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Sometimes listening to the morning news on television is a bit like entering into an alternate universe. Last Wednesday, the day after primary elections in New York State, CBS News reported that New York Congressman Eliot Engel was “facing a challenge” from Democratic Party challenger Jamaal Bowman. NBC News reported that Engel was “trailing.” The reality, according to the New York Times tally of the results that morning was that Bowman had beaten Engel by a margin to 60.9% versus 35.6% with more than 82% of votes counted. Even though it posted the numbers, the Times felt compelled to describe the apparently impending lopsided loss as if it were something less than that, as a “stiff challenge” for Engel.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The Black Lives Matter (BLM) call to action has
come to this Buddhist-majority society which is grappling with
discrimination against dark-skinned Thais, while some foreign black
people say they personally suffer racism here but not as brutally as
in the US and elsewhere.

In Bangkok, "I've been denied entry to bars, asked to pay at
restaurants before even getting the food, denied service in shops,"
Zipporah Gene said in an interview.

"I am British but of Nigerian and Egyptian heritage. My previous
hometowns include London, Cairo, and Kingston, Jamaica," said Ms. Gene
who has worked in Thailand for about a decade in media-related jobs.

Thais often call her 'kohn pew dam' which translates as 'person with
black skin.'

"While it’s not necessarily derogatory, it focuses on my skin color --
a lot -- which I‘ve always found quite weird.

"I could always tell when it was derogatory because some people would
scream it at my face, they’d have a hostile tone, or just spit after
they’d say it. It’s been a while since I’ve had that."

Maybe CHOP won’t last, but something is changing. Our national groupthink, as maintained with such stalwart certainty over the last half century by centrist politics and the mainstream media, seems to be crumbling before our very eyes.

And as the groupthink crumbles, a larger awareness opens. Progressive thinking is finding its way back into the collective conversation, allowing the nation to begin transcending situation normal — you know, militarized policing keeps us safe, racism is a thing of the past, etc., etc. — and opening up the possibility that we can begin creating a complexly compassionate future.

This small beginning has emerged from the police murder of George Floyd and the global uprising that followed. The media and many political and corporate leaders, instead of uniting to marginalize the protesters, as they have always done in the past (with the help of the police, of course), are sitting there in a stunned semblance of agreement: Yeah, something’s wrong. We’ve got to make changes.

By peace journalist Salem Bin Sahel from Yemen (@pjyemen on Instagram) and Terese Teoh from Singapore (@aletterforpeace), World BEYOND War, June 19, 2020
https://worldbeyondwar.org/peace-letters-in-yemen/

BANGKOK, Thailand -- When the CIA's most macabre paramilitary officer
Tony "Poe" Poshepny demanded and received the hacked-off ears and
heads of communists in Laos during the Vietnam War, no one predicted
he would become an exhibit in a new museum in Bangkok's red-light
zone.

The Patpong Museum, on Patpong Road, also describes why U.S.
intelligence and military officers, airlines, IBM, and others rented
buildings alongside sleazy bars packed with prostitutes, especially
during the Vietnam War which ended in 1975.

"In 1957, we have the American Chamber of Commerce here. We have the
U.S. Information Service Library here. We have Shell Oil here. Pan Am,
TWA," the museum's founder and curator Michael Messner said in an
interview.

The CIA's clandestine Air America secretly flew troops, casualties,
refugees, ammunition, rice and other supplies in Laos and elsewhere
and staffed an office here until 1972.

On display is a 1963 letter with an Air America logo from 3 Patpong
Road informing a pilot's parents that he vanished in Laos when
communists shot down his plane.

The Democratic Party is at a crossroads in California, where Bernie Sanders defeated Joe Biden in the presidential primary three months ago, winning more than half of the state’s delegates to the national convention. In recent days, over 110 Sanders delegates -- just elected in “virtual caucuses” across the state -- have signed a statement calling for Congressman Ro Khanna to be the chair of California’s delegation to the Democratic National Convention in mid-August.

Fairness, logic and even party unity all argue for Khanna to chair the delegation.

Noting that “Sanders received appreciably more votes in the California primary than any other candidate,” the statement points out that “Khanna has been a national champion on issues supported by California Democrats -- health care for all, national budget priorities based on human needs and opposing Trump on huge increases in military spending and endless wars, criminal justice reform, and a path to citizenship for immigrants.”

If you can do activism, do it around policies in a principled manner, and steer clear of elections.

If you can do funding, fund principled activist organizations, not political candidates.

If you must divert your energies and money into elections, I have a recommendation for how best to do it (not that you’ll necessarily listen to me, having already ignored my first two paragraphs, but what the heck):

Part of getting better governance out of Washington, D.C., will have to come from shifting power back from the White House to the Congress and putting better people into the Congress.

The coming election for the White House has, as always, an even worse lesser-evilism problem than it had the time before. The lesser evil is a bit too evil for a bit too many people. Some want to pinch their nose and go for it anyway. Others want to try for something better next time by, for once, withholding votes that have certainly not been earned. Others would support lesser-evil voting if not for the fact that so many who engage in lesser-evil voting develop symptoms of lesser-evil thinking and behaving and cheerleading on a long-term basis.