Author: Scott D. Strader

Witness

Updated 5 May 2020

Updated 20 Jan 2026

6 Oct 2018, 9:59 AM

No matter what happens with Kavanaugh, despair is not an option. Channel your angry energy into action. Call. Demonstrate. Register. Vote. There will be devastating losses along the way, and from them we recover and learn. We’re taking this fucking country back. Keep going.

6 Oct 2018, 10:59 AM

Older woman crying in photo: “How are we going to find the strength to keep fighting? Are we going to be out here for another 30 years? I don’t have 30 years left.”

Younger woman taking her photo: “I’ll be here. I’ll keep fighting.”

6 Oct 2018, 11:03 AM

NEW: Ramirez statement:
‘The other students … chose to laugh and look the other
way as sexual violence was perpetrated on me by (BK). As I watch many
of the Senators speak & vote … I feel like I’m right back at Yale where half the room is laughing and looking the other way.’

6 Oct 2018, 12:56 PM

Protesters have climbed the stairs of the Capitol chanting “November is coming!”. Hundred present here and across the street in front of SCOTUS.

6 Oct 2018, 1:12 PM

Thousands of anti-Kavanaugh protestors chanting “Vote them out!” Dozens being arrested on East Capitol steps now

6 Oct 2018, 3:46 PM

The screams from the protestors in the Senate are primal.

6 Oct 2018, 4:05 PM

https://twitter.com/ChuckWendig/status/1048665516699803649

There will be renewed calls for civility. Ignore them. They ask for civility as a way for you to grant them complicity in what they do.

Kavanaugh’s appointment isn’t a step backward. It’s a head-first plunge into an ugly past

6 Oct 2018, 5:48 PM

“What we are witnessing is not a step backwards for America so much as a headlong plunge into a punitive past. Adults must fight this future for the sake of the youngest Americans, who have already lost more than they ever got the chance to know.”

6 Oct 2018, 6:23 PM

What I hope people grasp is that the fight is not only about the win. You fight because it’s the right thing to do. You fight because if it alleviates suffering for just one person, it’s worth it. You fight because if you don’t, if you let them define you, you will lose yourself.

Updated 5 May 2020

I was reminded recently of another tweet Sarah Kendzior posted at the time of the Kavenaugh hearing. In his Washington Post op-ed Trump must be removed. So must his congressional enablers, George Will referenced the T S Eliot poem The Hollow Men. Skewering the Republican Congressmen, Kendzior posted verses from that poem along with images of those pretending to engage in the Kavenaugh accusations at hand, but were obviously not. This was the first time I had heard the poem and it was a moving introduction.

Updated 20 Jan 2026

Whenever I want to go back and read Kendzior’s thread I’m reminded that Twitter is garbage and won’t let you read threads unless you log in. Retrieved from UnrollNow:

Down

Trump was mocked ruthlessly by Obama et al. at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

He was corrupt for decades through the 80s and 90s and eventually grew into a dependency on money from Russian oligarchs. They laundered and he ameliorated debts he accrued from exceedingly poor business decisions and kiting loans and generally robbing Peter.

He joined the bloated collection of Republican contestants in the 2016 presidential election with gross absurdity: gliding down an escalator in a gauche-looking hotel lobby in front of a crowd paid for their attendance (to be repeated many times later). John Oliver notably and–regrettably–mocked him and his chances as did everyone. Craven and slightly un-craven presidential-hungry politicians were skewered by him with base taunts. The constituency groomed by Fox News and trash AM Limbaugh decades before in an attempt to destroy liberal policies arose to destroy the ugly conservatives that benefitted, until they didn’t. The golem ate its creators.

Hillary was too much of a policy wonk, too much of a Democrat, and too much of a Clinton.

The results were no less gauche and maybe we deserved it but no we really didn’t I don’t think or at least hope we didn’t. He started his iconoclastic retribution towards Obama childishly enough with a boast (eventually doubled- and tripled-down with cringe-inducing ferocity by his first-of-many press secretaries) that his inauguration crowd was larger than Obama’s. More grave attacks on the previous president’s accomplishments followed. Obamacare, the Iran nuclear deal, the TPP, NAFTA, the Paris Climate Accord, and any number of greater or lesser thorns. For Trump, the bad became the enemy of the good.

Hungry for vengeance against immigrants, Trump attacked Muslims with the protracted attempt at an emergency, short-term travel ban (eventually implemented in part and months after the original request was to expire), a horrific caging of children at the southern border that only grows more horrific, and an attempt to strip citizenship from foreign-born citizens. This all started with a dream of a wall.

In Helsinki, he stated that he trusted Putin over the US intelligence agencies. In front of Putin. In front of a disbelieving world.

Alliances with Europe and Canada were destroyed as new ones were formed with North Korea and Russia.

During the Obama administration, Republicans petulantly held up a Supreme Court nomination, along and with equal importance, many federal judgeship positions. Under Trump the SC position and federal positions have been quickly filled; many of those federal positions filled by the grossly inexperienced. To extend for decades.

Supreme Court Justice Kennedy retired.

The fight for his replacement started from a list provided by the Federalist Society. Going off script, Trump chose a judge who would allow a president to pardon himself, who would eliminate separation of state-level prosecutions when federal pardons are granted, and who–after being investigated for sexual assault in college–declared that the investigation was a product of, though not exclusively, a Clinton conspiracy. His accuser acted with more judicial propriety than him.

The women fought against the nomination and were both inspiring and heart-breaking, echoing the bravery of Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony.

via Bill Clark

I’m not sure where we go from here, but Sarah Kendzior has said from the start that it will get much, much worse. So probably further down.

The music things I got from Past Scott and am now enjoying

Updated 4 Oct 2018

I had two large shelves of CDs that were gathered beginning with the one My Brother gave me when I was in college before I even had (or maybe when I first got?) a CD player when they were rare-ish and my and others’ primary means of music w/r/t listening was The Turntable. It was Elvis Costello’s King of America.

First and last songs open with the same melody.

Fun fact: after the obtainment or maybe before, I went to a Costello concert following said album/CD’s release with bro and his then girlfriend at The Fox. It was neat. Also fun fact: I got into EC in HS when I dug through My Brother’s albums and decided to listen to Imperial Bedroom. It was a revelation.

CDs were kept; CDs were moved from college apts to post college apts to shared apt (hey Lisa!) to condo (hey Wife!!) and sat for years on shelves and were looked at like Ulysses the book we want to read but don’t. Still, they had memories. I resisted getting rid of them and appreciate that. Getting them in digital form was more than overdue. I still have everything that I’ve ever burned to digital on local, RAIDed, 4x2TB (~5 TB total) drives backed up to the cloud, but I see that as an old person habit that is irrelevant-ish. Google Play allows 50,000 songs and all purchases are download-able w/o copy-protection. Although I think copy protection may be an old person’s concept also.

So now those shelved CDs are less visible but more easily accessible. And the act of reviewing what got burned reëmphasizes what was valuable.

Stereolab

I got “into” them when I had a subscription to IIRC CMJ. They were a magazine I subscribed to that contained a CD of a dozen or so new artist that, Pitchfork-like, predicted possessed coolness. I discovered so much from them. And one was Stereolab. If I dug through the CD tracts I would remember the exact song but it doesn’t matter.

Years ago and years after the discovery I went to a concert with Wife and Robert and Shelby at Variety Playhouse. They don’t disappoint. I wonder if they still tour.

Sonic Youth

This is the one.

I discovered them one weekend during college when friends and I came in from Carrollton to L5P to dig through what Wax n’ Facts had to offer. I had heard of Sonic Youth, for how long I don’t know, and that, via Rolling Stone of-all-places, Daydream Nation was a masterpiece (same publication that called Imperial Bedroom a masterpiece). It was like discovering Dark Side of the Moon. The double album provided the right amount of prog framing with noise-rock experimentation. I had been informed by Glenn Branca et al. from high school and so I easily absorbed the rock band consisting of the musicians of Branca’s symphonies.

Played this for my college music theory teacher and he was… intrigued? Hey, Dr. Dan Bakos!

Found on the internet. Ah, memories.

This I had on cassette from … ROIR! (Google search). Obtained from mailings I would get with alt noise rock and no-wave. Sonic Youth’s first album was also offered in their catalogues but they were very Branca at the time and less Sonic Youth.

Shudder to Think

I had found these guys via an early internet radio station that was more like a pirate AM station than anything else. Two Austin (?) guys who just played the shit they liked and were as much talk as music but it was great. Besides StT I learned about math rock and the math rock bands Durian (which for no specific reason did not make the cut to be burned to MP3) and Faraquet (same, no reason?). StT I revisited as I re-listened and found that they were a bands’ band and of the Pearl Jam time milieu indie. Respected and influential.

Thingy

These guys were the weird ones in a field of weird. They are math rock via Sunny Day Real Estate (maybe?) via The Minutemen (short song, yet pop not punk). I cannot recommend them enough as forgotten missed potential. I really have no idea where I found them (see May 2004). There was random internet radio, RIOR, Wax n’ Facts, CMJ, a brother? Probably something else.

Now, the musicians from Thingy did as musical theatre a piece based on G. Stein’s poem (see Jul 2006) called The World is Round. I only had access to short clipes but goddammit I loved that music. A few videos were available the time, but research for this blog post brought up the rarity of a complete performance.

I had two large shelves of CDs

Updated 4 Oct 2018

Nice coincidence: Sonic Youth is celebrating the 30th anniversary (1988!) of Daydream Nation at an event in Portland, OR. Included will be documentaries of their performance from 2007 along with archival footage. Gordon Withers just released cello versions of two Sonic Youth songs including “Youth Against Fascism” which rails against Clarence Thomas (today I’ve been glued to the Kavanaugh news). Days after the Daydream Nation screenings, Steve Shelley will be performing a fundraiser for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Nice coincidence.

The void

I’ve had this idea of cultural memory w/r/t individuals and the longevity of the importance of their contribution to it, good or bad or whatever. There’s an infinite space with time progressing, say, left-to-right. A person of enduring importance would start as a dot then continue as a bright line that flares up, grows brighter or diminishes as their value to culture varies. The line may continue on, brightly, to a great length. Shakespeare. Bach; well-respected during his lifetime, less bright for a century or so, then “rediscovered” by Mendelssohn and increasing in brightness ever since. Some are bright and diminish as they are in and out of fashion. (I know music and art best so…) Sigismond Thalberg was a pianist and composer contemporaneous with Liszt, well-respected in his day but little-known now. Little-known but thought of passionately by some; the Wikipedia talk page for Thalberg is lousy with fights on who’s the better, Thalberg or Liszt. I had gotten involved in the talk page a decade or so ago and… let’s say his adherents had passions. I would not have known of him if I hadn’t dug into Liszt’s history.

So we see these lines, bright and less so, with some lasting effectively forever. And for the rest of us, even those famous in our lifetimes, we’re a dot. Maybe lasting a little longer a couple of generations but no more and ending with a precipitous drop. And then there is that blackness.

I wondered what that extra space in between was. I know it’s only a space created by my metaphor/simile yet that construct created this idea of The Void where none exist and nothing is remembered. And it seems important.

A similar-but-different idea is when I think about my impressions of art and generally many things these days. It’s not that I have great opinions or ideas, but it’s that I have an historical and reference-rich impression of each moment. Even something like a scene from a sit-com is overfull with references. Like the bright lines above, I think of it as a line of my going through time and encountering these dots of experiences. With each, a string hangs down and the longer ones represent those with more varied and complex references. I feel like there’re more and more of those long strings of complexity.

Or something like that.