Writing

Call it Emancipation Day

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Today, June 19, 2025, is a federal holiday officially called Juneteenth National Independence Day, more often just Juneteenth. It commemorates the announcement by Major General Gordon Granger in 1865 that, per the Emancipation Proclamation, all slaves in Texas were free. Texas was the last Confederate state where the Emancipation Proclamation went into force.

This is certainly a day worth commemorating, even if it wasn’t the final abolition of slavery in the USA (that happened only when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified). I just wish it had a more forceful name. “Juneteenth” is meaningless; it doesn’t even tell you exactly what day it falls on. The full name is seldom used, probably because it would be confused with Independence Day on July 4. The obvious name for it is “Emancipation Day,” which some people use informally.
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Protests on June 14

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Todd Lyons is “demanding” that we stop saying bad things about his Gestapo. Hegseth has threatened to deploy the Marines against the American people. Let’s give them the answer they deserve.

On June 14, Donald Trump is celebrating his birthday with a Soviet-style military parade at our expense. It’s also a day when there will be many protests against the brutal turn our government has taken. You can look for one in your area at 50501. Read the description of any event you’re considering, and check other sources if necessary. Some event organizers merely want a socialist all-controlling state instead of a populist one, and they’re trying to hitch a ride on justified public outrage. In my limited experience, though, most are focused on the administration’s gross abuses of power.
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Words for defending freedom

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Here’s a list of suggestions for effectively opposing Trump’s power grab. I don’t claim to do all these things well; some of them could be notes to myself. Feel free to quote from here, but consider linking back to this post.

Promote principles, not factions.

Focus. A few well-made points are better than a laundry list.

Anger weakens your case, and cursing rarely persuades.
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A curiously missing word

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A few days ago, I started to write something complaining about people who use “white supremacy” when they mean “white supremacism.” Supremacy, I was going to say, is the state of being supreme. Usually they mean the unfounded assertion of being supreme. People who make that claim are supremacists, so the claim should be called supremacism, right? Like “racist” and “racism.”

But my spelling checker complained about the word “supremacism,” so I checked to make sure. Neither Merriam-Webster nor dictionary.com recognizes it as a word, though both recognize “supremacist.” The OED recognizes the word, though, so it’s OK to use it east of the Atlantic.

If one word exists, shouldn’t the other? I’d start a campaign to get it listed in dictionaries, except that “campaigning for supremacism” doesn’t sound so good.