Netflix Queue: Black Panther

Three thoughts about Black Panther after a family viewing:

* This was my second viewing - I first saw it when it was in the theaters. It was a better experience this time: I think when I originally saw it I was so primed by all the hype that it was difficult for me to enjoy the movie on its own terms. This time I just watched, and it was fun.

* The highlight of both viewings: Michael B. Jordan as Killmonger. There's something about Jordan's acting that confuses me. Often, it seems to me, his affect is sort of flat. And yet, when his characters meet their biggest challenge -- I'm thinking Creed, but also The Wire - I find myself immensely moved. I can't figure out what kind of alchemy is going on there, but maybe I don't have to.

* That said, I'm tiring out of Marvel movies. Even with Ryan Coogler in charge, the look of this movie was so much like others. Wakanda's capital city looks a lot like Asgard to me, and maybe that's just a function of CGI cartoonishness that infests every corner of the screen. I will give this movie something, though: It was about something - lots of things, actually - instead of a hunt for a McGuffin. The calories don't feel quite so empty. But that's faint praise for a movie that, for many people, looked and felt pretty important.

Regarding Melania

Dear Trump-resisting friends:

Don't let President Trump's overall awfulness bait you into silly conspiracy-mongering absent any proof.

You needn't furnish your opponents with easy ways to take swipes at your credibility. Tread carefully.

Sincerely, Joel

Yes, immigrants do democracy. (Or, why 'The Flight 93 Election' is wrong. Again.)

Remember "The Flight 93 Election?" It was the "intellectual" case for voting Trump, and one of its central conceits is that immigration is bad because brown people don't know how to do democracy.

The ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty means that the electorate grows more left, more Democratic, less Republican, less republican, and less traditionally American with every cycle. As does, of course, the U.S. population, which only serves to reinforce the two other causes outlined above. This is the core reason why the Left, the Democrats, and the bipartisan junta (categories distinct but very much overlapping) think they are on the cusp of a permanent victory that will forever obviate the need to pretend to respect democratic and constitutional niceties. Because they are.

There's a lot to unpack there, much of it scurrilous, but you get the idea.

Anyway, Cato's David Bier ran into the same argument and makes mincemeat of it. "While immigrants do have less experience with liberal democracy than Americans do, the recent wave of immigrants actually comes from much more democratic countries than earlier waves."

He concludes:

The bottom line is that although immigrants to the United States today are less likely to have experience with liberal democracies than Americans, they are much more likely to have lived in liberal democracies than the ancestors of most Americans when they first arrived here.

Today's immigrants have more experience with self-governance than did the immigrant grandparents of today's fusty white guys. Who knew?

Where have all the teenagers in the workforce gone? (Or, how I held three jobs when I was 20.)

They're trying to get into college instead.

A recent analysis by economists at the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that an increased emphasis on education — and getting scholarships — had contributed to the decline in working teenagers, reflecting both the rising costs of education and the low wages most people that age can earn.

When I was 16, my dad told me it was time to get an after-school job. The days of my extracurricular activities were pretty much over — no more debate, no more football for me after my sophomore year, but I did spend about 20 hours a week carrying out groceries.

My dad was operating under the assumption he'd grown up under, that getting a job as a teen is a way to learn responsibility and, not incidentally, start paying for the fact that your life is becoming real expensive. (It's not just running-around money: Have you ever paid a teen boy's car insurance?)

These days, though, such a decision might've reduced my competitiveness getting into college. I made my way through on scholarships, loans, and work — my junior year I was a resident assistant, editor of the campus paper, and still carried out groceries. I also played in the pep band and carried a full load of classes. But I think even then, I was a rarity.

Today, a lot of the work I did then would be seen as competing with my education, I think, instead of enabling it. That's unfortunate: Learning to work was pretty important for me, and having a work ethic has served me well as a freelancer. Those skills never go out of style, but we're maybe not passing them on as well.

Republicans will always have Hillary Clinton to kick around

Vox: "Eleven House Republicans — Ron DeSantis, Andy Biggs, Dave Brat, Jeff Duncan, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, Andy Harris, Jody Hice, Todd Rokita, Claudia Tenney, and Ted Yoho — have signed a joint letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions calling for the criminal prosecution of Hillary Clinton and a variety of other Obama administration appointees, career FBI officials, and even Trump appointee Dana Boente, who is currently the FBI’s general counsel."

Two things:

• Remember when President Obama refused to prosecute Bush-era torture suspects because he wanted the country to move forward? Republicans apparently don't, or don't care.

• One nice thing about Republican administrations is that the GOP jeremiad against Hillary Clinton used to take a few months off now and again. When she ran against Obama in 2008 there were even some "strange new respect" noises from the right. Those days are over. The jeremiad is eternal now. And why not? It keeps attention off what ... the Republican administration is doing.

Tennessee: A white state punishes a black city for not honoring the heroes of racism

NPR:

The city of Memphis could lose a quarter-million dollars as punishment for removing statues of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and Confederate President Jefferson Davis last year. 

The Tennessee House of Representatives voted Tuesday to strip the money from next year's state budget. The sum had been earmarked to go toward planning for Memphis' bicentennial celebrations next year.

A key thing to understand here: Memphis is 63 percent black. Tennessee is 83 percent white.

What you have here is a white state punishing a black city for not honoring the heroes of racism. Disgusting.

Not even President Trump reliably speaks for President Trump.

Two stories in the New York Times this morning highlight a problem with the Trump presidency.

Actually, it's two problems, but they're related. The first is that no one but President Trump reliably speaks for President Trump.

President Trump was watching television on Sunday when he saw Nikki R. Haley, his ambassador to the United Nations, announce that he would impose fresh sanctions on Russia. The president grew angry, according to an official informed about the moment. As far as he was concerned, he had decided no such thing. 

The rift erupted into open conflict on Tuesday when a White House official blamed Ms. Haley’s statement about sanctions on “momentary confusion.” That prompted her to fire back, saying that she did not “get confused.” The public disagreement embarrassed Ms. Haley and reinforced questions about Mr. Trump’s foreign policy — and who speaks for his administration.

The second: Not even President Trump reliably speaks for President Trump:

After publicly flirting last week with having the United States rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership, President Trump appeared to rebuff the idea once and for all late Tuesday.

In a Twitter post at 10:49 p.m., Mr. Trump said that although Japan and South Korea would like the United States to join the 11 other nations in the multilateral trade agreement, he had no intention of doing so. The decision put an apparent end to a meandering trade policy in which Mr. Trump pulled out of the deal in his first week in office, before suggesting last week that he was having second thoughts.

 President Trump's statements are like the weather: If you don't like them, wait five minutes. Somebody will surely argue that this is a smart way of being president — keep everybody off guard — but it isn't. "Mercurial" is interesting in TV show characters, maybe. It's bad governance.