News with Nuance: June 23, 2023

Your Friday dose of News with Nuance: the week's biggest stories, unpacked + more ..

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School has officially ended here in Minnesota, and already I’m texting with fellow moms (yes, it’s usually moms managing this stuff), about what we lovingly, sometimes with gritted teeth, call “the summer scramble.”

I’m waiting on some writing work to be finalized this month, and I got an email that I found emblematic of a lot of the social challenges and inequality facing America. I’m quoting loosely, but basically it said:

“Summer is tough, because everyone is on vacation.”

Now, don’t get me wrong, we have a summer road trip in August that I’m really looking forward to, and I love a trip as much as anyone. But sometimes I find there’s this perception gap, where society kind of largely still assumes that people are “off” during the summer - and yet I don’t know about you, but the rent/mortgage is still due on the 1st of the month in June, July, and August - and the utility companies and credit card companies sure aren’t taking breaks, either. So somehow, especially while raising young kids - you’ve got to find a way for some kind of summer “fun,” while still making sure you find a way to get your work done and pay the bills.

And - yes - I find that most of this burden tends to be shouldered by women.

Of course as you read the rest of this newsletter, you’ll find that the inequality of managing work and summer camp amidst a “vacation” mentality is a huge marker of privilege in a country and a world where lots of kids have to simply fend for themselves during the summer, due to pricy camps and childcare, and where other parents are facing the unthinkable choice of either putting their children in harm’s way in countries facing civil war and entrenched poverty and gang violence, or paying huge sums to smugglers only to face sickness, imprisonment, and/or death on the seas or in the borderlands between the U.S. and Mexico/Central America/North Africa/Europe.

Whew. So much for “light” summer reading. I don’t know about you, though, but I find all of this stuff, personally and on a larger global level, weighs on me mentally and physically unless I am able to tell the truth about what’s really going on, and find a way to put it into context - as well as to look for the “helpers,” and find hope in those who are countering the larger trends of nihilism, indifference, cynicism, and violence.

Let’s get to the news - with nuance …

Coastguard footage of the (migrant) boat before it capsized

Photo by Hellenic Coast Guard/Reuters

The Headline: Pakistanis ‘were forced below deck’ on refugee boat in Greece disaster

While most major media outlets have been providing wall-to-wall coverage of the five wealthy “mission specialists” who lost their lives in a submersible voyage to the Titanic that cost at least $250,000 each - what I found most poignant and heartbreaking this week was contrasting that news coverage with coverage of the sunken ship filled with migrants, including hundreds of women and children forced into the hold of the ship, that capsized in Mediterranean Sea waters outside Greece last week.

I first learned about the connection between these two stories by reading Ishaan Tharoor’s excellent WorldView newsletter for the Washington Post, in which he cited the gulf between the wealthy Pakistani father and son aboard the Titan submersible, and the hundreds of destitute and desperate parents and children who paid their life savings to attempt to migrate to Europe on a rickety, unseaworthy vessel.

This tweet in particular has kept ringing in my head all week:

One of my main reasons for writing this newsletter each week is to explore and unpack whose stories get told in the world - and whose stories do not. Why will we know in detail the biography of each wealthy person who dies on the Titan - and at the same time fail to even identify the bodies of hundreds of migrants who perished at sea last week?

A quick note: this is not the first time we’ve covered the story about lack of identification and care for migrants who die at sea in Europe in News with Nuance. Here’s an article from January 2023:

While this story in particular highlights the economic inequality, grift, and corruption endemic in Pakistan, that doesn’t mean that Americans are off the hook. In truth, it’s often our government’s penchant for overlooking human rights abuses and corruption for tacit cooperation against shared enemies that enables such grift and ongoing poverty in countries around the world. This tendency today contributes to the hesitancy of countries in the Global South to join in on America and Europe’s campaign to support Ukraine against Russia, however worthy that campaign may be.

Of course, you cannot tell a story of such pain and death without acknowledging the ways that pain and death was exacerbated by intersectional evils. The Guardian cites leaked testimonies from survivors to the Coast Guard that suggest that women and children were forced into the hold of the boat ostensibly for “their protection,” even while other testimonies claimed that paying a bribe ensured access to the deck. When the boat later capsized, those women and children stuck in the hold, most of them Pakistani, had no chance at survival. How often is it that claims of “protection” for women in particular cover up instead abuse and violence against women, and how well I know that in my study of fundamentalist religion, including white American Evangelical Christianity.

No women and children have been counted among the survivors in the migrant boat tragedy, though hundreds were on board.

Reading this account of the tragedy from the Guardian is like experiencing a new low of tragedy in every sentence. There were no provisions on the boat for passengers, not even water, and six people reportedly had already died due to lack of water before the boat capsized.

Perhaps it’s easy for us, at so great a distance away, to point fingers at the “evil” smugglers who profit from desperate migrants. Or to blame the European Coast Guards who have been accused of, in effect, “hiding” from migrant boats until it’s too late for rescue attempts.

These folks all deserve a share of blame. But it’s typically those who have the most power who share the most blame. In our global economy, Americans by and large remain near the top of that list. Our hunger for cheap global goods and services has made us complicit in the suffering of people all over the world. Our ability to turn our heads away, and to support policies that claim “America First” or cracking down on “illegal aliens” can all be found at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, where so many lives, so much promise, and so much hope, died.

Their stories, too, deserve the breathless coverage and sorrow claimed by the five immensely privileged folks who also perished at sea, near the original grave of so much American and European hubris and ostentatious wealth.

The Quote:

Macabre details have emerged of conditions on the boat, as questions mount over whether the Greek coastguard “covered up” its role in the tragedy. With about 500 people still feared missing, new accounts from survivors indicate that women and children were forced to travel in the hold, and that certain nationalities were condemned to the most dangerous part of the trawler.

According to leaked testimonies told by survivors to coastguards, Pakistanis were forced below deck, with other nationalities allowed on the top deck, where they had a far greater chance of surviving a capsize.

The testimonies suggest women and children were effectively “locked up” in the hold, ostensibly to be “protected” by men on the overcrowded vessel. The Observer has learned that Pakistani nationals were also kept below deck, with crew members maltreating them when they appeared in search of fresh water or tried to escape.

Story by Betsy Reed, Guardian US

Further Reading: Death at Sea

The Headline: Justice Samuel Alito Took Luxury Fishing Vacation With GOP Billionaire Who Later Had Cases Before the Court

What do you know? Another week - another inarguable revelation that our country’s Supreme Court is hopelessly ethically and morally compromised, in thrall to a small billionaire class on whose cases with Court will continue to rule.

I have been reading ProPublica for a very long time, and so the allegation that these stories are politically motivated strikes me as totally fabulist. ProPublica has a well-deserved reputation for stellar investigative journalism and independence. In a country where journalism and journalists are increasingly under attack for speaking truth to power, ProPublica is one of the last remaining guardians of truth-telling and holding power to account, regardless of political party or leaning.

So what do we do with this ongoing onslaught of stories about the Court?

Honestly - I think it’s incumbent upon legislators to begin fearlessly talking about potential plans to restructure and rehabilitate the Supreme Court. I know it’s a scary idea to think about adding Supreme Court justices or potentially adding term limits - but I don’t think it’s any scarier than our current situation, with a Supreme Court horrifically compromised by relationships to wealth and power, and with zero ethical checks and balances to hold justices accountable.

As a woman of reproductive age, the current lean of the Court toward limiting civil liberties, especially for women and LGBTQ people, is personally dangerous. I am so grateful to ProPublica, especially reporters Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, and Alex Mierjeski for doing this important reporting, and I sincerely hope that legislators will take action - and voters will support legislators who promise to work to reclaim the Supreme Court’s independence.

Oh - and as for supposed journalists like the folks at the Wall Street Journal who decided to preempt ProPublica’s reporting with an unhinged screen from Justice Alito himself, I think it’s clear that those “journalists” have forgotten the important first rule of journalism, to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.

The Quote:

ProPublica’s investigation sheds new light on how luxury travel has given prominent political donors — including one who has had cases before the Supreme Court — intimate access to the most powerful judges in the country. Another wealthy businessman provided expensive vacations to two members of the high court, ProPublica found. On his Alaska trip, Alito stayed at a commercial fishing lodge owned by this businessman, who was also a major conservative donor. Three years before, that same businessman flew Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016, on a private jet to Alaska and paid the bill for his stay.

Such trips would be unheard of for the vast majority of federal workers, who are generally barred from taking even modest gifts.

Story by Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, and Alex Mierjeski, ProPublica

Bonus Reads

I wanted to share with you a few more articles, some of them local to Minnesota, that further illustrate the issues at play in the above stories, the widespread trends toward lack of access for ordinary people to information and connections shared by wealthy elites, and the ways that lack of access (including lack of access for reporters and journalists) leads to lack of trust in institutions, even ones as critical to society as public school districts and, of course, police forces, which in my hometown of Minneapolis have proven almost completely untrustworthy, especially for Native people and Black people in Minneapolis.

Minneapolis Public Schools has a transparency problem

DOJ finds Minneapolis police discriminate against Native Americans, a first in the country

This final story picks up on the theme of whose stories do we tell, and whose stories do we ignore - or what lies do we believe about people whose stories we don’t know

The biggest survey of homeless Californians in decades shows why so many are on the streets

This Week in Christian Nationalism and Religious Extremism

While this newsletter won’t focus overall on Christian Nationalism, each Friday I will include a brief update from that week, as it’s both a continuing focus of my work and also, I think, a critical threat to both American democracy and the faithful witness of Jesus’ Gospel, which exists independently of the United States!

In one sentence: Christian Nationalism is a version of the idolatrous Theology of Glory, which replaces the genuine worship of God with worship of a particular vision of America, often rooted in a revisionist history of white people in the 1950s, before the Civil Rights movement or the women’s movement. Christian Nationalism supports a violent takeover of government and the imposition of fundamentalist Christian beliefs on all people. Christian nationalism relies on a theological argument that equates American military sacrifice with Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross. It suggests that Christians are entitled to wealth and power, in contrast to Jesus’ theology of the cross, which reminds Christians that they too have to carry their cross, just as our crucified savior did.

This Week: It strikes me that much of what I do each week in this newsletter is an exercise in recent history: doing a small bit of the work that historians do so painstakingly, reviewing stories and facts from the past in order to put them into context for the future.

As this oft-cited quote proves, ““Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” - philosopher George Santayana.