept a “first strike” option open in case of precisely this scenario.

The current U.S. $1.7 trillion plan for a whole range of new nuclear weapons therefore seems to be a response to the reality that the United States cannot expect to defeat Russia and China in conventional wars on their own borders.

But the paradox of nuclear weapons is that the most powerful weapons ever created have no practical value as actual weapons of war, since there can be no winner in a war that kills everybody. Any use of nuclear weapons would quickly trigger a massive use of them by one side or the other, and the war would soon be over for all of us. The only winners would be a few species of radiation-resistant insects and other very small creatures.

Neither Obama, Trump nor Biden has dared to present their reasons for risking World War III over Ukraine or Taiwan to the American public, because there is no good reason. Risking a nuclear holocaust to appease the military-industrial complex is as insane as destroying the climate and the natural world to appease the fossil fuel industry.

So we had better hope that CIA Director Burns not only came back from Moscow with a clear picture of Russia’s “red lines,” but that Biden and his colleagues understand what Burns told them and what is at stake in Ukraine. They must step back from the brink of a U.S.-Russia war, and then from the larger Cold War with China and Russia into which they have so blindly and foolishly stumbled.

More from Salon on Joe Biden’s conflicted foreign policy:

Biden moves to replace Trump-picked USPS board members

President Joe Biden won applause Friday for moving to replace Ron Bloom and John Barger, two members of the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors who’ve shown unwavering loyalty to scandal-plagued Postmaster General Louis DeJoy even as he’s dramatically worsened mail delivery performance.

“It’s affirmatively good to remove Bloom and Barger from the board, men who said they were ‘tickled pink’ with DeJoy’s actions.”

But replacing Bloom—a Democrat and the USPS board’s current chairman—and Barger, a Republican, is just the first step toward rescuing the mail service from the ongoing right-wing assault, progressive advocates and Democratic lawmakers stressed Friday.

Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-N.J.) called Biden’s decision to replace Bloom “great news,” slamming the outgoing postal board chair as DeJoy’s “chief enabler and cheerleader.”

“Now fire DeJoy,” Pascrell added.

On Friday, Biden nominated former General Services Administration official Daniel Tangherlini and Derek Kan—a Republican and the former deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget—to replace Bloom and Barger.

If Biden’s picks are confirmed by the Senate, his nominees will have a majority on the nine-member postal board—enough votes to remove DeJoy.

Replace Ron Bloom.

Fire Louis DeJoy.

We're so close.

Keep the pressure on.

— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) November 19, 2021

Bloom and Barger were both nominated to the postal board by former President Donald Trump, who repeatedly attempted to sabotage the USPS ahead of the 2020 presidential election, which relied heavily on mail-in ballots amid the coronavirus pandemic.

DeJoy—a Trump donor—was selected to head the USPS by the postal board in May of 2020. Upon taking charge of the agency in June, DeJoy wasted little time moving to overhaul mail service operations and slow package delivery.

Last month, DeJoy’s decade-long plan for the USPS took effect as experts and Democratic lawmakers warned the changes would ensure the continued decline of Postal Service performance for years to come.

Lisa Graves, executive director of True North Research, told Common Dreams on Friday that Bloom and Barger “disqualified themselves from serving in positions of public trust by their enthusiastic support for Trump donor Louis DeJoy despite all the ways DeJoy has harmed the American people through his dictates, including charging people more for slower and less reliable mail.”

“They failed to object to his ‘ten-year’ plan to weaken the service standards or to DeJoy continuing to receive millions each year from an arrangement he has with his former company, a contractor of the Postal Service that got a $100+ million contract to outsource postal work, among other things,” Graves noted. “It’s affirmatively good to remove Bloom and Barger from the board, men who said they were ‘tickled pink’ with DeJoy’s actions.”

While Graves expressed concern over Biden’s choice to replace Bloom and Barger with Tangherlini and Kan—calling them “not the right people at all” for the roles—she said the transition will be “an opportunity for the Postal Service to move in a new direction, given the destructive path chosen by DeJoy and enabled by Trump’s appointees.”

The Washington Post reported Friday that Biden’s decision to remove Bloom—who’s currently serving a one-year holdover term that expires in December—”came as a surprise to the postal industry and policymakers in Washington.”

“Bloom as recently as last week told confidants he expected to be renominated,” according to the Post. “Last week, Trump appointees on the governing board reelected him as chairman over the objections of Biden-appointed Democrats.”

The Post noted that at least four members of the Senate Democratic caucus—Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—have pointed to Bloom’s enthusiastic support for DeJoy as a reason to oust him from the postal board.

“We need a Postal Service board of governors that is committed to replacing Mr. DeJoy with a postmaster general who will protect and strengthen the Postal Service, not undermine and sabotage it,” Sanders told the Post.

In a statement on Friday, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said he’s “tickled pink that two DeJoy enablers” are on the verge of being replaced.

“This action is a good thing for the Postal Service and, most importantly, a great thing for the American people,” he added.

Leaked text messages: Right-wing group coordinated with Trump for Jan 6 rally

Rolling Stone obtained text messages that show the coordination between Jan. 6 attackers of the U.S. Capitol and to former President Donald Trump’s White House.

According to the report, rally organizer Amy Kremer was focusing on food instead of what was happening down the street of her hotel at the U.S. Capitol. Among other things, Kremer is the founder of Women For America First and is a long-time tea party activist.

Kremer’s text messages made it clear that she was speaking with the White House for events that happened after Trump’s loss in November.

First, she hosted the March for Trump bus tour that would come to Washington to protest the president’s loss.

“For those of you that weren’t aware, I have jumped off the tour for the night and am headed to DC. I have a mtg at the WH tomorrow afternoon and then will be back tomorrow night,” wrote Kremer in messages to followers. “Rest well. I’ll make sure the President knows about the tour tomorrow!”

She went on to explain that she and her daughter Kylie seemed to indicate that they were in communication with the Trump team. Chris Barron, the spokesperson for the Kramers, claimed all of the messages that Rolling Stone has are fake news.

“You are printing things that are 100 percent factually untrue that we can prove are not true,” Barron said. “You are printing things that are absolutely, factually untrue and, beyond being factually untrue, for anybody who knows Amy are like hilariously preposterous.”

When Rolling Stone asked for specifics, Barron refused to answer, merely repeating that they disputed the report.

In another text, marked Dec. 13, 2020, Kramer told the group she was “still waiting to hear from the WH on the photo op with the bus.” She explained that she didn’t have the permits yet so they couldn’t tweet that the event would be at the Ellipse until it was confirmed.

“We are following POTUS’ lead,” Kylie then wrote.

A text message from Jan. 3 between activist Dustin Stockton and Kylie again made it sound as if there was blatant coordination. She told Stockton that handling rally credentials for VIP were being organized with a “combination of us and WH.”

Stockton’s fiance, Jennifer Lawrence, not the actress, asked for specifics about the press credentials. Kylie said that the Trump campaign was navigating that piece of it.

The House Select Committee for Jan. 6 subpoenaed documents from the Kremers but it’s unclear if the information was turned over.

The morning of Jan. 5, Kremer texted organizers, “we are about to be part of a pivotal and historic moment in our nation’s history.”

“Thank you for taking this journey with Women For America First. I love you all and am grateful for each of you,” she wrote. “Let’s go save the Republic!”

Ali Alexander was organizing another group that would protest at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

“Two sources who were involved in the Ellipse rally planning previously told Rolling Stone they had concerns Alexander’s event could turn violent due to his apparent ties to militia groups and its location directly outside the Capitol,” Rolling Stone explained. “Those sources claimed Alexander initially agreed he would not hold the ‘Wild Protest’ and would allow the Ellipse rally to be the only major pro-Trump event in D.C. on January 6.”

The leaked texts show that there were internal arguments over Kramer’s protest and Alexander’s.

“Ali trying to rearrange our women for america (sic) seats,” a volunteer wrote. “Stop that sh*t,” Stockton replied.

Kylie noted on a Dec. 31 text that the only reason that the Alexander group was hosting their own was that his group was made up of “all the people who aren’t invited or POTUS won’t be associated with. How do yall not get it? Seriously. Everyone needs to get off that damn bus because you are all going crazy focused on things that don’t matter.”

Then another volunteer asked the group why the details of the event hadn’t been tweeted. Kylie responded by saying that Ellipse events are extremely rare and that they necessitated more red tape. She noted that she was working with “Team Trump” to get everything prepared.

“I am very frustrated and feel like you guys have NO IDEA the hoops we have been jumping through 24-7 lately. Google events at the Ellipse. Send me pictures that you can find of anything other than the Christmas tree light or menorah lighting that are official WH events. THEY DONT HAPPEN,” Kylie wrote. “Y’all this has got to stop. The back and forth. If anyone doesn’t like what … team trump and I are doing then you don’t have to come to January 6th.”

Arguments continued within the group with Amy Kramer going so far as to admonish her daughter in public on the text chain for drinking.

“Kylie, you need to slow your roll on the wine RIGHT NOW,” Kremer wrote. “We have so much work to do and not enough time to get it done.”

She then told the group, “There will be no more drinking on this trip.”

Rolling Stone even got access to the food order that Kremer made for the organizers who met in her Willard’s hotel suite. A Jan. 6 order also included a bottle of champagne at the same time Kremer’s organization was denouncing the violence. Napa Tea Party coordinator Pam Silleman told The Uprising that she drank champagne in the Kremer suite as they watched the storming of the Capitol on television.

A March for Trump team member revealed that the suite was one of the nicest in the hotel and the Kramers demanded “fresh lightbulbs” and other special requests. The organizer suggested that the orders may have tipped off law enforcement.

“I got the call from someone at the FBI asking why I used my card at the Willard in DC. … It was an exorbitant bill. The suite they were in, it was ungodly expensive because Kylie had to have the presidential suite. That was what made her comfortable,” the team member told Rolling Stone. “She had to have her waffles every morning. She would check the lightbulbs at every hotel. She would have maintenance change the lightbulbs.”

Another organizer remembered over a dozen people in the suite with wine flowing.

“She was sh*tfaced that night Kylie Kremer was,” the person recalled.

The following day, some were so disturbed by the Jan. 6 violence they wanted to make a public statement.

“I don’t think it is wise for us to talk to the press or have a press conference. Our statement yesterday was strong enough and we need to leave it at that,” Amy Kremer wrote on January 7. “Nothing god (sic) will come from us talking to CBS or any other mainstream media outlet. I hope you guys understand and agree.”

Then something of a disaster happened. Kremer got locked in her bathroom and texted the whole group for help.

Manchin and Sinema pull billionaire GOP donors as they scale back Build Back Better

According to New York Times reporters Kenneth P. Vogel and Kate Kelly, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona are attracting some wealthy GOP donors.

“Even as Ms. Sinema and Mr. Manchin, both Democrats, have drawn fire from the left for their efforts to shrink and reshape (President Joe) Biden’s proposals,” Vogel and Kelly explain, “they have won growing financial support from conservative-leaning donors and business executives in a striking display of how party affiliation can prove secondary to special interests and ideological motivations when the stakes are high enough. Ms. Sinema is winning more financial backing from Wall Street and constituencies on the right in large part for her opposition to raising personal and corporate income tax rates. Mr. Manchin has attracted new Republican-leaning donors as he has fought against much of his own party to scale back the size of Mr. Biden’s legislation and limit new social welfare components.”

G.O.P. Donors Back Manchin and Sinema as They Reshape Biden’s Agenda

The two Democratic senators are attracting campaign contributions from business interests and conservativeshttps://t.co/pMyME84e8N pic.twitter.com/vgw3Ey1WgI

— Steven Greenhouse (@greenhousenyt) November 21, 2021

The blue wave of 2018 showed how big a tent the Democratic Party is. Progressive allies of Sen. Bernie Sanders such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York City and Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota were among the success stories of 2018, but so were Manchin (who was reelected) and Sinema — who has often described the late Sen. John McCain of Arizona as her political idol and has been on very friendly terms with his daughter, conservative GOP activist Meghan McCain. And with Democrats having only a razor-thin majority in the U.S. Senate, Manchin and Sinema have the power to make or break legislation.

“The stream of cash to the campaigns of Ms. Sinema and Mr. Manchin from outside normal Democratic channels stands out because many of the donors have little history with them,” Vogel and Kelly observe. “The financial support is also notable for how closely tied it has been to their power over a single piece of legislation, the fate of which continues to rest largely with the two senators because their party cannot afford to lose either of their votes in the evenly divided Senate.”

The legislation that the Times reporters are referring to is the Build Back Better Act of 2021, which recently passed in the U.S. House of Representatives and now goes to the U.S. Senate for consideration.

“Their influence has been profound,” Vogel and Kelly say of Manchin and Sinema. “The domestic policy bill, which would expand the social safety net and efforts to fight climate change, started out at $3.5 trillion and has been shrunk — mainly at the insistence of Mr. Manchin — to around $2 trillion; it could get smaller as the Senate takes up the version passed on (November 19) by the House.”

The Times reporters note that Stanley S. Hubbard, a billionaire Republican, made a donation to Sinema in September, and Kenneth G. Langone (a Republican billionaire and Wall Street investor) recently donated to Manchin.

According to Vogel and Kelly, “One Wall Street executive joked that in his industry, Ms. Sinema — who, as a young politician, once likened political donations to ‘bribery’ — was now referred to as ‘Saint Sinema’ for opposing most of Mr. Biden’s proposed taxes on the wealthy. She has, however, supported a 15% corporate minimum tax and other revenue-raising measures that will help pay for Mr. Biden’s legislative spending.”

Increased meat consumption leads to higher rates of serious disease, study finds

A new study provides more evidence that eating too much red meat and processed meat isn’t merely bad for you — it also makes it much more likely that you will develop several serious diseases.

Published in the medical trade journal BMJ, the paper focused on popular red meat and processed meat food items from animals like cows, pigs, lambs and goats. The researchers studied statistics on meat production and trade from the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization between 1993 and 2018. Specifically, they studied 154 countries, then recorded how the quantity of their red meat and processed meat consumption corresponded with non-communicable diseases (NCD) associated with that type of food. In particular, they calculated the proportions of deaths and years of life spent with a disability that could be attributed to diet among people at least 25 years old and were caused by coronary artery heart disease, diabetes or bowel cancer.

The conclusions were unambiguous: When you eat more red meat and more processed meat, you’re more likely to get sick.

Three-quarters of the 154 countries saw increases in death rates and years-of-life-with-a-disability rates that could be specifically attributed to the global meat trade, according to the authors. In raw human numbers, this means that there were 10,898 deaths between 2016 and 2018 that were able to be specifically connected to increases in red and processed meat consumption associated with increases in trade. That is an increase of almost 75 percent from the same figures for 1993 to 1995.

Within that same period, the global meat trade fueled increases in attributable deaths by 55 percent and attributable years-of-life-with-a-disability by 71 percent in developed countries, as well as increases of 137 percent and 140 percent in developing countries.

Overall the countries most impacted were located in Northern Europe, Eastern Europe, Oceania and the Caribbean.

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“The health impacts of red and processed meat trade have substantially risen in Northern and Eastern European countries, as well as island countries in the Caribbean and Oceania, which hinders international and national commitments to healthy diets,” the authors concluded. “Although many dietary guidelines have been suggested for both human health and environmental sustainability across the globe, few international initiatives and national guidelines for sustainable diets explicitly address the spillover impacts of meat trade across countries.”

This is hardly the first study to reveal that red meat consumption is bad for you. Another recent scientific analysis, which was presented on Monday at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2021, revealed that animal fat is linked to a higher risk of stroke while vegetable fat is linked to a lower risk. Its authors noted that even minor modifications in red meat and processed meat consumption could lead to “huge” improvements in public health. (The results, which were accumulated over 27 years by 117,000 health care professionals, has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.)

Similarly, a July study published in the scientific journal Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition reviewed the results of 1.4 million adults followed over a period of 30 years and found that eating 50 grams (1.75 ounces) more of red meat every day was associated with a nine percent higher risk of Ischemic heart disease; eating 50 grams more of processed meat every day was linked to an 18 percent increased risk. (The American Cancer Society recommends 85 grams or three ounces of meat.) By contrast, there was no associated increase linked to poultry consumption.

The notion that small alterations in one’s diet can have major health consequences has been reinforced by other studies. Last year a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association how replacing animal protein with plant protein can have a drastic impact on a patient’s health, cardiovascular or otherwise.

“The association between plant protein intake and overall mortality was similar across the subgroups of smoking status, diabetes, fruit consumption, vitamin supplement use, and self-reported health status,” the study’s co-authors explained. “Replacement of 3 percent energy from animal protein with plant protein was inversely associated with overall mortality (risk decreased 10 percent in both men and women) and cardiovascular disease mortality (11 percent lower risk in men and 12 percent lower risk in women).”

Researchers have found a simple way to reduce online hate speech

Online hate speech has been a problem since the earliest days of the internet, though in recent years the problem has metastasized. In the past five years, we have seen social media fuel far-right extremism, and more recently, galvanize Trump supporters to attempt a violent coup after he lost in 2020, based on misinformation largely spread online.

The January 6th riots prompted Twitter and other social media platforms to suspend Trump’s accounts, as the companies faced inquires over how they planned to balance protecting people from harm and propaganda with maintaining a culture that promotes free expression.

Given the limitations of digital platforms, it is reasonable to be skeptical of such efforts. After all, social media profits off of our communications, regardless of their nature; and social media companies lack some power in that they generally do not produce their own media, but rather collate and curate the words of others.

Yet a new study by New York University researchers found that a relatively simple move on behalf of social media site could have a huge impact on the effect and spread of hate speech. Their study involved sending alert messages online to Twitter users who had been posting tweets that constituted hate speech.

Published in the scholarly journal Perspectives on Politics, the study explored if alerting users that they were at risk of being held accountable could reduce the spread of hate speech. Researchers based their definition of “hateful language” on a dictionary of racial and sexual slurs. Then, after identifying 4,300 Twitter users who followed accounts that had been suspended for posting language defined as hateful, the researchers sent warning tweets from their own accounts which (though phrased in slightly varying ways) let them know that “the user [@account] you follow was suspended, and I suspect that this was because of hateful language.” A separate control group received no messages at all.

The study was conducted during a week in July 2020, amid Black Lives Matter protests and the COVID-19 pandemic — and thus when there was a significant amount of hate speech directed against Black and Asian Americans online.

The result? Twitter users who received a warning reduced the number of hate-speech tweets that they tweeted by up to 10 percent over the following week; if the warning messages were worded politely, users would do so by up to 15 or 20 percent. The study found that people were more likely to reduce their use of hateful language if the tweeter gave off a sense of authority. Since there was no significant reduction within the control group, this suggests that people will modify their bad behavior if they are told they may be held accountable, and will be more likely to view a warning as legitimate if it comes from someone who is credible and polite.

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Researchers added that these numbers are likely underestimated. The accounts used by the researchers had at least 100 followers, which lent them a limited amount of credibility. Future experiments could see how things change if accounts with more followers, or Twitter employees themselves, get involved.

“We suspect as well that these are conservative estimates, in the sense that increasing the number of followers that our account had could lead to even higher effects,” the authors wrote, citing other studies.

Unfortunately, one month after the warnings were issued, they had lost their impact. The tweeters went right back to tweeting hate speech at similar ratios as before the experiment started.

“Part of the motivation for this paper that led to the development of the research design was trying to think about whether there are options besides simply banning people or kicking them off of platforms,” New York University Professor Joshua A. Tucker, who co-authored the paper, told Salon. “There are a lot of concerns that if you kick people off of platforms for periods of time, they may go elsewhere. They may continue to use hateful language and other content, or they may come back and be even more angry about it. I think in some sense, this was motivated by the idea of thinking about the range of options that are here to reduce the overall level of hate toward each other on these platforms.”

Though social media sites operate as though they are free spaces for expression, curation of content on private platforms is not prohibited by the First Amendment. Indeed, the Constitution only prohibits the government from punishing people for the ways in which they express themselves. Private companies have a right to enforce speech codes on both their employees and customers.

A Swedish cardamom braid recipe passed down through several generations

Scandinavian lifestyle concepts are relentlessly commercialized in the U.S. these days, but it still takes me by surprise when I learn there’s a trendy term for practices my American family has passed down through several generations now removed from the old country. The Danes have hygge, of course, but my roots are Swedish, where the concepts of lagom (just the right amount) and mys (ultra-cozy) are hardwired into my sense of satisfaction and wellbeing, especially in the long dark months of winter.

My family isn’t exactly the most tradition-bound bunch. What we thought for years was my Grandma’s own Irish soda bread recipe, for example, turned out to be a handwritten copy of one she clipped from the New York Daily News. What an heirloom! (Here’s a more authentic recipe, if you’re looking for one.) But there’s one recipe handed down from our Swedish side — through four generations now — that epitomizes lagom, mys and family to me. You don’t need an elaborate feast or an extravagant party to feel connected to loved ones; slices of my Nana’s Swedish Cardamom Braid, with its subtle sweetness, shared over a strong cup of coffee, will warm you up just enough.

The Nana of Nana’s Swedish Cardamom Braid is Emma, my great-grandmother on my father’s mother’s side. She and her husband Karl hailed from Åland — an autonomous, demilitarized, politically neutral archipelago of Swedish speakers that technically belongs to Finland — and they settled in New Jersey in the very early 20th century. By the time my mother married my father, Emma’s grandson, in the 1970s, Emma was a widow in her 80s living in Jersey City close to her own daughter. Mom was a young mother, only 17 when my big brother was born, and she was a willing pupil of Nana’s and Grandma’s, learning how to cook thin Swedish pancakes with lingonberry jam for her own little family, writing down names in pencil on the backs of black-and-white photos of relatives from Åland posing somberly in front of farmhouses, safeguarding my father’s family knowledge to pass down to us — the next generation.

Nana died when we were babies, and Mom stopped Grandma — ever the practical Swede, who didn’t think anyone really needed an extra set of dishes — from donating Emma’s china, crystal and monogrammed flatware to the church rummage sale. My mother kept it all for us instead, moving the delicately packed boxes through many households and across two continents, pulling them out to serve holiday meals and reminisce about those early days when Nana was still with us. One of those holiday treats I grew up eating off Emma’s delicate, gold-rimmed, rose-bloomed Union K china was Swedish Cardamom Braid, a lightly sweetened, cardamom-spiced yeasty braided bread dotted with festive pärlsocker, or pearl sugar. (Finns make a similar braid called pulla, topped with toasted almonds.)

Once my mother passed Nana’s china to me, I found myself wanting to fill it with the tastes of childhood and family, and I asked her to walk me through how to make the Swedish Cardamom Braid, a recipe she has known by heart for decades. (I still have to consult my notes.) I don’t know if there’s anything inherently holiday-specific about this bread, but because I grew up eating it around Christmas — a time of year when fond memories feel particularly poignant, and making Emma’s recipes was one way my mother helped us stay connected to her — I associate it with this time of year. And because I tend to do most of my own baking around the holidays, I always try to make time to make several loaves of Nana’s Cardamom Braid — served on her china, of course.

I also grew up calling this Nana’s Coffee Braid, but not because coffee is an ingredient or flavor in the bread. That’s just how Emma liked to serve it — as part of a daily ritual Swedes call fika, taking a short break together to catch up over a cup of coffee and a bit of cake. Swedish Cardamom Braid is perfect for fika. It’s a casual and not too sweet treat that you don’t even need a knife to cut. Just give it a pull. Pour the coffee. Cue the cozy warm feelings of mys.

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This recipe makes two braids, so invite a friend over for fika — score a couple of fancy china cups from a thrift store if you aren’t the designated caretaker of heirloom china — and send your friend home with the second loaf. You can also throw in a compound butter to fancy up this homemade gift. I like a honey-orange butter made with local honey and orange zest. Just soften a stick of unsalted butter, then whip it in a mixer with 2 tablespoons of honey and the zest of one orange and pack in a mini Mason jar or chill in wax paper.

***

Braided Cardamom Bread (Erin Keane)

Nana’s Swedish Cardamom Braid

Yields

2 loaves

Prep Time

3 hours 20 minutes

Cook Time

25 minutes

Ingredients

1 package active dry yeast

1 cup milk

1/2 cup butter, plus extra for greasing

1/3 cup sugar

1 tsp. salt

2 tsp. cardamom

3 1/2 cups sifted flour, plus extra

1 egg and 1 egg white

Pearl sugar

Directions

Soften your yeast in 1/4 cup of lukewarm water.
While that stands for 5-10 minutes, combine the butter, sugar, salt and cardamom in a large bowl.
Scald the milk and pour into the bowl.
After the mixture cools, beat in 1 cup of sifted flour until smooth.
Stir in the yeast and mix well.
Add about 1 cup of sifted flour to the mixture and beat until very smooth.
Beat in an egg, then 1 1/2 cups of sifted flour, enough to make a soft dough. Your dough should have the consistency of a mud mask — slightly gloopy, sticky but spreadable.
Turn your dough onto a lightly greased, floured surface and rest it for 5-10 minutes.
Knead for 2-3 minutes. Nana didn’t have a stand mixer with a dough hook, so she did it by hand. Some traditions can be put aside for convenience, though.
Form your dough into a large ball and place it in a deep, greased bowl. Turn the dough over to bring the greased surface to the top. Cover it with a towel and let it stand in a warm spot (around 80º works) until the dough doubles. This should take about an hour.
When the dough has doubled, punch it back down. Pull the edges of the dough to the center and turn it completely over. Cover it back up for another one-hour rise.
When your dough has doubled again, divide it into six equal portions. Roll each one into a one-inch strip. Place three strips on a greased baking sheet and braid them, tucking the ends under.
Brush the braid with egg white and sprinkle with pearl sugar. Repeat with the other three strips.
Cover your braids for a final rise, about 45 minutes or until they double.
Bake at 375º for 25 minutes, or until the braids are lightly browned. Cool on racks and serve with coffee.

baking stories

Drinking is a huge part of Thanksgiving — here’s why I’m avoiding it

I stopped drinking in late 2018, the part of the year that leans toward Thanksgiving and the downhill cascade of holidays that follow it. I wasn’t dealing with an addiction, exactly, and therefore my experience of quitting alcohol was much easier than it is for many people: I didn’t like how alcohol made me feel anymore, and I was no longer getting any enjoyment from it to counterbalance its negative effects in my life. In short, I didn’t like drinking, so I stopped doing it. For this reason, I try to say that I stopped or quit drinking rather than that I got sober, to make a clear differentiation between the relatively straightforward process of letting go of a bad habit, and the far thornier and often lifelong struggle of a recovering alcoholic.

The truth is that I rarely miss drinking, and when I do, it’s occasion-based and never actually about the booze itself. There are certain events — almost always a celebration of some kind, whether an official holiday or just the festive exhale on a Friday afternoon at the end of a long week — that make me wish for the gesture of a drink, without the actual drink itself. Thanksgiving has been one of the times when I have had to work the hardest to re-create that gesture, underlining the holiday aspect of a holiday through other means.

It’s easy to see why Thanksgiving is a drinking holiday: It’s a day off in the middle of the week, right when the weather starts to get cold. It’s a holiday that starts in the morning, especially if you’re the one doing the cooking. It’s a day with no rules, except for consumption and abundance, and also one that’s frequently rather stressful. There are lots of reasons to drink on Thanksgiving; the day itself seems to demand it, both from the standpoint of celebration, and as a way of coping. It is, therefore, one of the more difficult days of the year to abstain from alcohol.

There are multiple ways in which alcohol acts as punctuation on Thanksgiving, across the long bend of the day toward its big meal and the food-coma afterparty. “Have a drink!” said my dad, watching me begin to collapse into panic over the timing of a tricky recipe. “You know what makes cooking more fun? A glass of wine in one hand while you do it,” he reiterated when I asked everyone to leave the kitchen so I could focus on a pumpkin pie with incredibly fiddly steps and timing instructions. I wanted to. I wanted to have the drink that would smooth out the experience, that would make it convivial, the glass of wine that I used to imagine would turn me into one of those people who could have a breezy conversation in the kitchen while cooking, keeping barely half an eye on the stove.

But I’m not that person, and part of the reason I stopped drinking is that alcohol, no matter how many times I tried, does not turn me into her. Not drinking was, for me, about facing up to these sorts of facts, admitting and then navigating the distances between the kind of person I wished I could be, and who I actually am. The glass of wine that turns a stressful task into one more aspect of a lazy day off in the middle of the week — yes, you have to get up early and cook a million things, but you can have a drink at 10 a.m. while you do it, this is a holiday — isn’t reachable for me. Creating that holiday feeling, the one where I remember that doing the cooking on Thanksgiving is ultimately a leisure activity, comes not from booze but from being honest with myself. I might not ever really be able to find cooking less stressful, but what I can do is admit that the stress is part of what I enjoy about it. I like doing a high-stakes task, and I like having it turn out well against all odds. The buzzy endorphin rush of getting everything into the oven early enough in the day to sit down on the couch and let my sweat dry while I watch the parade on TV is closer to what I was once looking for from booze than what booze ever actually offered me.

These punctuation marks continue through the day, and each time a similar sort of longing flares up in me. Thanksgiving is supposed to be about family, biological or chosen or thrown together. It is about welcoming people into your home, or being welcomed into theirs. It says come inside and get warm, this room is a place where you belong. That welcoming sense, that hosting emotion, is one that also often finds a companion in alcohol. It is gesturally related to offering someone a drink or accepting the offer of one, to starting out the afternoon with cocktails, to getting a little buzzed before the meal, setting in the cozy, day-off ambience. The drink is the paragraph break, marking out the difference between the workweek and the holiday, between the cold world outside and the party inside.

That party proceeds into a meal which often starts with toasts, which are the most obvious way in which alcohol is a punctuation mark, obligatory and superstitious. You’re supposed to drink to celebrate, to demonstrate gratitude, to say thank you to the host and whomever else did the cooking. If you did the cooking yourself, drinking the toasts and then drinking more during the ensuing meal is meant to be the reward for your hard work. The fact that you are allowed to get gently buzzed, or even totally wasted, was always, at least for me, proof of a job well done. I’m finished and nobody can ask anything of me, which I can prove by minorly or majorly incapacitating myself.

Later in the evening, alcohol keeps the party going after the meal. It’s a way to show people that they don’t have to go home yet or go back to their weekday lives. It’s still a holiday because we can keep drinking. Alcohol is part of the syntax of Thanksgiving, and it’s the fuel that gets us from one end to the other of it, at least for many people, at least in a certain, relatively common version of the holiday.

I have always loved the no-parents-no-rules feeling of a Friendsgiving, the big gatherings I’ve had and attended throughout the years in which a motley crew of people who for whatever reason couldn’t or didn’t want to be with their families on Thanksgiving gathered together in somebody’s home, re-creating the parts of the holiday we liked and leaving out the ones we didn’t, making up new traditions, or doing the old ones in a bigger and more over-the-top way, to prove that we could, that we did not need the structure and frame of our given families in order to have the holiday we had imagined, in order to celebrate the things we wanted to celebrate.

Perhaps, then, not drinking on Thanksgiving can be understood in a similar way. At least, this is how I have come to think of it, over the course of a few years of celebrating Thanksgiving without booze. There are lots of aspects of this holiday I don’t like at all, starting with the origin story itself, which is an execrable whitewashing of just one episode of colonial violence out of the many that make up America’s history. When I say “celebrating Thanksgiving,” the phrase itself makes me queasy; I have no desire to celebrate any of the history that this holiday was created in order to honor, or the Thanksgiving that is taught to American schoolchildren.

But I keep having a big, food-laden party on this day because there’s so much I love about the traditions that have grown up around it, the ones that can — at least I hope they can — be pried apart from the ugly story at its root. I think of this Thursday in November as a day to celebrate gratitude, abundance, and laziness, a day free from work and free from the ideas of scarcity that isolate us from one another. A warm room and a heaving table, at which everyone I love is welcome, is a holiday on its own.

Family is another obligation built into Thanksgiving, but after many years of Thanksgivings around tables that included no one to whom I was biologically related, I realized that that aspect was also optional and unnecessary, and for many people runs counter to the welcoming, grateful idea of the day. If family, and history, can both be sheared off of the definitions of this day, then so can alcohol.

The longing I have for a drink on Thanksgiving, just like any time I have a longing for a drink, isn’t really about that drink, in the same way that Thanksgiving isn’t really about family. What I want is welcoming, or gratitude, or the joy of feeling stressed out and important and then tired and accomplished. I want to celebrate the people I love, and make them feel celebrated. I want to feel like there is more than enough for everyone. I want to feel like it is warm inside while it is cold outside, and that a bright gathering of people, whether that’s two people or 20, and whether or not any of those people are related to one another, can defeat the encroaching winter, can raise up a celebration loud enough to drown all our worries for a day. Booze is, for many people, one way to get there, in the same way that family is, for many people, a way to feel embraced and brought in out of the cold. But these aren’t the only ways. Boozeless Thanksgiving is itself a celebration, a reminder that our holidays are self-made, and that it is in our power to change their meanings, to make them what we actually want from them, and not what we are told they should be.

Before you put the grill away for the winter, you’ve got to try these 6 seasonal vegetables

While many people think of grilling vegetables as being synonymous with summer, the cooking method is not seasonal — the charred flavor is irresistible all year long. You just have to know what in-season vegetables to pick.

“Getting the things that are more in-season are definitely going to be more flavorful and more nutrient rich for us,” said Jason Hawk, a chef-instructor at the Institute of Culinary Education. Here are six of his favorite picks for grilled colder-weather vegetables that are packed with flavor and nutrients.

Potatoes

“Grilling, in general, I’m typically looking for something more like firmer flesh, vegetables that are going to stand up to grilling,” Hawk said. “You don’t want anything too moist or too soft. That’s going to fall apart on a grill.”

That makes potatoes a good choice. He also recommends seasoning them beforehand — at least with salt and pepper — to bring out the flavors.

Carrots

As an everyday “super food,” carrots are a good source of fiber, vitamins and potassium. While they have a really pleasant sweetness when cooked plain, you should try Hawk’s method of marinating them to allow the carrots to take on additional flavor.

“I will go with a combination of oil, some form of acid — so that’s either vinegar or lemon juice — and then some herbs,” he said. “Whatever herbs you want to go into there to go with, whether that’s dry herbs or some fresh herbs.”

A nice seasonal mix would be olive oil, apple cider vinegar and some fine-trimmed rosemary.

Mushrooms

Marinating mushrooms is also recommended by Hawk. Note though that, unlike carrots, mushrooms are sponge-like so you want less marinating time. In particular, Hawk highly recommends working with portobello and oyster mushrooms because they are larger and fit on a grill more easily.

“You don’t want to usually grill small things that will fall through grills [and] that are harder to move around,” he said.

Cauliflower

Hawk described cauliflower as “a good cold weather crop.” Though you can spot cauliflower all year round, its peak season is actually from September through November. You can either season or marinate it before grilling to add more flavor.

Sweet Potatoes

The inherent sweetness makes this root veggie taste good even without any seasoning or marinating. But if you want to get more creative, as Hawk suggested, you can either look at different types of marinades or pair the sweet potatoes with similar root vegetables like parsnips, for example.

However, it’s best to avoid anything overly sugary, like honey. It caramelizes really quickly and has the potential to stick to the grill (this is true for sweet potatoes, but is a pro-tip for almost anything on the grill).

“I would probably avoid adding anything too sugary to marinate in my grilling just because the direct heat of that is going to char it up too quickly,” Hawk pointed out.

Butternut Squash

The nutty taste of this type of winter squash is going to spoil your taste buds. Hawk recommends really letting it take on some distinct grill marks. The slightly bitter char plays really nicely with squash’s inherent sweetness.

More recipes centered on elevating simple ingredients:

Ringo Starr’s MasterClass offers a student-focused approach to finding one’s own drumming style

As the pandemic has raged on lo these past few years, enterprising folks have found new ways to thrive at work and at home. Come to think of it, both of those places may be one and the same for a large swathe of the contemporary workforce. We’ve binge-watched and spring-cleaned ourselves into near-oblivion. And a lucky few have taken hold of their dreams, reclaimed a long-lost hobby or even taken on a new one.

Which brings us to the master class phenomenon, that rarefied world in which you study at the feet of the very best. This past October, MasterClass celebrated its seventh anniversary, a period in which it has taken the concept of the tutorial to new heights. Imagine studying acting with, say, Helen Mirren. Or writing with Joyce Carol Oates. Or cooking with Gordon Ramsay. With MasterClass, the celebrity professoriate seems almost limitless.

And this week, as we celebrate the much ballyhooed release of Peter Jackson’s multipart “Get Back” documentary, a new member of the faculty has stepped forward. And oh, my my, it’s Ringo Starr. Over the years, a kind of urban legend has emerged in which Ringo is somehow the lesser Beatle, as if he were the beneficiary of the world’s greatest lottery ticket when he landed the final spot in the vaunted Fab Four.

Love the Beatles? Listen to Ken’s podcast “Everything Fab Four.”

But in truth, his place in the Beatles was not only well-earned, but vital. And the lessons inherent in Starr’s MasterClass make this point indubitably clear. As the Beatles’ music demonstrates so resoundingly, Ringo’s driving beat propelled one magisterial song after another. He provided the foundation that will keep those songs in heavy rotation for eons. Think about it: without Ringo working behind the kit, Lennon and McCartney would never have become, well, Lennon and McCartney.

With his MasterClass, Starr brings his essential qualities as a drummer to life in a series of 12 lessons (and including a few famous musician guests such as Steve Lukather). To his great credit, Ringo deftly turns the tables on his personal story, which is a powerful tale, to be sure, focusing instead on the student. To that end, he takes the viewer on a tour — not merely concentrating on his talents, which are many — but rather, on the elements that he brings to each and every performance. The skills that aspiring drummers would do well to emulate.

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Starr devotes particular attention to assisting students in understanding the role of “feel” when working behind the kit. For Ringo, finding his way into a song has always been the hallmark of his efforts. To his way of thinking, each new composition is an opportunity for the drummer to find his or her voice in the song. Try to imagine the Beatles’ “Come Together” without Ringo’s innovative tom-tom roll. You can’t. His drumwork served to elevate an already great composition into a stupendous one.

At the outset of his MasterClass, Starr shrewdly vows not to transform his students into carbon copies of himself, but instead, to help them find and hone their own drumming styles. When you think about it, focusing his attentions on his audience is the most “Ringo” thing that Ringo does. It’s the very same generosity that he brought to the Beatles’ songs where, more often than not, he didn’t resort to fills or flash to make his presence known. As he reminds us during his MasterClass, the drummer’s essential role is to keep the beat. And when you learn how to do just that, you’ve taken your very first step towards playing like Ringo. And possibly finding yourself in the bargain.

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My best Thanksgiving prep trick comes from a highly unlikely source

What thrills you about Thanksgiving? Is it the menu-making? The wine pairings? The guest and playlist selections? Yes, all of the above for me. But I’d like to throw in one more: The scrum board making and monitoring.

Allow me to introduce you to my favorite, most efficient way to set up for a multi-course meal, which incidentally borrows some project management parlance. In its simplest form, a scrum board (also known as a sprint board) is a visual task board that many teams use to chart out and follow along the progress of one or more projects (“sprints”) from beginning to end. It can be a physical board or a digital one, but the function remains the same. At its most basic, the scrum board is divided into three categories:

To do
In progress
Done

And there can be additional stages in between. Tasks move through each of these categories until completion.

Now, how does this fit in with dinner? Very aptly, actually! Whether it’s for a birthday meal or a holiday feast like T-Day, the scrum board is a vital tool that keeps my husband and me organized and moving along so that we can spend time with our guests once the time comes. Here’s how we do it, and how you can replicate it to suit your own festivity’s needs.

What you’ll need

Post-it notes
Sharpie
Whiteboard or blank wall space
A can-do attitude

Scrum board how-tos

1. Dedicate a space

In our apartment, my husband and I use the narrow part of our kitchen wall as a makeshift scrum board, breaking down the components of what will need to get done before, during, and after a soiree via good old fashioned Post-its. The reason we opt for a physical space is because once the prepping and cooking get underway, your hands get dirty and wet — we find that moving tactile Post-its around is much easier than scrolling through our phones or navigating our laptops with caked fingers. If you’re inclined, you can also assign different color Post-its to the varying courses or elements of your party; it isn’t absolutely necessary, though. I would, however, recommend a fresh Sharpie because that just feels nice.

2. Read and break down recipes

Depending on the size of the party, we start the planning as far as a few weeks out. After we’ve chosen and/or read through the recipes, we re-read them carefully and parse out the to-dos on individual Post-its. These tasks drill down further than what a singular recipe instruction or seemingly straightforward task might indicate. For example, a directive to “prepare the salad” might be broken down to a few different Post-Its whose position on the board will inevitably vary: “Wash/spin lettuce,” “Make vinaigrette,” and “Toss salad.”

Also, by studying the recipes all together, we can see where we can be efficient and streamlined. For example, if multiple recipes call for preparing chopped onions or other aromatics, we can create a single Post-it for this task and just be sure to write out the amounts we’ll need for each recipe, ie: “Chop 2 cups of onions: 1) 1 cup for stuffing; 2) 1/2 cup for gravy; 3. 1/2 cup for soup.” Another alternative Post-it might be: “Prepare 2 onions: 1) 1 onion, chopped for stuffing; 2) 1 onion, quartered for stock,” etc.

3. Don’t forget the non-cooking tasks

There are a whole host of non-cooking to-dos waiting to be filled out. First, we start with the recipes and identify areas that will require attention that are related to cooking, but not the actual cooking, ie: “Heat oven,” “Rest turkey,” “Refrigerate cheesecake,” and “Chill wine.” Then we move onto tertiary areas, like preparing the tabletop and dining area. Such tasks can include: “Set table,” “Prepare serving ware,” “Vacuum,” “Take out trash and recycling (pre-party)” and “Take out trash and recycling (post-party).” This is a good time to really think through those tasks you tend to always forget until the last minute (see: “Buy more unscented candles” and “Refill toilet paper and hand soap”).

4. Set it up

At the top of the scrum board, above eye level, we line up our three categories from left to right: 1) “To Do”; 2) “In Progress”; 3) “Done.” Now that we’ve identified most of the tasks, both cooking- and non-cooking-related, we’re able to easily sort and/or group the Post-its on the “To Do” portion of the wall, whether by course, task, or other salient theme.

Photo by Hana Asbrink

5. Keep it movin’

As we slowly start to work through the left column of our “To Do” list, we try not to forget to move tasks into the middle “In Progress” section as soon as we begin them. Not only will this be a good physical act, it’s also nice to step back once in a while to really get a visual sense of how far we’ve come along in the prep. Don’t forget to document the journey on Instagram Stories as people will be interested and invested in your progress!

6. Enjoy the guests

Once the guests start arriving, we’re prepared to answer the myriad questions around what all these Post-its are doing up on the wall. We make them a drink (one for the chef, too!) and keep an eye that little visitors’ hands don’t accidentally start making their way around the wall. If there are small guests, give them their own Post-it pad (different color, preferably) and pen, and let them have at it.

Photo by Hana Asbrink

7. Pat yourself on the back

At the end of the long evening, we sit back and admire the now-empty first two columns. We find deep satisfaction in this moment. If we aren’t too tired, we load the first round of dishes in the dishwasher to make our morning a bit easier.

These days, we are content just to see and spend time with loved ones at all! It might take a minute to get back into pre-Covid-level entertaining, but it’s worth dusting off the Post-its for. I’d love to know your tried and true techniques for keeping the trains running during the busy holiday season; be sure to share them with us all below!

Buttermilk powder is the key to mess-free, super-tender turkeys

If you’ve wet-brined a chicken or Thanksgiving turkey, odds are you’re familiar with the concept of dairy as the base of that brining solution. The lactic acid in milk, yogurt , buttermilk, even feta helps tenderize the bird by breaking down protein walls. Though the result is incredibly moist meat, the dairy-brining process is messy, there’s no way around it. But what if I told you that the most tender buttermilk-brined turkey actually requires no liquid at all?

Meet the dry-buttermilk-brined turkey. You’ll mix powdered buttermilk — literally just a dehydrated version buttermilk — with salt and pepper, and rub it all over the skin.

In 2020, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat author Samin Nosrat adapted her book’s wildly popular buttermilk-marinated roast chicken recipe for a spatchcocked turkey in The New York Times. Indeed, it’s easier to place a butterflied bird in a bag of buttermilk than a whole turkey, but the fact remains that you still need quarts of buttermilk and a two-gallon bag. Now I genuinely don’t mind a project on the average evening. But on Thanksgiving, when I’m in the midst of cooking multiple other dishes, I want the simplest possible recipe with the highest quality result. With a dry-buttermilk-brined turkey, the only equipment needed is a sheet pan — and cleanup truly couldn’t be easier.

Recipe: Dry-Buttermilk-Brined Turkey

When applied to turkey (or chicken for that matter — yes, I tested it with chicken too!) dry buttermilk acts exactly like its liquid counterpart. The lactic acid, still present in the dehydrated product, works with the salt to tenderize and season the meat. Once roasted, the sugars in the powder begin to caramelize, rendering a glistening, deeply browned skin. Whichever size bird you plan to brine, use about 1 tablespoon of dry buttermilk, ½ tablespoon kosher salt (I use Diamond Crystal), and ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper per pound of meat.

One thing feels important to note: I roast all turkeys (and chickens) directly on sheet pans, not on a roasting rack. Though you may think a roasting rack is the secret to crispy poultry skin, it’s not. In fact. There really isn’t a way to roast a whole bird and get crispy skin — there’s simply too much steam in the oven and juice in the meat when cooked low and slow, the best way to yield tender meat. You’ll have a better chance of slightly-more-crisp skin by letting the turkey dry brine in the refrigerator, uncovered, for a full 24 hours, and drying any juices that leach out during the process before heading into the oven. Could you still make this turkey in your beloved roasting pan? Why not! But ultimately, for crisp skin, you’ll need to sear poultry parts in a skillet on the stove, then finish in the oven, and that’s simply a whole other thing.

Considering that dry buttermilk, which is available online and at many supermarkets, has an incredibly long shelf life (we’re talking years, if not more) even after opening, and can be used exactly the same as the liquid, I personally tend to keep a container in the fridge at all times. So if you don’t use it all with this recipe, simply swap it in according to the package directions in any recipe that calls for buttermilk. When it comes to brand, any brand of buttermilk powder will do (and there are dozens!), but I’m partial to Sacco, Bob’s Red Mill, and King Arthur Flour.

The line between right-wing trolling and violence is collapsing

After the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse on Friday afternoon, right-wing trolls — many of whom are elected members of Congress — were ecstatic at this prime opportunity to trigger the liberals. Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Madison Cawthorne of North Carolina, and Paul Gosar of Arizona — all Republicans more interested in trolling than governance — made showily public offers of an internship to Rittenhouse. Cawthorne even took it to the next level, instructing his supporters to “be armed and dangerous.” Never one to be out-trolled, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia let loose with some truly unhinged tweets about “radical Marxists” who are trying to start “a race war,” proclaiming that “gun rights are the only thing holding back the Communist Revolution the Democrats are waging.” And on the Senate side, Ted Cruz of Texas attacked the “corrupt corporate media,” skillfully targeting the very people he needs to amplify his message and get that sweet trolling attention.

Right-wing pundits joined in on all the gleeful trolling, as well.

Ann Coulter tweeted a meme equating Rittenhouse with superheroes, and Donald Trump Jr., forever trying and failing at being a Twitter wit, wrote, “The Rittenhouse jury just gave Biden his second colonoscopy of the day.” Multiple right-wingers on social media wrote songs to honor Rittenhouse. On Friday, popular and trollish YouTuber Steven Crowder celebrated the verdict by insisting, “it’s so wrong that we teach young men that violence is immoral,” and encouraged viewers to follow in Rittenhouse’s lead by taking up arms against Black Lives Matter protesters. Tucker Carlson, King of the Trolls, will host Rittenhouse on his Fox News show and insisted that he’s “not a racist person.” This claim is impossible, of course, to square with the photos taken earlier this year in a Wisconsin bar where Rittenhouse partied with Proud Boys and flashed white supremacist signs at the camera.

All of these provocations worked as intended: They got attention and garnered liberal outrage. “Liberal tears” are the most valuable commodity in Republican circles these days, and nothing brings forth tears like senseless violence. For those who subsist on liberal outrage, the dunks were easy and plentiful, because it turns out those silly liberals really do make frowny faces over the celebration of political violence.

The right is reacting to this verdict like they’re sports fans whose team just vanquished a rival team in the Superbowl. The excitement on the right was palpable, but also measurable. As an analysis from Raw Story shows, Facebook exploded with conservative celebrations of the verdict, with “18 of the top 20 most engaged page links in the world” originating with conservative American pages. And the pleasure of the moment was explicitly tied to joy over how upset liberals — or at least those perceived as liberals — were. Right-wing figurehead Dan Bongino, who is reliably one of the most popular figures on Facebook, posted a link claiming Chuck Todd “nearly cries” after the verdict. The post garnered over 3,000 shares and 68,000 reactions, the majority of which were the “laughing” emoji.

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It’s not just that this behavior is tasteless. It also illustrates how violence is the logical endpoint of the right-wing obsession with trolling liberals. If your goal is provoking a reaction, then violence is surely the most efficient way to do it. Unlike mean tweets and “f*ck your feelings” T-shirts, violence simply cannot be ignored. By celebrating this violence, congressional Republicans and right-wing media are openly inviting more of it, because the reward of upsetting people on the left is just so delicious. The distinction between right-wing trolling and violence is collapsing.

To be certain, the escalation of violence-as-trolling has been going on for awhile now. As Eric Boehler wrote in his Press Run newsletter, “The flashpoints of Republicans and conservatives promoting political violence have become ceaseless, to the point of frightening normalization,” to the point where polling data suggests “that as many as 21 million Americans think that the use of force is justified to restore Donald Trump to the presidency.”

Much of the month has been dominated by a story about Gosar tweeting out a fan-made video that depicts him murdering President Joe Biden and Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. The Democratic-controlled House responded to this unsubtle threat by censuring Gosar and stripping him of his committee assignments, but nearly all Republicans stood by Gosar. The excuse used to defend Gosar’s behavior was that he was just trolling liberals for fun. Gosar’s digital director even put out a statement saying, “Everyone needs to relax. The left doesn’t get meme culture. They have no joy.”

However, right-wing “joy” is not mutually exclusive from violence.

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Gosar’s tweet was both trolling to get a reaction from the left and a threat of violence. Trolling is a crucial aspect to both amplifying violent threats and helping conservatives hype each other up for more violence. That’s why Gosar doubled down by retweeting the video minutes after being censured for it. The message is clear: If you love outraging the left, then violence is the swiftest way to do it.

Even Rittenhouse’s behavior prior to killing two people at a Kenosha, Wisconsin protest last year embodies this troll logic. As Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times observed, Rittenhouse’s presence at the protest was clearly a provocation. Rittenhouse carried a showy AR-15 “in part because the rifle “looked cool,” and the gun “seemed to invite conflict.” Popular right-wing troll Drew Hernandez was at the protest that night, and testified in court that, when some protesters saw Rittenhouse and other men with guns, “they immediately attempted to agitate them, to try and start some conflict with them.”

In other words, Rittenhouse’s AR-15 functioned both as a troll and as a deadly weapon. The distinction between trying to “trigger the liberals” and actually pulling the trigger on liberals collapsed completely the night Rittenhouse shot three people, killing two. He certainly got what every right-wing troll wants, which is an outraged and dramatic reaction from people he perceived as liberals. The result was two dead bodies — and another opportunity for GOP leaders to troll some more, further reinforcing the idea that, for those who live for triggering the liberals, nothing works better to get a reaction than actual violence.

Pence vs. Trump? Former veep opposing “extreme” Trump-backed GOP primary challengers

Former Vice President Mike Pence vowed last week to support sitting Republican governors against primary challengers backed by former President Trump, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Trump has raged in recent months against Republican governors who he believes were insufficiently loyal, or did not do enough to help him overturn his election loss, backing primary challenges to former close allies like Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. But Pence, himself the former governor of Indiana, told the Republican Governors Association (RGA) last week that he plans to back sitting governors that drew his former running mate’s ire.

“I want to be clear,” Pence told the group in a private speech, according to the Journal. “I’m going to be supporting incumbent Republican governors.”

Though Pence has consistently defended Trump since leaving office — without directly discussing his refusal to block certification of the Electoral College votes on Jan. 6 — there is an undeniable tension between the two camps as both reportedly mull potential 2024 presidential bids. Trump has not done much to repair the strained relationship, even defending Capitol rioters who chanted “Hang Mike Pence” in a recent interview.

Democrats say the intra-party discord could help them in a cycle where Republicans are otherwise poised to expand their power.

“These extreme primary challengers are going to push Republican governors further to the right and out of the mainstream,” David Turner, a spokesman for the Democratic Governors Association, told the Journal. “The political environment is only going to improve for Democrats.”

Taylor Budowich, a spokesman for Trump, told the outlet that the former president will continue to be an “active and defining voice in gubernatorial races” against “radical Democrats” and “weak Republicans.”

“Just like in cycles previous, successful Republican candidates must earn the support of President Donald J. Trump,” Budowich said.

But some Republican incumbents are instead trying to distance themselves from Trump. A growing number of Republicans view Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin’s victory earlier this month, in which the Republican refused to campaign with Trump or endorse his false claims about the 2020 election, as a sign that they don’t need the former president’s support to win.

The RGA, which spent $14 million backing Youngkin, plans to spend millions to fend off primary challenges to incumbents, according to the Journal. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican who recently dealt a blow to the party’s hopes of regaining the Senate by announcing he would run for re-election rather than against Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan, also said he would back incumbents and criticized the Trump faction’s campaign to unseat sitting conservatives. He even left open the door to a potential 2024 primary campaign against Trump in an interview with The New York Times.

“When the pandemic hit, no one had ever experienced anything like that,” Sununu told the Journal. Republican governors “did a phenomenal job and to try to play politics after that — with those records of success — is a shame.”

Trump has frequently groused about so-called RINOs, or “Republicans in name only,” for a variety of reasons. None has drawn more anger than Kemp, whom Trump blames for resisting his demands to help overturn Joe Biden’s narrow victory in Georgia. Though numerous recounts and probes failed to find any evidence of Trump’s baseless claim that the election was stolen, Trump has pushed former Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., who lost his own runoff race in January after Trump spread conspiracy theories that the state’s elections were rigged, to run against Kemp in next year’s Republican primary.

Kemp lamented in an interview with the Journal that the attacks from Trump have undermined his conservative credentials, even after he signed draconian new voting restrictions inspired by the former president’s conspiracy theories and challenged Biden’s vaccine mandates.

“It’s insane,” Kemp told the Journal.

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The former president is also backing former TV anchor Kari Lake, a rabid conspiracy theorist who has echoed his false claim that the election was stolen, to replace outgoing Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, who also rejected Trump’s demands to help him overturn the results of the election. Ducey, who cannot run again due to term limits, told the Journal that he may “get involved” in the primary as well.

Trump recently threw his support behind Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, who has feuded with Gov. Brad Little, a fellow Republican, over COVID policies, and even tried to seize power and overrule Little’s decisions while he was out of the state.

Trump is also backing former Rep. Geoff Diehl, a former Massachusetts co-chair of Trump’s campaign who lost a 2018 Senate bid against Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., by 25 points, in a potential primary against Gov. Charlie Baker, a moderate Republican and frequent Trump critic. Rep. Jim Renacci, R-Ohio, a Trump loyalist, has launched a primary bid against Gov. Mike DeWine, another Republican who has criticized Trump and blamed him for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

A new name to surface on Trump’s hit list is Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, according to the report. Trump blames Ivey — a staunchly conservative Republican — for a state commission decision that prevented him from holding a rally last July at the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park. The commission said it canceled the rally because the facility, which houses a World War II battleship and other historic military aircraft, cannot be used for political events. A spokesperson for Ivey denied that she had anything to do with the decision. But Trump has met with Lynda Blanchard, who served as his ambassador to Slovenia — the home country of Melania Trump, to drops a possible endorsement if she drops her potential U.S. Senate campaign and runs against Ivey instead.

Members of the RGA are increasingly concerned that Trump’s revenge tour could hurt their chances in upcoming races.

“It’s outrageous, unacceptable and bad for the party,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, the former RGA chairman, told the Times, labeling the former president’s retaliation campaign “Trump cancel culture.”

Read more on Donald Trump’s “revenge campaign” within the Republican Party:

Republicans splinter: It’s Trump versus the GOP establishment — again

Two prominent conservative voices have finally decided they’ve had enough and quit their gigs at Fox News.

Stephen Hayes, author of “The Connection: How al Qaeda’s Collaboration with Saddam Hussein has Endangered America,” and Jonah Goldberg of “Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change” fame announced that they resigned from the flagship right-wing network over “Patriot Purge,” Tucker Carlson’s fraudulent “documentary” about January 6th. I guess everyone has their breaking point, although it’s kind of hard to believe it was Carlson’s scurrilous project that did it rather than the event itself.

Considering their body of work, however, I suppose the news about Goldberg and Hayes is not too surprising. Goldberg told Ben Smith of the New York Times that “they had stayed on at Fox News as long they did because of a sense from conversations at Fox that, after Mr. Trump’s defeat, the network would try to recover some of its independence and, as he put it, ‘right the ship.'” Apparently, they were under the inexplicable impression that Fox wanted to change course — which is kind of hilarious. After all, their biggest star, Tucker Carlson, has been pushing increasingly extremist rhetoric and philosophy on his show for months.

Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp runs Fox News, spoke to shareholders last week and pointedly said that Donald Trump should get over the 2020 election — which didn’t stop Trump from appearing on the network on Sunday night to whine about the 2020 election. Neither does it seem that Murdoch is taking any action to rein in top talent like Carlson whose “Patriot Purge” just adds fuel to the Big Lie. As Bloomberg’s Timothy O’Brien observed, perhaps the patriarch has actually handed over those reins to his son, Lachlan, who seems to be simpatico with the Fox flamethrowers and has backed Carlson to the hilt throughout his descent into far-right extremism.

Murdoch isn’t the only one who wants to have it both ways.

I wrote about Chris Christie’s rather pathetic attempt to carve out a “middle lane” for himself in a GOP primary, extolling Trump’s allegedly super-impressive accomplishments while trying to distance himself from the Big Lie. He’s also working hard to stay in the good graces of the Fox flamethrowers, so he winds up on the opposite side of people like Hayes and Goldberg. Watching Chris Christie walk that tightrope is not a pretty picture.

Meanwhile, we have a bunch of Republican governors who met this past week for their annual confab toasting their newest member, Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, while, according to Jonathan Martin of the NY Times, meeting furtively behind the scenes to privately gripe about Donald Trump’s “cancel culture.” They were referring, of course, to his penchant for gleefully bringing the hammer down on any Republican who looks at him sideways.

The head of the Republican Governors Association, Steve Ducey of Arizona, pledged to all the incumbents up for reelection in 2022 that the group would back them regardless of Trump’s endorsement, which is probably not all that reassuring. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that has the Youngkin victory putting Trump on the defensive since Youngkin didn’t openly embrace the former president, Trump sees the Republican victory in Virginia as a personal vindication:

Mr. Youngkin’s success in a campaign in which his Democratic opponent relentlessly linked him to Mr. Trump has emboldened the former president to further tighten his grip on the party, one whose base remains deeply loyal to him.

Those poor GOP governors all thought it would show him that he needs to stay on the down low so the party can win. Naturally, Trump took the opposite lesson. And now he’s feeling his oats:

Moving beyond the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him this year, Mr. Trump is now threatening to unseat lawmakers who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill. He taunts Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell as an “old crow” on a near-daily basis, while demanding that Mr. McConnell be removed from his leadership post. And, most alarming to the clubby cadre of Republican governors, Mr. Trump has already endorsed two challengers against incumbent governors and is threatening to unseat others.

For all the hand-wringing and pearl-clutching over the Democrats’ chances in 2022, the desperate grasping at straws taking place among Republicans as they head into another election season with Donald Trump dominating their party is a story that should not be ignored. As Jonathan Martin quipped on Twitter:

The whole RGA meeting-Trump vengeance campaign is a nice metaphor for the GOP:

Hogan aside, old guard determined to throw on lanyard + sport coat, have a cocktail to celebrate @GlennYoungkin —while averting gaze from the Maga tank division rolling up Camelback to the Biltmore

— Jonathan Martin (@jmart) November 21, 2021

And needless to say, the MAGA army is already gathering on the battlefield for 2024.

The Atlantic’s Peter Nicholas attended the same meeting and reports that one of Trump’s former advisers has a plan to make Trump back down: Teach him about Adlai Stevenson.

“I think that would resonate. Trump hates losers,” the former advisor told Nicolas that he plans to explain to Trump that if he loses in 2024 he would be like Stevenson, one of history’s serial losers.

That’s the plan. I’m not kidding.

Apparently, some people on this planet have not yet discovered that Trump doesn’t believe he lost in 2020 and will never admit to losing anything ever. He believes that he can create his own reality, simply by saying what he wants people to believe over and over again. Even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who you’d think would know better, told Nicholas, “I don’t think he wants to risk losing twice. Once, you can argue about the outcome. Twice, it becomes a repudiation.” Actually, the twice impeached president who made a spectacle of himself on the world stage, played politics with a deadly pandemic, left the economy a smoldering wreck and incited a violent insurrection was rightfully repudiated in no uncertain terms by a majority of voters. The fact that he’ll probably be given a mulligan after that dreadful performance is a sad comment on the Republican Party.

I suppose it’s good news that two more Trump skeptics have finally reached their limit and walked away from Fox News. And yes it’s a positive step that some Republican governors and other officials are criticizing Trump among themselves. But let’s not pretend that this is some kind of trend. We just watched the entire GOP House caucus gather in support of a violent., white nationalist nut, Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, and then Trump immediately endorsed him for re-election. It’s obvious which way the wind is blowing.

Two longtime Fox News contributors quit over Tucker Carlson special: “It will lead to violence”

Two Fox News contributors have quit their jobs over host Tucker Carlson’s documentary on the January 6 Capitol riot, fearing that the film would lead to “violence.”

Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg expressed their grievances in an open letter on Monday, writing: “Fox News still does real reporting, and there are still responsible conservatives providing valuable opinion and analysis. But the voices of the responsible are being drowned out by the irresponsible.”

“A case in point: Patriot Purge, a three-part series hosted by Tucker Carlson,” the duo added.

Hayes and Goldberg – former editors at the Weekly Standard and The National Review – reportedly began mulling their resignations back in late October, when the film’s trailer was first released.

“I’m tempted just to quit Fox over this,” Goldberg wrote to Hayes at the time.

“I’m game,” Hayes responded. “Totally outrageous. It will lead to violence. Not sure how we can stay.”

The film was released on Fox News’ online streaming service just days after the exchange.

Patriot Purge, Carlson’s first film debut, sets out to explore the Capitol riot through the lens of various outlandish right-wing conspiracies, entertaining the idea, for example, that the insurrection was an FBI-led false-flag operation designed to tarnish the reputation of the conservative movement.

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“It’s basically saying that the Biden regime is coming after half the country and this is the War on Terror 2.0,” Goldberg told NPR. “It traffics in all manner of innuendo and conspiracy theories that I think legitimately could lead to violence. That for me, and for Steve, was the last straw.”

Hayes echoed his colleague: “It’s a narrative that’s contradicted by certainly the vast collection of legal documents charging those who participated in January 6th, the broad reporting by a wide variety of news outlets on what happened on January 6th then and in the time since, and contradicted in part by Fox News’s own news site and the reporting that people on the news side have done.”

Carlson, for his part, told The New York Times that Hayes and Goldberg’s resignations are “great news,” adding: “Our viewers will be grateful.”

Fox News’ release of “Patriot Purge” in many ways solidifies the channel’s ideological alignment with Donald Trump, who has repeatedly downplayed the insurrection, as the Times’ Ben Smith suggests. Fox’s allegiance to the former president was recently questioned after it was reported that Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch privately casted Trump as a bygone figure in the GOP.

“The current American political debate is profound, whether about education or welfare or economic opportunity,” Murdoch said in a shareholder meeting last week, according to Deadline. “It is crucial that conservatives play an active, forceful role in that debate, but that will not happen if President Trump stays focused on the past. The past is the past, and the country is now in a contest to define the future.”

Back in October, Carlson also received criticism from his colleague, Geraldo Rivera, who suggested that “Patriot Purge” might do more to “provoke, rather than illuminate.”

After the Rittenhouse verdict: Will “white freedom” spell the ruin of America?

“White freedom” could bring the ultimate ruination of America. By that term, I do not simply mean “white privilege” or “racist” behavior that violates social norms and is considered unacceptable or aberrant. White freedom is much more powerful than that: it is a core organizing principle of American society.

In his recent book “White Freedom: The Racial History of an Idea,” Tyler Stovall explains this concept as “the belief (and practice) that freedom is central to white racial identity, and that only white people can or should be free.”

Contrary to what many Americans would like to believe, the country’s founding was not a project dedicated to universal human rights. Instead, America’s “democratic” experiment was based on a racialized understanding of democracy and of who counts as fully human — and who does not.

In the 18th century, full citizenship rights and “democracy” were exclusive to white men who owned property. As Charles Mills, Edmund Morgan and other scholars have documented, Black and other nonwhite people were the boundary against which “democracy” and white freedom were to be demarcated and built upon. In his 1999 book “The Racial Contract,” Charles Mills summarizes this as: “Whiteness is not really a color at all, but a set of power relations.”

White freedom is everywhere in America. Black and brown people (and some white people as well) condemn it as a manifestation of the lies which undercut any claims that America is an “exceptional” nation and the world’s greatest democracy.

Many or most white people, however, take white freedom for granted and are likely to deny its very existence, even as they remain extremely protective of its power. This is but one example of the lies that are central to race itself, and the transhistorical project of making and remaking whiteness.

The trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, and his acquittal on all charges, offers one of the most recent high-profile examples of how white freedom functions in America.

Last August, Rittenhouse, who was then 17 years old, traveled across state lines, armed himself with an AR-15 assault style rifle, joined forces with a local militia group and put himself in the middle of the civil disturbances caused by the police shooting of a black man named Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Rittenhouse shot three men, killing two of them, allegedly in self-defense. When he attempted to surrender to police they ignored him, and then he was cleared of all legal responsibility in a criminal trial whose judge was blatantly biased in his favor, and based on gun laws and definitions of self-defense that advantage white defendants. He is already a right-wing media star, and will likely soon become a wealthy celebrity.

Consider the fact that Rittenhouse was not shot dead by the police as he walked down the street with an assault rifle, immediately after shooting three people in the street. That is an iconic illustration of white freedom’s power over life and death in America. White vigilantism is perhaps the ultimate expression of white freedom.

I asked Tyler Stovall to share his thoughts about the role of white freedom in the Rittenhouse saga. He responded by email:

The recent acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse by an essentially white jury for murdering two unarmed men simply underscores the widespread belief in the fragility of white privilege and the overwhelming need to preserve it. Rittenhouse’s argument that he acted in self-defense proved compelling, even though it was not backed up by any substantial proof, and the jury simply ignored the facts that he chose to enter an area armed with a high-powered rifle and became the only person to kill another human being that night. Rittenhouse’s trial became a textbook case of the need to preserve white freedom, to prevent a tearful young white man from going to jail even though he permanently deprived others not only of their liberty but of their lives. …

One only need imagine what would have happened if Kyle Rittenhouse were a young Black man who claimed to have shot others in self-defense. Consider the case of Tamir Rice, shot by Cleveland police in 2014 at the age of 12 for holding a toy rifle. The claim of the police, upheld by the judicial system, was that his murder was justified because he presented a possible threat. If Rittenhouse were Black his victims would doubtlessly be seen as justified in attacking him, in self-defense, because he held a rifle (a real one), and Rittenhouse would most likely have been convicted of murder. But Rittenhouse is white, and self-defense works in his case because it is ultimately a defense of white power, white privilege and white freedom.

Rittenhouse’s actions were easily avoidable: If he had simply stayed home, no one would have died in Kenosha that night. That human tragedy also offers an example of the ways white freedom is central to a larger dynamic of escalating right-wing political violence and other threats to American democracy.

The ongoing Republican coup and Jim Crow 2.0 assault on multiracial democracy is an act of white freedom, in which Black and brown people’s civil rights are being usurped as part of a larger plan to create a new American apartheid system. Moreover, white freedom is so powerful that these fascistic attacks on multiracial democracy are largely legal — or at least occur on the debatable margins of legality — and cannot simply be corrected by enforcing existing laws.

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The coup attempt and attack on the Capitol last January by Donald Trump’s followers was also an example of white freedom. The insurrectionists felt emboldened in their violence, overt racism and anti-democracy fervor because they believed, with good reason, that white freedom granted them the “right” to act with impunity.

Trump and the other plotters who planned and executed the events of Jan. 6 — and many other aspects of the ongoing coup against American democracy — have not been punished for their evident or likely crimes. For the most part, the foot soldiers arrested in the wake of Jan. 6 have received relatively light sentences for their crimes against democracy and the rule of law.

All of these events are part of a much larger campaign against democracy, which law enforcement and national security experts warn may lead to a violent insurgency against the Biden administration, the Democrats and other groups targeted by the far-right “patriot” movement. This too is another example of white freedom.

Black and brown people (or “leftists” of any race, for that matter) would never be allowed to operate with such impunity, or with reasonable assurance that they would face no serious punishment. They certainly would not be described in empathetic detail by voices in the mainstream news media as people who were “angry,” “upset,” “confused” and likely “misunderstood.”

White freedom is also exemplified by America’s criminogenic politics — which go back well before the Age of Trump — in which the wealthiest individuals (nearly all white) and largest corporations (nearly all controlled by white men) can act with impunity, concealing their wealth and income to avoid taxes, destroying the environment and evading virtually any responsibility for their individual and collective crimes against society.

White freedom also manifests through collective narcissism. The Republican death cult repeatedly emphasizes the language of “freedom” to encourage its followers not to wear masks and to refuse vaccination against COVID-19, not merely risking their own lives but endangering public health on a grand scale.

Across a range of public policies, today’s Republican Party and the larger “conservative movement” have advocated and enacted laws that have increased human misery and loss of life among the American people, as well as around the world. White freedom permits, encourages, enables, protects and normalizes such antisocial and sadistic behavior.

Neofascism may represent the final form of white freedom in American democracy. Right-wing political violence and other forms of terrorism are becoming normalized. The Republican-fascist movement led by Trump is a political cult prefaced upon using white freedom to attack its “enemies” with impunity. Those who are deemed inferior, according to the ideology of white freedom, are to be denied any fundamental human rights or liberties.

Loyalty to white freedom, and the retrograde reactionary values and politics it represents, empowers a wide range of antisocial and anti-human behavior against marginalized individuals and groups, not always based on race, color or ethnicity. White freedom by definition is exclusionary, and this form of “freedom” is defined by white people’s ability to define and limit the freedom of others

Leonce Gaiter, who has written extensively on questions of race, masculinity and violence, offered this additional context for understanding white freedom and American history, in an email to Salon:

When white supremacy is challenged, white reaction follows. Reconstruction brought reclamation. The ’60s and ’70s rights revolutions brought Reagan. Obama’s election brought the tea party and Trump.

In this nation’s 245 years, African Americans have enjoyed statutory equal rights for only 56 — since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Think about it. White supremacy and forms of apartheid have been the status quo in this nation for 77% of its history. The very ideas of black equal rights and full black citizenship are shockingly new. This is something we dare not forget. After Obama’s election, the post-racial nonsense flew in all directions, flung by white pundits desperate to forget American history. Instead, we got Trumpism and a Republican Party cheering racist violence to maintain white supremacy.

To a large percentage of the white population, their “white identity” can be reduced to “white supremacy.” There is no “white” American identity because there is no aspect of American “white” identity that Black and brown Americans have not overtly impacted (speech, art, letters, music, dance, morality, notions of freedom) — save white supremacy. “White” is a null identity — it was created in opposition to those it wished to exploit. It does not celebrate what you are. It insists on what you are not. Thus the identity is so fragile that any perceived threat requires the appearance of long guns.

Gaiter concluded:

The Rittenhouse trial and verdict — a judge coddling the white man on trial for murdering white men seen as black allies — an overwhelmingly white jury, white “self-defense” as an excuse for murdering men after overtly seeking violent confrontation… it’s all America’s normal. We are not better than this. It is a large part of who we have always been. Supposed “moderates” and liberals have never had the stomach to sever the diseased limb of white race hatred from the body politic. Until they do, there will always be a Kyle Rittenhouse. His story is the bulk of America’s.

Historians have observed that America’s founding rests upon two crimes against humanity: The genocide against First Nations peoples and white-on-Black chattel slavery. White freedom was a partner in those crimes against humanity, and was largely defined by them.

America in the 21st century faces an existential struggle for the future of its democracy and society. Matters are becoming so dire that if seems conceivable the country could face a second Civil War. In this struggle for America’s future, the neofascists are carrying the banner of white freedom.

On the other side are those Americans who believe in a true “We the People” multiracial democracy. These two forces cannot logically be reconciled. Unfortunately, the Democrats and other Americans who hope to redeem and renew democracy are consistently on the defensive. To defeat white freedom, we can no longer downplay it or deny its existence. We must name it, recognize it and confront it directly, before it devours us all.

More from Salon on resurgent white supremacy in the Age of Trump:

Arizona and West Virginia would win big from BBB: Are Manchin and Sinema paying attention?

Arizona and West Virginia would stand to gain a great deal from President Biden’s Build Back Better package but holdout Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin — the two “centrist” Democrats who represent those states — still haven’t committed to supporting the plan, even after extracting major concessions.

On Friday, the House passed Biden’s $1.75 trillion package, including climate measures, health care and affordable housing investments, and child care funding. But the bill still faces major changes in the Senate, where Manchin and Sinema have led the charge to gut Biden’s initial $3.5 trillion proposal. Sinema hinted that she still may not be on board with the House version of the bill, telling The Washington Post that it was “not the agreement the president put out in his framework.” Manchin has raised “concerns” for months about the size of the bill, the scope of proposed policy changes and the risks of inflation, calling for the party to delay the bill until next year.

Both senators’ constituencies have a lot to gain in the bill, according to a new report from the progressive advocacy group Accountable.US. Arizona is home to the largest number of Native Americans of any state in the country, and stands to benefit from more than $5 billion in investments in Native communities in Biden’s plan. The plan would also provide more than $4 billion to invest in the country’s national parks, a key issue for Sinema. The proposal would also help alleviate West Virginia’s growing senior care staff shortages, according to another report from the group. And the paid family and medical leave proposal, which Manchin, opposes would be a boon to the 61% of West Virginia workers who have no access to unpaid leave.

“Sens. Manchin and Sinema may never get this opportunity again to deliver a real chance at a better life and better care for tens of thousands of their constituents,” Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US, said in a statement to Salon. “It makes no sense to squander this moment to vastly expand access to paid leave and improve child and senior care in their states because of unrelated complaints from a handful of wealthy special interests.”

Sinema opposed Biden’s initial proposal to invest $3.5 trillion in social programs, health care and measures to combat climate change, pushing to remove proposed tax increases on the wealthy and corporations that would fund much of the plan. Sinema’s intervention in the Democrats’ proposal to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices also saved the pharmaceutical industry about $450 billion, at taxpayer expense, while making it more difficult to raise needed revenues. Although Sinema has privately told Democrats that she is “supportive” of the overall plan, according to Politico, she still won’t commit to voting for it.

Sinema’s constituents have tried to pressure the senator to get on board with the Democrats’ agenda as the party tries to hammer out a deal before Thanksgiving. Jonathan Nez, president of the Navajo Nation, the largest Native tribe in the country, urged Congress to pass the BBB, and Diné community leader Lena Fowler wrote an op-ed calling on Sinema to support the plan.

“Some of the Senate chamber’s swing votes have said that the cost of the tax and spending package is too high,” Fowler wrote, “but the cost is far greater for our communities if we don’t act now.”

The BBB would invest more than $2.3 billion in Native American health initiatives, including the Indian Health Service, according to Accountable.US. It would provide $1.67 billion for tribal housing, infrastructure and community development, and includes at least $485 million for climate resilience, conservation and drought relief specifically targeting Native communities, $200 million in grants for Native American language educators, and $523 million in other benefits to Native communities.

“The ‘Build Back Better’ package includes expanded clean energy, water and other climate priorities that are not part of the bipartisan infrastructure plan,” Arizona state Sen. Jamescita Peshlakai, a member of the Navajo Nation, wrote in an op-ed. “While the bipartisan infrastructure plan includes important broadband, energy and infrastructure improvements, it doesn’t go nearly far enough to protect us.”

The BBB also includes over $500 billion to combat climate change, which Sinema herself has called the “most important” part of the package, and billions more for national parks. Arizona has three national parks, including the Grand Canyon, and four national monuments overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. Arizona is the fourth fastest-warming state in the country, according to a recent analysis, and experienced a record number of heat deaths last year. A 2018 study found that temperatures at national parks are increasing at double the national rate. Grand Canyon, one of the most visited national parks in the country, could face water shortages and potential ecosystem collapse due to climate change, according to local researchers. Sinema has said that “Arizona’s economy depends on protecting the Grand Canyon and ensuring it remains a safe and stunning part of our state for generations to come.”

The National Parks Conservation Association last month called on Congress to pass the BBB to protect public lands from “irrevocable damage due to climate change.”

The latest version of the BBB would provide more than $4 billion to the National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management to address nationwide staffing shortages, conservation, habitat restoration, wildfire management and maintenance projects, according to the Accountable.US report.

“National parks and communities are on fire, underwater and inundated by storms. We need climate action now,” Chad Lord, the senior director of environmental policy and climate change for the NPCA, said in a statement. “This framework includes historic investments in our clean energy future and climate resilience measures for parks ravaged by flood, fire and drought. It would create jobs and drive investment in communities hit hardest by pollution.”

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Sinema has largely remained silent in public during BBB negotiations but hit back at critics this week for trying to push her to the left. “No one tells me what to do,” she told the Washington Post. In a separate interview with Politico, she criticized Democratic leaders for overpromising on legislation they could not deliver (in part because of Sinema’s opposition) but vowed to continue to negotiate in “good faith.”

Manchin has also refused to commit to the bill, even though party leaders have acquiesced to many of his demands. In recent weeks he has raised concerns about inflation even though rating agencies say the package would not add to inflationary pressure. But the package includes funding that would be a big help to many people in West Virginia, which is one of the poorest states in the nation and has one of the oldest populations.

West Virginia faces a dire shortage of senior care workers and a “perfect storm” of staffing challenges as a result of worker shortages and burnout, Marty Wright, CEO of the West Virginia Health Care Association, said earlier this month. The COVID pandemic has pushed West Virginia facilities to the “breaking point,” he told The Herald-Dispatch last month.

BBB includes $150 billion to expand access to home-based care for millions of older adults, including funding to strengthen the direct care workforce. It also allocates funding to “recruit and retain” direct care workers and help “address the direct care workforce shortage.” The bill also provides more than $1 billion to help fund services for older Americans and those with disabilities.

“This historic legislation is the biggest expansion of the social safety net for seniors and their families in five decades,” Max Richtman, president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said in a statement. “It expands Medicare benefits, lowers prescription drug prices, and adds billions of new dollars for seniors to receive care in their homes and communities — improvements supported by majorities of Americans across party lines.… It is now up to Senate Democrats to get this done.”

But the package that passed the House last week could see significant changes in the Senate. The House bill includes four weeks of paid family and medical leave, which Manchin has repeatedly ruled out, saying he supports a paid leave policy but wants it done in a “bipartisan way,” rather than in the budget reconciliation bill. “We just can’t be spending so much money,” he recently argued to paid leave advocates. He has told Democratic colleagues that the bill could hurt small businesses or “invite fraud,” The Post reported last month.

West Virginians would greatly benefit from a paid leave program. About 61% of the state’s workers are not eligible even for unpaid leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act, according to the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy, a nonpartisan research organization. The state has a nine-percentage point gap in labor force participation between men and women, in part because of the “lack of family-friendly policies,” according to the group. Nationwide, women stand to lose more than $60 billion per year from lower labor force participation and lower work hours due to a lack of family leave protections, according to the National Partnership for Women & Families. This trend could worsen amid the pandemic. West Virginia lost nearly three times as many women to unemployment last year, compared to pre-pandemic levels.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and other women senators leading the legislation have continued to lobby Manchin to compromise on the issue, but he has so far refused. Gillibrand is now even reaching out to female Republican senators, such as Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, in hopes of securing a bipartisan compromise separate from the BBB as a result of Manchin’s refusal, according to Axios.

“It is just the opposite of what a senator from West Virginia ought to be doing right now,” Jeffrey Sachs, an economist at Columbia University, said in a news conference earlier this month. “He ought to be championing everything in this legislation and everything that has been cut out because he said that we can’t afford it. But he was the one who stopped the way to afford it, which is for rich people to pay something, for heaven’s sake.

“Everything is upside down. None of it makes any sense until you remember how big money pays for politics in this country. That’s the only thing that enables this to make any sense at all: that money owns our politicians right now.”

Manchin and Sinema have both come under fire for their ties to industry groups who have spent millions to kill provisions in the bill. Manchin has taken more than $1.5 million in donations from groups opposed to the BBB, according to an analysis by Accountable.US, while Sinema has taken nearly $1 million.

“Rich corporations and billionaires don’t need any more special treatment,” Herrig told Salon, “but everyday people in West Virginia and Arizona could benefit tremendously from a more level playing field under Build Back Better — and Manchin and Sinema hold the key.”

Read more on Manchin, Sinema, and the Build Back Better battle:

10 killer facts about “Dexter”

When “Dexter” debuted on Showtime on October 1, 2006, it changed the landscape of TV. It premiered before antiheroes like Don Draper or Walter White were household names, and it helped put Showtime on the map with its original programming.

Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) works as a blood spatter specialist at the Miami Metro Police Department, but also moonlights as a serial killer. He has a code, though: Don’t kill innocent people, don’t get caught, and don’t get emotionally involved. For eight seasons and 96 episodes, Dexter literally got away with murder. But as heard through his internal dialogue (a.k.a. The Dark Passenger), he was conflicted about his real self and only shared the truth with a few people — most of whom ended up dead.

On the show, Dexter’s not-biological sister Deb (Jennifer Carpenter) falls in love with him, which added to the conflict — especially since, offscreen, the two got married and divorced during the run of the show. The series ended in September 2013 with a polarizing finale: Dexter lived, but others died in his wake. Now, Hall is back to rewrite television history with “Dexter: New Blood,” a limited reboot of the Emmy- and Golden Globe Award-winning show.

1. Michael C. Hall wasn’t interested in making another TV show when “Dexter” came along

Hall’s first show, the funeral home drama “Six Feet Under”, went off the air in 2005, so he wasn’t looking to jump back into TV again. “I got a call about a new pilot,” Hall told Entertainment Weekly. “I was reluctant to the idea of doing another television series in general.” He heard the pitch and asked himself, “‘Do I want to be surrounded by dead bodies for another indeterminate number of years?'” He read the book and the script and decided he liked that Dexter “operated in a morally gray area.”

“The tragedy of Dexter is that it’s not his homicidal behavior that’s gotten the people in his life in trouble but it’s his appetite to play at becoming a human being — his desire to have real relationships,” Hall said. “I guess a lesson that’s emerged is that you can’t have your cake and kill it, too.”

2. “Dexter”‘s first season was based on Jeff Lindsay’s book, “Darkly Dreaming Dexter”

In 2004 Jeff Lindsay published “Darkly Dreaming Dexter,” the first of eight novels surrounding the charming serial killer. The book was the basis for the show’s first season, but the rest of the seasons strayed from the novels. Lindsay said the inspiration for the character came to him rather randomly: “I was speaking at a business booster’s lunch. I don’t know why, but I looked out at the crowd, and thought, ‘Serial murder isn’t always a bad thing.'” That was the message Lindsay tried to get across in his book, and the idea that carried through to its television adaptation.

“I think Dexter is actually very moral — there are lines he will not cross, no matter what,” Lindsay said. “I’m hoping he makes us think a little about what is and isn’t moral, and where the whole idea of a conscience comes from, but if not, hey, just enjoy the book.”

3. John Lithgow thinks Dexter and Tony Soprano have a lot in common

During an interview with the “Los Angeles Times,” a reporter asked John Lithgow — who played the Trinity Killer, the main antagonist in “Dexter”‘s fourth season (who we will see again in “Dexter: New Blood”) — who some of his favorite villains had been. “The great evil creation of the last 10 years has been Tony Soprano, and I see a lot of similarities between Dexter and Tony,” Lithgow said. “Obviously, there are a lot of huge differences, but he’s a captivating character. You can’t get enough of Tony Soprano: even when he was slapping a Russian prostitute on the butt or killing people in the most gruesome manner, you’re still with him all the way. I think Michael C. Hall and James Gandolfini are both great, smart actors who really understood that duality, that’s what made it so hypnotic.”

4. David Zayas was a cop in real life

David Zayas portrayed Lieutenant Angel Batista on “Dexter” and was a cop in real life, too. While working for the New York Police Department, Zayas studied acting. “The moment I was involved in that world, it electrified me and I realized that it was something that I wanted to do,” Zayas told NPR. He didn’t tell many of his co-workers he was trying to become an actor, but his partner knew.

“I remember riding in the cars with [my partner] during the midnight shifts and he would run lines with me for my audition the next day,” Zayas said. For the past two years, Zayas has played another police officer on the second and third seasons of “Bloodline,” another show set in Florida.

5. Julie Benz made a joke out of her character’s death

Julie Benz played Dexter’s wife, Rita, until the end of season four, when the Trinity Killer sought revenge and murdered her. But Benz felt shocked when she discovered her demise was coming.

“I found out an hour before they put out the script,” Benz told MTV. “Then I only found out an hour before we shot the scene how I was going to die — they wouldn’t tell me or anybody. It was the last scene of the season, so my family — the crew, who I spent five years with from the pilot forward — was very emotional and upset because they couldn’t believe it. I at least had a couple of days to process it, so I brought in a Styrofoam tombstone and I floated in the bathtub that said R.I.P. just to make a joke. I needed some kind of levity! Saying goodbye to my character, my job and people I love, was just too heavy.”

6. John Lithgow doesn’t think the Trinity Killer was pure evil

During an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Lithgow — who won a Guest Emmy for playing the Trinity Killer — said his character was “far more than one-dimensional. Even in the first episode, you see him commit this horrific murder, and it looks like pure evil, but the next time you see him, he’s in that scalding shower, torturing himself with remorse. Something’s going on: there’s a lot more going on here than just sadism and evil.”

When he’s not killing people, Lithgow’s character, Arthur Mitchell, tries to be a family man and fit in with society, which humanized his character. “To me, the most fascinating thing is that he’s an evil man who does not want to be evil,” Lithgow said. “In that sense, he’s sort of a mirror image of Dexter, just a much, much more extreme case.”

7. Yvonne Strahovski thought Hannah would die in Season 8

Yvonne Strahovski played Hannah, Dexter’s serial-killer girlfriend in Seasons 7 and 8, and was one of the few people who had enough of an emotional attachment to Dexter to survive. “I was surprised when I got to the end of Season 7, and I read that scene where she leaves the black orchid at his doorstep, I thought, ‘Wow, this is a pretty open ending. This might mean that they want me back,'” she told Collider. And sure enough, Season 8 happened and I thought, ‘Well, I probably will end up dying in this season, seeing as I didn’t die in Season 7, and traditionally, most of the guest stars on that show usually die.'”

The show ends with Dexter’s son Harrison and Hannah fleeing to Argentina, with Dexter battling a hurricane in Miami. Later on Hannah hears about Dexter’s death, which unbeknownst to her was faked. “There is no happy ending in any of it,” she said. “I walked away feeling very depressed, and it really stayed with me. That feeling lingered for a while after I watched it.”

8. Jennifer Carpenter wanted Deb to die

Jennifer Carpenter told The Hollywood Reporter she wanted her character to die but didn’t want Dexter to do the deed. “In a strange way, I wanted her [death] to be a suicide,” she said. “I wanted Deb to take the one thing that was totally alive in his life away. But how it played out was much better. Deb deserved to die an organic death.”

Carpenter also said if Deb had lived, she probably wouldn’t have had a happy ending. “She always would have been making sure she was piling enough dirt on the secrets that existed with Dexter. I’m not sure a happy ending was possible for her. This was her happy ending.”

9. “Dexter” might have inspired some real-life murderers

In 2009, an Indiana teenager named Andrew Conley strangled his 10-year-old brother. The reason? “He felt just like Dexter.” And if that wasn’t bad enough, Mark Twitchell built a Dexter-like kill room, lured strangers off the internet saying it was part of a “Dexter” movie he was making, and then murdered Johnny Altinger. In 2011 Twitchell was sentenced to prison, where he continued to watch the show and even drew pictures of Michael C. Hall.

10. Dexter Morgan wasn’t allowed to die

The big question of the series finale was: Would Dexter live or die? He almost died in a hurricane, but Showtime was adamant he needed to live. “They [wouldn’t] let us kill him,” producer John Goldwyn said. “Showtime was very clear about that. When we told them the arc for the last season, they just said, ‘Just to be clear, he’s going to live.’ There were a lot of endings discussed because it was a very interesting problem to solve, to bring it to a close. People have a relationship with “Dexter,” even if it doesn’t have the size and the ferocity of the fan base for “Breaking Bad.” But it has a very core loyal following.”

Dexter did sort of die, though. He faked his death and ended up at working as a log driver in the Pacific Northwest. “He banishes himself, if you will, into exile,” executive producer Sara Colleton told TV Line. When he looks into the camera in the end [of the finale], the rest is silence; there’s not even a voiceover there anymore. It’s just emptiness . . . Committing suicide is too easy; that’s letting himself off the hook.”

Hall commented on the finale saying, “Sometimes I wish he’d offed himself, wish he’d died, wish Deb had shot him in that train compartment — of course, that would have made an eighth season difficult to do . . . But the idea that he imprisons himself in a prison of his own making I think is fitting [for the character].”

A version of this story ran in 2017; it has been updated for 2021.

“Spencer”: how Diana became the popular culture princess

Despite being dead since 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales, is once again the focus of much attention. This time it’s not due to the anniversary of her death or the apparent breakdown in her son’s relationship. Instead, the much-anticipated film, “Spencer” starring Kristen Stewart is being released.

Focusing on December 1991 at the Queen’s Sandringham Estate, “Spencer” is an imagining of Diana’s decision to end her marriage to Prince Charles and leave the royal family. Following its world premiere, Stewart’s performance as Diana has already been heralded as Oscar-worthy. The reception of the film even achieved a three-minute standing ovation.

In her lifetime, Diana lived out many roles in the public eye. She became a princess after a fairytale-like wedding, a mother, a victim of bulimia, a target of the tabloid press, a fashion icon, a captivator of public hearts and ultimately a divorcee who died at the age of 36 under tragic circumstances.

Diana has also been venerated as an internationally recognised symbol for love, compassion and charity and an advocate for the disadvantaged and stigmatised. Diana understood the power of holding a role in the public eye and used this to change attitudes and address societal issues.

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As a high-profile public figure, Diana displayed a rare vulnerability and humanity that differed from the royal family she had married into. Subsequently, she achieved a beloved status that has extended beyond death.

Indeed, Diana is no longer limited to photographs and interviews in her lifetime. She is resurrected in Netflix’s “The Crown” and now in her own feature film, Spencer. Diana is experiencing a successful posthumous career – with her image and life labouring after her death – without her consent. And in this way, Diana is being introduced as a consumable popular culture hero to the generation born after her demise.

International gossiping

Diana was the focus of much gossip in her lifetime. Even after her death, the tabloid gossip and fascination with the princess did not really wain. This fascination has again been reignited on a mass global scale at the prospect of the release of Spencer.

Research shows that gossip or frivolous talk can help to create and maintain social bonds as it allows us to form groups. It can also allow people to develop new ways of thinking about themselves and others.

However, objects of gossip, such as Diana, do not experience a strengthening of bonds with others. Instead, they become alienated or a target and victimised by talk conducted about them. In this way, popular culture portrayals of Diana allow for a new wave of gossip to be unleashed as the public watch, consume and contemplate.

Through gossip on a mass international level, Diana becomes evermore objectified and abstract. She is an “other”, a symbol to be used and talked about. Her personal life is aired for all to see. And now her private thoughts and feelings have received the Hollywood touch – she is fictionalised and speculated about as a reimagined consumable movie character.

Fixated on a symbol

Princess Diana as a popular culture hero and source of gossip has value in shedding light on societal appetites in the 21st century. She reveals how much has changed and also how little has changed in how social bonds are formed through gossip. Talking about the rich and famous still binds people together, but it has now expanded into the international realm of social media.

Kristen Stewart in “Spencer” (Neon)

Diana is forever frozen in time as a beautiful divorcee and mother of a future king. She manages to attract public interest and is a springboard for debates about societal challenges. Whether the challenge is press freedom, the role of the royal family, or public grieving. Diana is a catalyst for public debate.

Diana reveals that society is still fixated on symbols that can be at once venerated and vulnerable. She highlights societal divisions while also bringing about unity and togetherness. And Diana’s reinvention in Spencer cultivates a space for the international community to gossip once again about the “people’s princess” whose fairy tale turned sour.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.