"A sense of crisis enveloped the capital of Virginia on Thursday, with the police on heightened alert and Richmond bracing for possible violence ahead of a gun rally next week..."

"... that is expected to draw white supremacists and other anti-government extremists. Members of numerous armed militias and white power proponents vowed to converge on the city despite the state of emergency declared by Gov. Ralph Northam, who temporarily banned weapons from the grounds of the State Capitol. The potential for an armed confrontation prompted fears of a rerun of the 2017 far-right rally that left one person dead and some two dozen injured in Charlottesville, about an hour’s drive from Monday’s rally. The unease increased after the F.B.I. announced the arrest on Thursday of three armed men suspected of being members of a neo-Nazi hate group, including a former Canadian Army reservist, who had obtained weapons and discussed participating in the Richmond rally. The men were linked to the Base, a group that aims to create a white ethnostate, according to the F.B.I. For weeks, discussions about the rally have lit up Facebook pages and chat rooms frequented by militia members and white supremacists. Various extremist organizations or their adherents are calling Monday’s rally the 'boogaloo.' In the lexicon of white supremacists, that is an event that will accelerate the race war they have anticipated for decades."

From "Virginia Capital on Edge as F.B.I. Arrests Suspected Neo-Nazis Before Gun Rally/The three men had obtained guns and discussed traveling to Virginia for protests against new gun control measures, officials said" (NYT).

From a week ago, at NPR, "'Boogaloo' Is The New Far-Right Slang For Civil War" (audio & transcript). "Boogaloo" was originally a song and dance, then a reference to a famously bad movie ("Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo"), and then slang for "any unwanted sequel." Then it got attached to the idea of another civil war — "Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo." The NPR reporter, Hannah Allam says the word is used by "anarchists and others on the far left" as well as "right-wing militias and self-described patriot groups." We hear an audio montage of unidentified persons:

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: So many people are saying that the boogaloo is about to kick off in Virginia.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: When the boogaloo happens, these are the people that you're going to have to watch out for.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: Do not think for one second that there aren't people that would love to see this thing to get started, that would love to see this boogaloo start rolling. Personally, I do not want to see that. I don't want it to come to that....

Interesting that all 3 of those persons were talking about those other people over there.

Next we hear from Oren Segal of the Anti-Defamation League, who tells us that pop culture references are "weaponized" to spread an extremist message. Then the NPR reporter, Hannah Allam wraps it up:

ALLAM: For a subset of the far-right, the fringe of the fringe, civil war isn't enough. They're spoiling for a race war. Decades later, boogaloo is no longer about music, but about menace - a word coined by black and brown people now used by some who envision a country without them.

Here's the Urban Dictionary page for the word. There's a graph showing a big spike in May 2019:

Here's the Ringo song from 1971, "Back Off Boogaloo" — "Back off boogaloo/What do you think I'm going to do?/I got a flash right from the start/Wake up, meat head/Don't pretend that you are dead." Get it? The walrus was Paul, and "Boogaloo" was Paul. No. Wait. That's the rumor...

Several commentators have interpreted the lyrics as an attack on Paul McCartney, reflecting Starr's disdain.... Ringo Starr identified his initial inspiration for "Back Off Boogaloo" as having come from Marc Bolan... Over dinner one evening at Starr's home... Bolan had used the word "boogaloo"...  "[Bolan] was an energised guy. He used to speak: 'Back off, boogaloo ... ooh you, boogaloo.' 'Do you want some potatoes?' 'Ooh you, boogaloo!'"

ADDED: It's funny that Ringo's story has Marc Bolan saying "Ooh you, boogaloo." I'd say that reinforces the theory that the Boogaloo was Paul, because one year before that pass-the-potatoes conversation between Ringo and Marc Bolan, Paul put out a song, "Oo, You":



ALSO: There are also Antifa plans to attend that Richmond rally, and not to oppose the conservative gun-rights people, Vice reports:

"Fearing a repeat of the deadly violence that engulfed Charlottesville more than two years ago, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam declared a temporary emergency Wednesday banning all weapons, including guns, from Capitol Square ahead of a massive rally planned next week over gun rights."

NBC12 reports.

That phrase — "Fearing a repeat of the deadly violence that engulfed Charlottesville more than two years ago" — caused me to have a thought so cynical that I will refrain from writing it down.

(If you're trying to remember the details of Northam's blackface problem, go here.)

ADDED: Vice reports it this way:

The governor said at a press conference Wednesday that authorities believe “armed militia groups plan to storm the Capitol” during the January 20 rally. He also said that law enforcement had intercepted threats and “extremist rhetoric” similar to what was observed prior to the violent Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in August 2017. “We will not allow that mayhem and violence to happen here,” he said....

Northam acknowledged that the organizers had been planning the rally for some time. “I believe them when they say this is a peaceful event — that’s what democracy is,” said Northam. “Unfortunately, they have unleashed something much larger, something they may not be able to control.”

"Questions like 'Should Northam resign?' or 'Is the wall racist?' divide voters today by ideology far more than race."

"'White' is a description of a person’s race, whereas feelings about whether whites are privileged or whether diversity makes the country stronger are part of a person’s racial ideology. Liberal whites — not minorities — are setting the tone on these issues. Since 2012, white liberals have moved considerably left on questions related to race, reflecting both a campus- and online-driven cultural awakening that has accelerated in response to Mr. Trump."

From "Americans Are Divided by Their Views on Race, Not Race Itself/It’s a crucial difference — and grounds for optimism" by Eric Kaufmann (author of “Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities") in the NYT.

Why is this "grounds for optimism"? Kaufman asserts that "ideological differences... are less polarizing than racial conflict, in which whole communities mobilize against an enemy."

A mix of races are found in each racial ideology, preventing tribe and creed from pushing in the same direction, which might lead to civil conflict. This raises the hope that American political elites can one day heal the country’s divisions.

That's how the column ends, with hope in American political elites. Aren't they the ones stoking this ideological division? At least the masses of people aren't organized by whatever race they happened to acquire by nature. I get that. But I think the elites are choosing to manipulate people with racial ideas, which are interesting and exciting and sure get us going. Why would they stop what's been working for them? Why would they heal? Obama didn't take his fantastic opportunity to heal. Now, there was some high level hope in the elite...

And this "Whiteshift" author dangles "the hope that American political elites can one day heal the country’s divisions"? The elites are thriving in the wounds.

We're not talking about Gov. Northam anymore.

I wonder why. Is it just a matter of time? Steel yourself when they all come after you and wait. They'll go somewhere else soon enough.

Or did something else happen that drove the story out of the news? Was it just big news — Trump's "emergency"? Or something that specifically offset the Northam story — maybe the Jussie Smollett  story: Maybe some people don't want to think about why Northam made himself into a fake black man if we're worried that Jussie Smollett made up some fake white men.

Smollett's possibly fake white men were outright hateful and they make black people feel that they are hated, and Northam's fake black man was more ambiguous, perhaps more mockery than hate and even possibly admiring (if it really was about imitating Michael Jackson). And, of course, what Smollett did — if he did it — happened just a couple weeks ago and Northam's idiocy is more than 30 years in the past.

ADDED: If it turns out that Smollett staged an elaborate hoax, how do you think it will/should be resolved? Obviously, one answer is criminal prosecution and punishment.

But — especially if he would continue to assert that he was attacked — it might be better for everyone involved if Smollett were allowed to escape all punishment if he would only clearly explain that it was a hoax, acknowledge that it was very wrong, and give a sincere apology. I'd be happy to forgive if we could get out a strong message that hoaxes like this are cruel and destructive.

Another scenario I've pictured is something about mental illness and rehabilitation. We'd learn that Smollett is unwell and will get treatment, which is problematic because it might feel like another hoax.

By the way, I hope it's a hoax. Aware that I'd prefer it to be a hoax, I'm wary of talking about it as a hoax at all. Maybe it happened, and if it did, Smollett deserves empathy for both the attack and the doubting of his integrity.

AND: A montage of media people and politicians conveying Smollett's allegations as if they were proven facts:

CNN's Nina Turner stomps on a Democratic Congresswoman's effort to blame Trump for the problems with the Democratic Party leadership in Virginia.

I loved this exchanged on "State of the Union" this morning. (Transcript and video.) Jake Tapper was moderating a panel about the mess in Virginia involving the Governor and the Attorney General, both white men who wore blackface years ago, and the black Lieutenant Governor, whom 2 women have accused of rape. Tapper asked Congresswoman Nanette Diaz Barragan (a woman of Mexican heritage) to confirm that she wouldn't want the 3 men — all Democrats — to resign, given that it would make the Republican speaker of the house of delegates governor.

Diaz Barragan gave a quick "no" and immediately shifted into her own topic, Trump:

No, but we need to think about doing what's right and what's right for Virginians and what's right overall. I mean, the race issue in today's day and age with the president at the helm who has been one of the most divisive presidents and, frankly, racist himself, is a conversation we do need to have. But looking at just the line of order and saying we're not going to do that because of the consequence is not the right way to do this. And so for me, I would -- I do think we need to have this conversation and we should continue to have this conversation, but it has to be front and center. And we can't forget about the person who is dividing us and who himself is injecting this into the country to live up again and coming out again. We haven't seen it be this bad in recent time until the president has really made this a race issue whether it's about African-Americans, certainly he's doing it all over the board with immigrants, but we need to have this conversation.

That lit up the CNN commentator Nina Turner (who is black):

Jake, I cannot. I just can't. 1984, 1980, Gucci just a few days ago. This is not about President Donald Trump. This is about racism in the United States of America. Congresswoman, I hear you, but on this, we're not blaming President Trump.

Diaz Barragan tried to break in — "I'm saying he has divided this country" — and Turner — very excited said:

No, let me just say this... I am not going to continue to let politicians use this man as the excuse to deal with racism in this country. It's been going on for far too long in the United States of America. We need some real truth and reconciliation. Yes, president Trump is a racist. There is no doubt about it. But as we have seen, Democrats delve in racism as well. We've got to stop making this about who is a Republican, who is a Democrat. I want to know who say humanitarian. I want to know who's going to stand up for people's lives, starting with black people's lives. Because when you take care of black lives everybody's life is taken care of. Everyone's life taken care of. So no more about this -- these three men. It had nothing to do with President Trump. What Lieutenant Governor Fairfax is going through don't have nothing to do with President Trump. Northam wearing blackface don't have nothing to do with Donald Trump. Herring, wearing blackface has nothing to do with Donald Trump. This is about racism in the DNA of this country. And I am over it. We are traumatized, Jake, and we are sick of it. Politicians need to stop playing games.

"PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT! It should never be allowed to happen again!"

Trump, this morning, on Twitter:

So now Congressman Adam Schiff announces, after having found zero Russian Collusion, that he is going to be looking at every aspect of my life, both financial and personal, even though there is no reason to be doing so. Never happened before! Unlimited Presidential Harassment....

....The Dems and their committees are going “nuts.” The Republicans never did this to President Obama, there would be no time left to run government. I hear other committee heads will do the same thing. Even stealing people who work at White House! A continuation of Witch Hunt!

Democrats at the top are killing the Great State of Virginia. If the three failing pols were Republicans, far stronger action would be taken. Virginia will come back HOME Republican) in 2020!

PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT! It should never be allowed to happen again!

"It seems like him trying to buy time for what is the firing squad circling around him, calling for him to resign, but it kind of defies logic here."

Said Astead Herndon, a national politics reporter for the NYT, just now on CNN, when Jake Tapper wanted to know why Governor Northam has not resigned.

I think Herndon meant to express the idea that Northam is hopelessly vulnerable and he only accidentally referred to a circular firing squad.

I don't think he is. What's his motivation to resign? If he goes, he's defeated, and no one will care about him anymore. Where will he go? And those who are pressuring him to leave — how can they do anything more? And are they exposing themselves to political injury? Is that accidental invocation of the circular firing squad a little too apt?

Who first thought up that image of the circular firing squad? I'm seeing this in The Nation, "The Circular Firing Squad Isn’t Amusing Anymore/The left is tearing itself apart," by Danny Goldberg in July 2017:

This coming October 9 will mark the 50th anniversary of Che Guevara’s murder. Yet the pathology underlying his famous quip that when the American left is asked to form a firing squad it gets into a circle is as relevant today as a Rachel Maddow response to Kellyanne Conway’s spin du jour.

It comes from Che Guevara? I tried to confirm that and could not. And The Nation calls it "famous." Wikiquote has a huge collection of Che Guevara quotes, and the only one about a firing squad — marked as "disputed" — is...

To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the paredón [execution wall].

If you think of the killing as the destruction of a person's career and social standing, that has plenty of resonance in America today. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. Isn't that what's being done to Northam? And shouldn't we feel good then that our firing squads form a circle?

"But the governor, already isolated from Virginia’s political leaders, was fast becoming a pariah outside Richmond, too..."

"... after a wave of top Democratic leaders, including most of the contenders for the 2020 presidential nomination, called on him to resign. And the turmoil enveloping the state only grew when, at 2:55 Monday morning, aides to Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who would succeed Mr. Northam were he to resign, issued an extraordinary statement denying an online report that the lieutenant governor had once committed sexual assault. 'He has never assaulted anyone — ever — in any way, shape or form,' said two of Mr. Fairfax’s top staff members. They were responding to an accusation published late Sunday that in 2004 he sexually assaulted a woman while at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Mr. Fairfax’s aides — his chief of staff, Lawrence Roberts, and his communications director, Lauren Burke — said The Washington Post had investigated the claims around the time of the lieutenant governor’s inauguration last year but did not publish an article. The Post published a story Monday explaining its decision...."

From "Virginia Capitol Thrown Into Chaos as Pressure on Northam Intensifies" NYT.

Here's that WaPo article, "Va. Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax denies sex assault allegation from 2004":

"It doesn't really matter what I believe or anyone else believes."

On "State of the Union," yesterday morning, Jake Tapper talked to Terry McAuliffe about the Ralph Northam problem. Transcript. Video:



McAuliffe was the governor of Virginia just before Northam, and Northam was his lieutenant governor, so McAuliffe could not avoid vouching for the man he was there to denounce. And with Northam having made such a fool of himself saying one thing and then another, it was important for McAuliffe to sound competent and lucid as he put together the argument that Northam has to go. That didn't happen:

TAPPER: Northam is now saying it's not him in the photo. Do you believe him?

MCAULIFFE: It doesn't really matter what I believe or anyone else believes.

Why not?!! It's Tapper's first question. You're going to say it's a bad question? You're on the show for a reason. You worked closely with Northam. Help us out here! Was he confused? Is he a liar? We want to know what to believe, and you're telling us it doesn't matter what we believe?

The MSNBC chyron says "MOUNTING PRESSURE" but this Northam constituent makes me think the pressure is lifting.

I love everything about this Virginian — right down to the coffee cup — and it's very funny afterwards how the newsman (Geoff Bennett) scrambles to maintain the "mounting pressure"...

How can the pressure be dissipating when all these faces are arrayed against Northam?



MSNBC is going on and on about this story, and I think you can really tell that what's driving them is a desperation to bolster the powerful Democrats who went all in on this?

It seems to me that if that guy with the coffee cup wants to give the Governor another chance, that's the right answer. I'm going with Coffee Cup Guy.

ADDED: He has a name — AJ Brewer. Let me transcribe what he said: "I don't like this idea of, you know, this person doesn't deserve a second chance. It seems to be, at least from my perspective, Ralph is a decent guy, and, whatever person he was 35 years ago doesn't seem to be that person today. I don't want people to treat me that way, so I'm not going to treat him that way."

ALSO: Here's an article about AJ Brewer in Richmond BizSense:

"Surprisingly, it was not controversial," says a University of Richmond professor who taught courses called "American Blackface" and "Blackface in Post-Soul Literature and Culture."

“I honestly do not recall it being uncomfortable, mostly because I guess we were taking it seriously. We weren’t looking at if as, ‘Hey, isn’t this funny?’”

I'm reading "Where blackface is concerned, outrage is appropriate, says UR professor," by Michael Paul Williams in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. He's quoting Bertram Ashe, who teaches English and American Studies.

Ashe said the history of blackface dates far back to about the 1830s and extended well into the 20th century. He described it as “a weird obsession with blackness that grows out of that master-slave relationship.”

“What folks don’t know is it was primarily a Northern entertainment,” he said. For Northerners who had never set foot in the South, it was a way for white audiences “to imagine what they thought black life was in Southern spaces,” he said.

“It’s a portal. It’s a space through which [white people] can behave and act in a way that is not like ordinary middle-class whites behave,” Ashe said. “It appears to be irresistible to a certain type of person who cannot keep themselves from blackening their skin and imagining a type of black persona.”

I found that article because I was looking for discussion connecting the Northam story to Spike Lee's movie “Bamboozled.” The movie is mentioned in the article, but not in any significant way. I haven't seen this movie (and it's not available for streaming at Amazon (I'd have to buy the DVD — and it's $89.99)), but I've seen the trailer and read descriptions, like this from The New Yorker:

Pierre Delacroix (Damon Wayans) is the sole black programming executive at a TV network. Wanting to prove his bosses’ obliviousness, he proposes a monstrous absurdity—a “Saturday Night Live”-style minstrel show, featuring black actors, in blackface, reprising vile stereotypes. To Pierre’s horror, the show is picked up and becomes a hit, restoring those stereotypes to popular culture... The exuberant performances of the show’s stars—a comedian (Tommy Davidson) and a tap dancer (Savion Glover)... —bring out Lee’s potent theatrical paradox. The pleasure of mocking stereotypes risks perpetuating them, which is why comedy... is, in Lee’s view, a high and serious calling.

But this was not a popular movie, so I think white people did not take advantage of what seems like  permission to laugh at a minstrel show. And that was 20 years ago.



Blackface is a serious subject. Spike Lee made a movie about it, but it seems hard to watch because it's set up to cause us to laugh like racists and then feel horribly ashamed of ourselves. That's an interesting idea, artistically, but since we can see the trap, we can avoid it, by not watching. We're not lured in, so we don't have the experience of confronting our own corrupt heart. The professor's course sounds excellent, and it does seem to be a subject we could educate ourselves about. "What folks don’t know is it was primarily a Northern entertainment." We don't know what's inconvenient to know.

What Gov. Northam did was "unforgivable" Trump says... but look at what he's calling "unforgivable."

Democrat Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia just stated, “I believe that I am not either of the people in that photo.” This was 24 hours after apologizing for appearing in the picture and after making the most horrible statement on “super” late term abortion. Unforgivable!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2019

What is Trump calling unforgivable?

Theory #1: What's unforgivable is the tight cluster of poor expression. In quick succession, Northam said something about late-term abortion that sounded as though he meant that a woman could have her born child euthanized if its existence interfered with her mental health, then he apologized for appearing in the blackface-and-Klansman photograph, and then he withdrew his confession that he is one of the men in the photograph. It's a mind-boggling botching of communications, and there's no amount of better communication that can undo the evidence he has created of his own radical incompetence to serve in a role of important trust for the people of Virginia. No kindheartedness or belief in redemption should motivate us to forgive him. We're not saying he can't go to heaven or that his friends and family ought to shun him. It's just that he can't rehabilitate himself as governor.

Theory #2: Based on what we know about Northam's soul — having something to do with that photograph and something to do with beliefs about abortion — we should judge him and declare him unforgivable. Trump identifies as Christian, and Christianity is widely understood to reveal that even the worst person can receive forgiveness, but Trump meant to say that it is impossible for Northam to be forgiven.

Theory #3: With respect to the photograph, Northam provided a written apology and a long press conference, but (as Trump sees it) he hasn't really walked back his endorsement of super-late-term abortions. (He's only said, I believe, that he meant to refer to allowing a badly disabled baby to die.) What's unforgivable is thinking that a decades-old expression of racism is a more serious matter than a present-day statement that you want to legalize the killing of infants after they are born.

Theory #4: Trump doesn't actually think Northam is unforgivable. He just needed to end his tweet with an exclamation, and he could just as well have written "Ridiculous!" or "Terrible!" Trump swings a bit wildly, but the people he's reaching get it, and the big idea is there: Democrat bad.

Theory #5: I'm adding this after reading the post to Meade. This is a verbatim quote from Meade: "Above all else Trump is a media genius, and what Northam is asking for is for us to let him off the front page, and that's what his groveling is all about, and that's what Trump is focusing on. Not so fast. You need to stay on the front page."

Now, Gov. Northam denies that was him in the photograph but confesses that he did blackface on another occasion.

The strange story of Ralph Northam continues, and he won't resign.

From the NYT report:

"It was definitely not me,” Mr. Northam, a Democrat, told reporters at a news conference in the governor’s mansion. “I can tell by looking at it.”

Pressed on why he initially apologized, Mr. Northam said he had wanted to “take credit for recognizing that this was a horrific photo that was on my page with my name on it.”

Yes, but you said it was "a photograph of me." How can you get that wrong? Did it look like something you might have done?

The governor called the images, which first surfaced Friday afternoon, “offensive, racist and despicable.” But he said that “I cannot in good conscience choose the path that would be easier for me to duck the responsibility to reconcile.”

For reasons I develop in my earlier post today, I'm inclined to approve of his not resigning. But this is weirder than it was before, and now we have not only decades-old behavior to judge but current behavior. It's not very reliable of him to say one thing and then another. Is he lying or simply confused and given to speaking without thinking? And then there's this new blackface incident:

[He revealed that he] had darkened his face with shoe polish for a Michael Jackson costume in a dance contest in Texas in 1984, when he was a young Army officer....

And there's the fact that as an undergraduate student he had the nickname "Coonman." And then there was his mixed-up or downright evil statement about very late-term abortions. To me, it looks like it was the abortion material that made him a target and led someone to decide to rid the Democratic Party of him by dropping the old photograph. I'd like to know the background on that, but it's not in the NYT article.

ADDED: This is the highest-rated comment at the Times:

I am a black man, but I am not offended by the photo, though it is obviously in poor taste.

It looks like a joke to me, since Klansmen and black men don't generally have a beer together. Probably because they called him "coons man" in College.

It seems that my Party (Democrats) can't seem to avoid falling into one identity pothole after another, and the circular firing squad is in full force again.

If this keeps up, I will be staying home in November of 2020. Or, I might try to find Al Franken, to console him on his earlier electronic lynching. 

Should we try to understand Governor Northam or demand that he Al Franken himself?

Is the Democratic Party the party of no forgiveness? Does it need its own guy to kill himself because they want to be able to kill other people? Unquestionably, if a picture like this...



... had shown up from President Trump's old yearbook, Democrats would yell that he must resign. How can they retain their credibility to ruin Republicans if they don't destroy their own? I see Kamala Harris jumped right in to lead the pack. Harris is to Northam what Gillibrand was to Franken. Instant death. No pausing to reflect on human frailty. No empathy for the the imperfect judgment of young people. No contextualizing, even so soon after people misread what they saw in the photograph of the Covington Catholic boy and the Native American elder.

What was the context? Is asking for the context extending white privilege and contributing to the ravages of racism? I want to read Northham's own statement. Does that make me complicit in historical evil? The Democratic frontrunner for President, Kamala Harris, didn't sound interested in context, understanding, or empathy. She performed snap judgment. Northam must resign.

But let's read. Let's see what Northam gives us to think about.

Earlier today, a website published a photograph of me from my 1984 medical school yearbook in a costume that is clearly racist and offensive.

So we know that is him in the photograph... but which one is he? And why isn't he telling us?! Maybe if I could figure out which costume is worse, I'd know why he isn't telling. The KKK character is the evil one, but the other one is blackface, and everyone knows that a white person must never, ever put on blackface. I mean, Ted Danson didn't know in 1993 (and Whoopi Goldberg dared him to do it (he said)) but young Ralph Northam was supposed to know in 1983.

What was the occasion? A costume party of some sort? Is there anything to be said about the apparent camaraderie between the Klansman and the black man? Some vision of the peaceable kingdom: "The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together..."



But a white man put on blackface and another white man put on a KKK outfit and that's all the there is: Northam's statement, adding nothing but a confession that he was inside one of those costumes, implicitly says, there is no context to consider. To contextualize would be to minimize guilt, when he wants to take on full guilt... except for the little detail of costume was his. (Is he waiting to hear which costume is worse? Which one does he want to be, given that he has to be one?)

The statement continues:

I am deeply sorry for the decision I made to appear as I did in this photo...

You mean as a Klansman or as a black man? I'd like to know, even as I'm unsure which is worse.

... and for the hurt that decision caused then and now. This behavior is not in keeping with who I am today...

But who were you then? What did the costume mean? Were you actually a racist at the time? I'd like to know what he remembers thinking and what other people said. Maybe he isn't talking about it because there was some garish racial foolery or even bigotry, but I suspect he's keeping it short because he's been advised that any attempt to explain will be taken as a failure to take racism seriously. You'll be making it worse.

... and the values I have fought for throughout my career in the military, in medicine, and in public service. But I want to be clear, I understand how this decision shakes Virginians’ faith in that commitment. I recognize that it will take time and serious effort to heal the damage this conduct has caused. I am ready to do that important work. The first step is to offer my sincerest apology and to state my absolute commitment to living up to the expectations Virginians set for me when they elected me to be their Governor.

The elements of an apology are thus firmly in place. Must he also resign? This isn't the Senate. He can't be expelled by a bunch of Senators like Al Franken. But Al Franken ousted himself when the Senators banded together against him. Will Northam take himself out? If he does, what will it mean?

Let's look to Kamala Harris as a source of meaning. Her tweet:

Leaders are called to a higher standard, and the stain of racism should have no place in the halls of government. The Governor of Virginia should step aside so the public can heal and move forward together.

Northam did something 30 years ago. How is his presence in the "halls of government" the presence of the "stain of racism"? This is grandiose and severe language. And yet it purports to give priority to healing and moving forward. If we really cared about healing and moving forward, wouldn't we believe that a man may have moved forward over the course of 30 years and not insist that he is stained forever?

If we are stained forever by what is in the past, then there is no healing, no moving forward — ever, no matter what. So how could Northam's resignation help us do what cannot be done? And, most absurdly, how are we moving forward "together" if the main thing that must be done is to leave one of us behind? There is no "together," no "healing," no "moving forward," just relentless stain, rejection, and punishment.

I'm concentrating on Kamala Harris, because she seems to be the Democratic Party frontrunner for President and because her call for Northam's resignation is the first one I've heard, but others have followed the same path of no forgiveness. The candidates for President look desperate not to be left behind. They see which way things seem to be going and they rush to get there too. Julian Castro, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Sherrod Brown,  John Hickenlooper,  Eric Swalwell (who?), Terry McAuliffe. I see why they have to do it, to preserve the Democratic Party brand, and yet I think it's an awful brand — relentless, unforgiving, without context, without careful consideration.

And (most ironically) it makes it harder to say that racism is pervasive and runs throughout humanity. We're stuck in a shallow ritual of identifying scapegoats and imagining that we could emerge from that ritual stainless and whole.

What a terribly bad week it's been for Gov. Northam.

Today, there's this:

BREAKING: Gov. Ralph Northam yearbook page shows blackface and Klan photohttps://t.co/6A89ejp5Ho

— The Virginian-Pilot (@virginianpilot) February 1, 2019

And earlier this week, a lot of people heard him saying he'd accept infanticide, though I myself gave him a charitable reading and never took it that way.

As for the blackface and Klansman photo, what's the charitable reading? He's not responsible for his yearbook page? Remember last September how seriously Democrats took Bret Kavanaugh's yearbook page?

Fake news.

Fake news of the day: “Moderate” Dem Virginia governor: Our new late-term abortion bill would allow babies to be killed … after they’re born https://t.co/9VMRccXBdj

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) January 30, 2019

Have you seen this awful anti-Gillespie ad?

I'm only seeing that now because I'm reading that it was talked about on last Sunday's "Meet the Press," where Chuck Todd interviewed the DNC chair Tom Perez. The ad (above) is played and Todd asks:

Aren't you stereotyping? Are all pickup trucks--I drive a pickup truck. I mean, are all pickup truck drivers racist? That’s what the ad--do you understand why some people think the ad implies that?

Perez plunges into distraction and evasion:

Well, Chuck, let's be clear...

(That is, let's not be clear.)

... about what's happening in the race in Virginia and in all too many races, dog-whistle politics. Steve Bannon just endorsed Ed Gillespie in Virginia this morning. And throughout this campaign, Ed Gillespie has been fear mongering. He's been doing the same thing Donald Trump did. That's not fair. That's not right. Virginia, under Ralph Northam's leadership, under Justin Fairfax leadership, they're looking for a way to unite people.

The ad is the opposite of attempting to unite people.

And Ed Gillespie, throughout the campaign, has been dividing people. And when you, when you hit the bully back, and the bully starts crying, those are crocodile tears to me.

The ad isn't hitting Gillespie. It's generating amorphous fear that some ill-defined evil is out to do something symbolized by mowing down children with a truck.

Perez registered no shame or regret about that ad.

ADDED: That ad made me think about something Scott Adams wrote in "Win Bigly":

Fear can be deeply persuasive. But not all fear-related persuasion is equal. To maximize your fear persuasion, follow these guidelines.

A big fear is more persuasive than a small one.

A personal fear is more persuasive than a generic national problem.

A fear that you think about most often is stronger than one you rarely think about.

A fear with a visual component is scarier than one without.

A fear you have experienced firsthand (such as a crime) is scarier than a statistic.

I'd say that pickup truck ad followed all the guidelines for maximizing fear persuasion. It went too far and got criticism, and yet the criticism made it viral. I'm passing it on, and you can probably tell that I hope that looking at it together and being critical lifts us above our animal instincts and helps us resist irrational fear. But I don't know. Maybe that visual image, the truck coming after the children is still lodged in my head, affecting my decisions.

"Gillespie is establishment. He hasn’t said one word about Trump. It’s a hold-your-nose vote, but I have to vote for him. We don’t want that goddamn Northam."

Said Bobbe Scruggs, "an 88-year-old retired administrative assistant who was excited about Stewart in the primary and now dutifully attended a picnic for Gillespie in Beaverdam."

Quoted in "What Va. voters can agree on: These guys and Trump are from different planets" (WaPo). The headline on the front page is different: "In Virginia governor’s race, two low-octane candidates vie for votes beyond their bases."

"Virginia Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Ralph Northam omitted any mention of Justin Fairfax, the party’s African American candidate for lieutenant governor..."

"... from about a thousand pieces of campaign literature, a move Fairfax called a 'mistake' and that has stoked tensions within the Democratic ticket and threatens to alienate African American voters three weeks before Election Day. The palm cards with photos of Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring (D) were produced for canvassers with the Laborers’ International Union of North America, which asked that Fairfax be excluded because it did not endorse him. Fairfax has spoken critically of two proposed natural gas pipelines that the union supports."

WaPo reports.

It's a "mistake" only in the sense that what they did completely intentionally has received attention and made them look bad. And do you even believe the explanation for why they did it? These were palm cards with photos. I would guess that the party is afraid that black people who see a photo of a black face will decide that's the one to vote for.

ADDED: I'm misreading this, so my guess there is wrong. Northam is the only Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor. So the Democrats can't be accused of trying to redirect black voters to a white candidate. They may be trying to hide the black candidate from voters who don't like or are skeptical of black candidates, but I'm willing to believe the union's argument: they don't like his position on pipelines and didn't mind risking alienating black people (until it got too much attention).

IN THE COMMENTS: cubanbob said:

So the Democrats are hiding the candidate the union rank and file would be against since he is against their interests. That's the problem for the Democrats; too many interest groups to placate and many of them at cross purposes.