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What’s at stake if we lose net neutrality? A guide for the perplexed

(Credit: Getty/Salon)

Tomorrow, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will vote to keep or eliminate net neutrality rules — and if net neutrality is discarded, their decision could potentially turn the American Internet into an oligarchy, controlled and mediated by a few large corporations. The unraveling of these rules, which were established in 2015 under the Obama administration, is a partisan issue to be sure — nearly all Democrats are pro–net neutrality, and the charge to end net neutrality is spearheaded by a few Republicans like FCC chairman Ajit Pai and President Donald Trump — yet its impact will affect all American internet users regardless of political persuasion. For the record, that’s most of the country: only 13 percent of Americans don’t use the internet.

If you didn’t follow the debate leading up to the implementation of the rules in 2015, you might be more confused about why everyone is freaking out about Thursday’s vote; or, perhaps, what the impact on consumers will be if the overturn is passed, which is likely considering the party split of the commission. Here, we’ve put together a Salon explainer guide.

First, what is net neutrality?

“Net neutrality is the rules of the road that are designed to keep a level playing field between Internet service providers (ISPs) and other players in the broadband space,” Amber McKinney, Assistant Managing Editor at the legal publication Law360, and who covers telecommunications, explained to Salon.

Currently, the U.S. has 62 ISPs, including big names like AT&T Wireless, Sprint, T-Mobile, Xfinity (a Comcast product) and U.S. Cellular.

Why is this happening now?

In 2014, Obama passed an order that classified the Internet as a Title II entity under the Communications Acts, which ultimately established restrictions for Internet providers that inhibited them from blocking content, accessing content, and throttling Internet content — which is when ISPs intentionally slow (or speed) a specific Internet service. As Obama explained during the initial debate a few years ago, “no service should be stuck in a ‘slow lane’ because it does not pay a fee.”

According to McKinney, there were several instances in which ISPs took advantage of an Internet without net neutrality rules, which is what helped pave the way for Obama’s net neutrality rules. In 2007, Jon Hart of California, sued Comcast for allegedly blocking him from using the peer-to-peer application BitTorrent. In 2012, AT&T limited the use of Apple’s Facetime feature on their phones, in an attempt to save bandwidth.

However, after President Donald Trump took office in January, he appointed Ajit Pai as the chairman of the FCC. Pai was already a commissioner at the FCC, having been nominated by Barack Obama in a recommendation from Sen. Mitch McConnell, R.-Ky. The FCC is always comprised of five commissioners, and no more than three can belong to a party—as it stands, three, including Pai, are Republicans.

Since Pai has become Chairman, he’s made it the FCC’s priority to reverse Obama’s net neutrality rules. In his proposal, net neutrality regulations would essentially become obsolete.

When Pai announced the new order, he claimed that Obama’s order forced the government to micromanage the Internet.

“We propose to repeal utility-style regulation of the Internet. We propose to return to the Clinton-era light-touch framework that has proven to be successful. And we propose to put technologists and engineers, rather than lawyers and accountants, at the center of the online world,” Pai said in a statement about the rollback.

He also pointed to small ISPs, and their inability to grow due to Obama’s net neutrality rules.

“Small ISPs faced new regulatory burdens associated with common carrier compliance. Innovative providers hoping to offer their customers new, even free services had to fear a Washington bureaucracy that might disapprove and take enforcement action against them. With the possibility of broadband rate regulation looming on the horizon, companies investing in next-generation networks hesitated to build or expand networks, unsure of whether the government would let them compete in the free market,” he said.

Since then, Internet pioneers and Democratic Senators have publicly asked Pai to delay the vote. A Republican, Mike Coffman, R-Colo., also asked Pai to delay the vote. The request to delay the vote isn’t only motivated by irreconcilable party differences, it’s also because of a debacle regarding the FCC comments section on the matter. When Pai announced his plan to reverse Obama’s net neutrality rules, he said the FCC would accept and consider comments on the matter; yet the FCC comment page ended up being trolled by bot accounts that spammed the page. In fact, according to a Pew Research Center study, fifty-seven percent of publicly-posted comments on the FCC’s website came from temporary or duplicate emails.

In an open letter penned by Apple’s co-founder Steve Wozniak; Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web; Vinton G. Cerf, whose nickname is the “father of the Internet,” and more, it was revealed the the FCC has neglected to acknowledge Freedom of Information Act requests related to the fake comments.

A twinge of hypocrisy

What’s a political debate without a little hypocrisy? Congressman Coffman, R-Colorado, wrote a letter to Pai in which he pointed out how Pai’s previous words contradict his current stance.

As Coffman wrote:

“As you stated in your dissent to the previous FCC’s open Internet proceeding, ‘A dispute this fundamental is not for us, five unelected individuals, to decide. Instead, it should be resolved by the people’s elected representatives, those who choose the direction of the government—and those whom the American people can hold accountable for that choice.’”

Yet, here we are.

Future implications

As the hours countdown to Thursday’s vote, there’s no end in sight to suggest that the vote will be delayed or the overturn won’t pass, which means consumers should begin to mentally prepare for an Internet without net neutrality regulations. According to McKinney, like anything, changes would be implemented at a slow pace, and there’s no way to truly predict what they would look like, but many are pointing to Portugal as an model of the types of tiered-Internet packages ISPs would offer.

For example, an ISP could charge $25 for a basic Internet access, and then ISPs could add extra charges for additional services like streaming video or using social media. It’s unclear if American consumers would stand for that, but the rollback would give ISPs an opportunity to experiment.

The other potential implication is what ISPs will do to companies who get a lot of traffic, or have features that require a lot of bandwidth. McKinney told Salon that one way to think about this is to look to Ikea, a furniture retail company that gets a lot of traffic. “Let’s say Ikea has a VR component to see what a piece of furniture would look like in your living room, but that feature takes up a lot of bandwidth,” she says. “The ISP might charge more for that feature, and Ikea could say that’s not worth it to us, and they’d take it off their website.”

Moreover, this vote also comes at a moment when the news industry faces a crisis of public faith, largely as a result of attacks on the news industry’s credibility from the president and his allies.  If the net neutrality rules are overturned, McKinney tells Salon it could have an impact on news sites as well.

“An Internet service provider, say Comcast that also owns NBCUniversal Media, could decide to provide content from NBC on a ‘fast lane,’ meaning stories and video clips load quickly, while throttling the same type of content from a competitor’s news site, making that media load more slowly,” she told Salon. “It remains unclear how much the Federal Trade Commission will be able to police these kinds of arrangements, and whether the scenario above with two related companies will be treated differently for enforcement purposes from a situation where one media outlet simply pays Comcast or another ISP a higher rate to make sure their content is provided on one of the internet fast lanes.”

Even though the vote doesn’t hinge on citizen voters, a recent poll by Politico and Morning Consult has found that 52 percent of voters are in favor of Obama’s net neutrality regulations, including 53 percent of Republicans and 55 percent of Democrats. Likewise, a University of Maryland poll, quoted in the Washington Post yesterday, noted that “large majorities of Americans — including 3 out of 4 Republicans — oppose the government’s plan to repeal its net neutrality rules for Internet providers.”

Not another Trump University: Does Arizona need Woz U?

Steve Wozniak (Credit: AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

At an October tech conference in Arizona’s Paradise Valley, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak announced a new online technology education platform called Woz U. He expressed hope it would revolutionize the industry and become the standard for software and technology education. “Our goal is to educate and train people in employable digital skills without putting them into years of debt,” Wozniak said. “People are often afraid to choose a technology-based career because they think they can’t do it.”

As of now, Woz U only offers two 33-week courses for customer-support specialists and software developers, both MOOCs, or massive open online courses. But Wozniak’s plans don’t stop there, as he also hopes to add data science, mobile application and cybersecurity programs to the curriculum.

Woz U, which will be based out of Scottsdale, has plans to expand the school into physical campuses all across the country, with the goal of setting up campuses in more than 30 cities across the country and another 15 internationally. This initiative, called Woz Academy, will begin in 2018, although no future sites have been announced. Another part of Wozniak’s plan, called the Accelerator, is to create a different kind of school that will aim to attract elite tech talent and innovators to participate in an immersive 12-month program that will offer paid internships. The Accelerator will also have a physical campus in a yet undisclosed location in Arizona.

Woz U has already run into some issues within the state regarding accreditation and logistics. The school does not have a physical campus, but does have an office in Scottsdale that will serve as its headquarters. The Arizona State Board for Private Postsecondary Education, the state agency that regulates for-profit schools, announced Woz U is not licensed to operate in Arizona. 

Because the news release and website for the school describe it as an “Arizona-based” school offering classes with headquarters in Scottsdale, that would mandate it get a license or face a Class 3 misdemeanor if the school advertises, recruits students or operates without a license.

The programs being offered now are run by a for-profit education company called Southern Careers Institute, which doesn’t have the best track record of success for its students. Only 31 percent of the students who attend SCI graduate, a staggeringly low score, even among for-profit schools.

According to the website, the school is working in partnership with Exeter Education, whose CEO, Brent Richardson, was the former chairman of another for-profit school in Arizona, Grand Canyon University. The premise of Woz U wouldn’t be a new one, as there are other similar programs that used MOOCs to teach tech-based skills. But the other elements of his proposed goal for what the school will become are surely innovative on the surface.

However, Woz U currently doesn’t offer any form of degree or certification for completing the courses offered at the moment. Aside from the two MOOCs offered, those interested are limited to requesting more information about what the program will look like eventually. The site itself outlines the vision for the school, but for the time being it offers nothing but the prospect of something better coming in the future, albeit with the Woz’s stamp of approval.

But with Woz U’s partnership with a for-profit company, it raises questions of why it chose Arizona to set up shop.

History of for-profit education in Arizona 

Arizona is a state that welcomes for-profit colleges with open arms. Arizona has 26 different for-profit colleges, ranging from job-specific schools for cosmetology and auto mechanics, to more traditional or online schools like the University of Phoenix.

Arizona is more than just welcoming to for-profit schools; it may be the best place in the country for them. The country’s largest for-profit college, the University of Phoenix, was established in Arizona because, as the founder John Sperling once told the Arizona Republic, there were no regulations. It’s no coincidence that the school’s name also adorns the Arizona Cardinals football stadium, providing, if nothing else, a symbolic representation of the significance of for-profit education in the state.

Arizona politics are also heavily influenced by the lobbying arm of the for-profit education industry. Arizona Senators Jeff Flake and John McCain worked to nix an investigation by the Pentagon into aggressive recruiting practices aimed at veterans by the University of Phoenix, whose parent company was one of the primary campaign contributors for both senators. A bill was proposed last year in the state Senate to lower the state property tax for for-profit colleges from 18.5 to 5 percent, which would essentially only benefit schools with a physical campus like Grand Canyon.

For-profit education problems

For-profit education has its many detractors, who cite a multitude of issues that plague the industry. Large for-profit schools such as ITT Technical Institute and Corinthian Colleges were shut down in 2016 because of predatory advertising practices and a failure to ensure students become gainfully employed, or in other words, are able to get jobs that make it possible for them to pay off their debt. For-profit schools have also been criticized for taking advantage of first-generation students, minorities and veterans by deceiving them and not delivering on promises of career advancement and job placement, let alone graduation.

Many have argued that for-profit schools take advantage of these types of students who might not be aware of other options available at traditional two- and four-year public institutions. They have also been the subject of a number of investigations and studies that have shown for-profit schools have higher default rates on loans, are more expensive than public colleges and have lower graduation rates than their public counterparts. Perhaps the most famous example of a for-profit institution taking advantage of students is Trump University, which was owned and operated by Donald Trump and was open from 2005-10. Now defunct, Trump agreed to a $25 million settlement with over 3,700 former students, who alleged in a class-action lawsuit the school took advantage of them. They argued they were defrauded by the school, pressured into paying thousands of dollars for real estate seminars that failed to deliver on the promises advertised. The suit claims they were pressured into signing up for the expensive seminars through aggressive sales techniques and false promises on the curriculum and business opportunities. Trump denies any wrongdoing and has even hinted at reopening the school in the future, despite the settlement. 

Not all for-profit schools are bad, as there are a number of trade and vocational schools that are highly successful in training and educating new professionals. They also serve a vital role in the education ecosystem, in that they are responsible for filling a major gap in the marketplace for skilled workers by graduating almost half of all the associates degrees for computer science and information technology.

Those that run afoul and fail, however, especially such large schools like ITT and Corinthian, present a number of problems. More than 90 percent of students at for-profit schools rely on federal loans to pay for school, compared to 43 percent of students at public colleges. The schools themselves also rely heavily on federal funds, so when the schools go belly up like many did last year, the students are left in crippling debt and the taxpayers are footed with the bill.

Is Woz U different from other for-profit schools? 

The concept of Woz U is noble one, and it certainly hasn’t defrauded any students. Another part of the plan is to fund K-12 programs that focus on science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics (STEAM). But while it may look promising to some, to many it could just be another school offering the promise of career enhancement and opportunity with no proof that it can do either.

The timing of the announcement to create another for-profit school is interesting as well. In 2016, the Obama administration placed restrictions on schools and began monitoring those who were defrauding their students or not equipping them with gainful employment. Schools found to violate the rules would lose federal funding or accreditation, as was the case with ITT and Corinthian. But the new administration and education Secretary Betsy DeVos have already rolled back those regulations, potentially ushering in another wave of for-profit schools unencumbered by rules that help protect the interests of students. 

Woz U promises to educate and train, without going into years of debt, but with no degree or certificate programs, will the price be worth it? Wozniak’s personal investment in the school seems to be a good sign for the school and its potential students, but that gets tricky when the school worries more about the bottom line than preparing its students for successful lives and careers. The school could become a hotbed for innovation like envisioned, but the history of for-profit schools may suggest otherwise.

Salma Hayek claims Harvey Weinstein extorted her into doing a sex scene

Salma Hayek (Credit: Getty/Chris Delmas)

Salma Hayek describes numerous instances of alleged abuse and sexual harassment from Harvey Weinstein in a new editorial in the New York Times titled “Harvey Weinstein Is My Monster.”

Hayek says these experiences occurred during their collaboration on “Frida,” a Frida Kahlo biopic and passion project for the actor that she not only starred in, but produced and essentially willed into being. “My greatest ambition was to tell her story,” she wrote, adding that she thought Weinstein was the perfect person to help her bring the biopic to life.

The original deal they struck was unequal, but in Hayek’s mind, it was worth it to pursue her goal. “I did not care about the money,” Hayek said. “I was so excited to work with him and that company. In my naïveté, I thought my dream had come true. He had validated the last 14 years of my life. He had taken a chance on me — a nobody.”

Hayek said the abuse and harassment began shortly after the partnership began. She claims had to deny him entry to her hotel rooms repeatedly, to tell him she would not shower with him, that he could not watch her shower, that he could not give her a massage, that he did not have permission to give her oral sex, and that she would not give in to his many, many other inappropriate, offensive requests.

“And with every refusal came Harvey’s Machiavellian rage,” Hayek wrote. “I don’t think he hated anything more than the word ‘no.'”

She continued, “The range of his persuasion tactics went from sweet-talking me to that one time when, in an attack of fury, he said the terrifying words, ‘I will kill you, don’t think I can’t.'”

Hayek says after Weinstein was finally convinced that she would not sleep or submit to him, he threatened to give the lead to another actor. Then, she said, he told her if she completed a list of impossible tasks, like raising $10 million and finding an A-list director, that Weinstein would allow “Frida” to commence.

Hayek said when she met those demands and filming finally began, Weinstein stopped sexually harassing her, but the abuse and rage continued. She claims he constantly berated her with insults, and threatened to shut down the film because of the story of the complicated, defiant artist lacked “sex appeal”. At times, he demanded that Hayek remove her character’s unibrow and limp, both recognizable, even iconic, traits of the historical Kahlo. “The only thing he noticed,” she said, “was that I was not sexy in the movie.”

She said it, “was soul crushing because, I confess, lost in the fog of a sort of Stockholm syndrome, I wanted him to see me as an artist: not only as a capable actress but also as somebody who could identify a compelling story and had the vision to tell it in an original way.”

“He offered me one option to continue,” Hayek wrote. “He would let me finish the film if I agreed to do a sex scene with another woman. And he demanded full-frontal nudity.”

Hayek said she felt tied, after the years and favors and talent that had already been poured into “Frida.” So, she agreed for the sake of the film.

“I arrived on the set the day we were to shoot the scene that I believed would save the movie,” Hayek said. “And for the first and last time in my career, I had a nervous breakdown: My body began to shake uncontrollably, my breath was short and I began to cry and cry, unable to stop, as if I were throwing up tears.”

Hayek said she had to take a tranquilizer to get through the scene, and even post-production, Weinstein continued to disparage, shortchange and attempt to sabotage the film. Despite the initially limited release the producer would give it, “Frida” went on to be a box-office and critical success, winning two Oscars and further burnishing Weinstein’s golden reputation.

Even after all the alleged abuse Hayek endured at the hands of Weinstein, she said years later he told her “You did well with ‘Frida'; we did a beautiful movie.” She added, “I believed him. Harvey would never know how much those words meant to me.” Even after everything he had allegedly done, she still sought and valued his approval.

Not only is this a sign of how Weinstein apparently wielded power over people who suspected he was or knew him to be a monster, it’s indicative of the shame so often folded into experiences of sexual harassment and abuse for the victim. So many abusers don’t just harass or physically assault their victims, they convince them in many ways that they were somehow worthy of such treatment — “a sort of Stockholm syndrome,” indeed.

“I am grateful for everyone who is listening to our experiences,” Hayek concluded. “I hope that adding my voice to the chorus of those who are finally speaking out will shed light on why it is so difficult, and why so many of us have waited so long. Men sexually harassed because they could. Women are talking today because, in this new era, we finally can.”

 

Make 2018 the most productive year of your life

With all the myriad pressures and stresses of life, it can be extremely difficult to stay on task and maintain an excellent level of productivity. This day and age, it’s easy to procrastinate by just watching an episode (or an entire season) of your favorite show on Netflix. However, success is often measured in just being able to get things done! Been having some trouble this year? Check out The Ultimate Productivity Bundle, available now to Salon readers for just $36.

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Trump’s mining regulator nominee was once dropped by the agency for doing “junk” work

(Credit: AP Photo/Matthew Brown, File)

President Donald Trump’s choice to head a federal coal mine regulator, like more than one of his nominees, is a vocal critic of the very agency he’s being asked to lead. Steven Gardner is a longtime coal industry consultant, and he has called the agency’s marquee Obama-era regulation the product of “one of the most disingenuous and dishonest efforts put forward by a government agency.”

But in Gardner’s case, there is an unusual — and contentious — twist: He runs an engineering firm that produced a report as part of the process of preparing that regulation, and the agency deemed it so shoddy that it cut ties with Gardner’s company. Now he’s the nominee to head that agency, the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement. (In broad terms, OSMRE — pronounced “oz-muhr” — focuses on mining’s effect on the environment, while the other key regulator, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, focuses on the welfare of miners.)

State and federal officials at the time harshly criticized a draft report produced jointly by Gardner’s firm, ESCI, and other contractors. They blasted it as “nonsensical,” “junk,” “inaccurate and incomplete,” and “a piece of crap.” Some OSMRE staff members went so far as to accuse Gardner of trying to sabotage the regulation his firm was hired to help develop.

Acrimony and accusations flowed in both directions. Gardner charged that agency officials had pressured contractors to soften the projected economic impact of the regulation, the Stream Protection Rule. The stated purpose of the rule was to limit damage done by coal mining to waterways, but Gardner and other critics saw it as a strike at the heart of the coal industry.

Gardner is expected to testify in the coming weeks at a confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Former Obama administration officials and a contractor who worked with Gardner have questioned how he will lead an agency that he has held — and that has held him — in something less than high regard.

“It has been said that one of my biggest challenges will be winning the support of OSM staff I will oversee due to the past controversies,” Gardner said in an emailed statement. “While there may be some in OSM that differed with my opinions, many others sent me messages of support noting they did not agree with OSM management during that controversial period.” (The White House referred a request for comment to the Department of the Interior, OSMRE’s parent agency, which did not respond to a request for comment.)

This was no backroom tiff. The conflict between Gardner and OSMRE played out in unusually public forums, including congressional hearings. On Capitol Hill, Republican opponents of the Obama administration’s ambitious environmental and energy agendas had branded its coal policy a “war on coal.” They seized on Gardner’s claims as evidence that the administration was fighting dirty.

Gardner’s strained relationship with the agency can be traced to 2010. ECSI was among a group of contractors hired to analyze the environmental and economic impact of various proposals for the Stream Protection Rule. OSMRE officials hoped ECSI and another subcontractor, Morgan Worldwide, would serve as counterweights to each other. ECSI worked principally with the coal industry, while Morgan Worldwide tended to represent environmental interests.

By the fall of that year, state and federal officials had begun to express doubts about whether the contractors were up to the task. “If this had come from one of my entry-level students (when I taught college hydro), I would have failed them,” OSMRE scientist Debbie Dale wrote in an email that November, describing a section of the draft report assigned to ECSI. She called it the “most poorly written ‘professional’ document” she had ever seen, according to the 2013 inspector general report. Eight state regulators wrote a letter to OSMRE Director Joseph Pizarchik, calling it “often nonsensical and difficult to follow.”

At one 2011 meeting, Dianne Shawley, a senior agency attorney, laid the bulk of the blame at the feet of ECSI and the other subcontractors. “They’ve given you a piece of crap, really. To be blunt,” she told executives from the general contractor, Polu Kai Services.

Agency officials were dismayed. “In my experience, it was very unusual to receive so much negative feedback about a contractor’s work,” said Pizarchik, who stepped down at the end of the Obama administration, in an interview with ProPublica. “I’m not aware of other instances where this has occurred.”

Sean Jensen, the president of Polu Kai Services, defended the draft report, noting the contractors never had a chance to finish it. “We did our job,” he said. “I’m happy with the team’s work.”

In the meantime, another concern had surfaced, this one limited to Gardner. Staff members, who have since left OSMRE, told Pizarchik they believed Gardner was trying to undermine the Stream Protection Rule. They accused him of being uncooperative, asserting that he was deliberately misreading parts of the draft rule so he could condemn it as an overly broad ban on underground mining. (In an email, Gardner described himself as cooperative and his reading of the rule as correct.)

Gardner had spent decades consulting for coal companies and would later be elected president of a major professional association for the mining industry. A Kentucky native, he is fond of observing that, because he grew up on a tobacco farm, he has “the honor of being involved in the two most politically incorrect industries in the country.”

The dispute between the contractors and the agency came to a head in January 2011. The Associated Press had published a leaked draft of the contractors’ initial analysis. It suggested that the Stream Protection Rule would have a devastating impact, wiping out 7,000 mining jobs nationwide.

OSMRE officials disputed the accuracy of the projection, but by then it was too late. The job-loss figure had become a part of the public discourse around the agency’s incipient rule.

The fallout from the leak prompted a series of at times heated meetings at which OSMRE officials and the contractors tried to resolve their differences. The endeavor proved unsuccessful, and in March 2011, agency officials declined to renew the contract. They hired a new set of contractors to complete the project, though they retained Morgan Worldwide. (John Morgan, president of Morgan Worldwide, said agency officials never complained about his company’s work.)

Congress, however, wouldn’t let the issue rest. Republicans had found in the dramatic job-loss figure powerful ammunition for their fight against the Obama administration’s coal policy. “It was all about blocking everything the Obama administration wanted to do,” Pizarchik said. “Everything was a war on coal.”

At congressional hearings in November 2011, the tensions between OSMRE and the contractors spilled into the open. When one congressman declared that the Stream Protection Rule “will kill jobs and stop coal mining,” Pizarchik accused the contractors of producing job-loss projections with “no basis in fact.” Incensed, Gardner testified two weeks later that OSMRE officials had put pressure on the contractors to manipulate their analysis to obscure the reality that the rule would decimate the American coal industry.

The dispute attracted the attention of the inspector general for the Department of the Interior, which ultimately produced a report that criticized both sides. The IG concluded that OSMRE officials had managed the contracting process poorly, but found no evidence to support Gardner’s claim that administration officials had tried to improperly influence the contractors’ work. The contractors’ job-loss figures, investigators concluded in their 2013 report, weren’t fabricated, but they relied on little more than claims of expertise.

“The contractor and subcontractor could not identify any of the assumptions they made,” Pizarchik said. “Staff reported to me they said, ‘We’re the experts. That’s our opinion. Rely on that.’ . . . It was purely their opinion derived through the ‘expert elicitation process.’” (Gardner disputed this, saying the assumptions “were clearly identified.”)

All these years later, Gardner has come out on top in one respect. In February, less than a month after the Stream Protection Rule went into effect, Congress nullified it. In the intervening years, Gardner had continued to denounce OSMRE and the Stream Protection Rule in lectures, on his Facebook page and in newspaper op-eds.

It remains to be seen whether the victory proves Pyrrhic. “I think it’s a fatal flaw,” John Morgan, Gardner’s fellow subcontractor, said. “If you abused civil servants and accused them of the types of actions he did, it would be very difficult to be a leader.”

Why Trump’s evangelical supporters welcome move on Jerusalem

(Credit: Kobi Gideon,GPO via AP)

President Trump’s announcement on Wednesday, Dec. 6 that the U.S. would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel received widespread criticism. Observers quickly recognized the decision as related not so much to national security concerns as to domestic U.S. politics and promises candidate Trump made to his evangelical supporters, who welcomed the announcement..

Historian Diana Butler Bass posted on Twitter:

“Of all the possible theological dog-whistles to his evangelical base, this is the biggest. Trump is reminding them that he is carrying out God’s will to these Last Days.”

It is true that evangelicals have often noted that their support for Trump is based in their conviction that God can use the unlikeliest of men to enact his will. But how did conservative American Christians become invested in such a fine point of Middle East policy as whether the U.S. Embassy is in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem?

For many of President Trump’s evangelical supporters this is a key step in the progression of events leading to the second coming of Jesus. There’s an interesting story as to how that came to be.

Ushering in the kingdom of God

The nation of Israel and the role of the city of Jerusalem are central in the “end-times” theology – a form of what is known as “pre-millennialism” – embraced by many American conservative Protestants. ​

Evangelical Christians from various countries wave flags as they show their support for Israel in Jerusalem in a march held in October 2015.

AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner, File)

While this theology is often thought of as a “literal” reading of the Bible, it’s actually a reasonably new interpretation that dates to the 19th century and relates to the work of Bible teacher John Nelson Darby.

According to Darby, for this to happen the Jewish people must have control of Jerusalem and build a third Jewish temple on the site where the first and second temples – destroyed centuries ago by the Babylonians and Romans – once were. In Darby’s view this was a necessary precursor to the rapture, when believers would be “taken up” by Christ to escape the worst of the seven-year-period of suffering and turmoil on Earth: the Great Tribulation. This is to be followed by the cosmic battle between good and evil called Armageddon at which Satan will be defeated and Christ will establish his earthly kingdom. All of this became eminently more possible when the modern state of Israel was established in the 1940s.

But to understand the power of this way of looking at the world, it is necessary to do more than point to theological tenets. It is their dissemination through culture that determines which thought systems take hold and which ones are lost to history.

As author of “Building God’s Kingdom,” I focus on various aspects of conservative American Protestantism in American culture and politics. In my research I have seen how some thought systems get lost in history and others take hold.

Here is what happened with the end-time narrative that made it a core undercurrent to how these Christians look at the world and history.

The origins of this narrative

The end-times framework was popularized in the 1970s with an inexpensive and widely available paperback by evangelist and Christian writer Hal Lindsey called “The Late Great Planet Earth.” Lindsey argued that the establishment of the state of Israel in the 1940s set up a chain of events that would lead to Jesus’s return.

Waiting For The Word, CC BY

He calculated a date for that return in the 1980s. Lindsey, like many end-times prognosticators before him, argued that he lived in the “first time in history” when the biblical prophecies could possibly be fulfilled. This, he thought, was due in large part to the reestablishment of Israel.

Despite his claim to be reading the Bible literally, Lindsey’s interpretation was far from literal. He said, for example, that the locusts predicted in the one of the plagues in the book of Revelation were “really” helicopters.

As adults were reading Lindsey’s book, a generation of young people watched an “evangelistic” film, “A Thief in the Night,” in church services and youth group meetings.

Beginning with an ominous ticking clock, the film begins at the rapture. It shows how all the faithful Christians suddenly disappeared. For those who remained, there was one more chance to accept the Gospel but that chance required living through extreme persecution.

The film scared young people into conversion by depicting the experiences of these young Christians who were suffering because they had arrogantly dismissed warnings from their friends, families and churches to repent and had missed the rapture.

According to scholar Amy Frykholm, an estimated 50 million to 300 million people viewed “A Thief in the Night.”

The end-times and the culture wars

The use of popular media to spread a terrifying vision of the end of history to draw young people into repentance continued in the 1980s with the apocalyptic novels of Frank Peretti. The Peretti novels depicted a vibrant and active spiritual world in which cosmic forces of good and evil were vying for supremacy all around us.

As the book presented it, every person is obliged to play a part for one side or the other in very literal ways. This applies to all people: “True Christians” were meant to fight on God’s side, and the rest on the side of Satan. The first of these was called “This Present Darkness.”

Though clearly recognized as fictional, these books were also perceived as “real.” For example, while the seat of the diabolical scheming was the fictional local college and the chief antagonist was a fictional professor, it wasn’t lost on readers that they were to perceive colleges and professors as likely enemies.

The depiction of literal “good guys” and “bad guys” as regular people aligned with God and Satan, respectively, played into the increasingly divisive culture war battles of the time. These books were powerful and effective until a decade later when they were replaced in popular Christian culture by the “Left Behind” series, co-authored by culture warrior Tim LaHaye.

These 16 books and four films, released over the course of a decade, also trace the lives of the latecoming believers who had missed the rapture and were now part of the “Tribulation Force,” as they endured the post rapture world and sought to remain faithful despite persecution. The series’ successes included a New York Times best-seller, while seven others set sales records. The entire series sold more than 65 million copies.

Natasha Padgitt, CC BY-NC-SA

It’s impossible to overemphasize the effects of this framework on those within the circles of evangelicalism where it is popular. A growing number of young people who have left evangelicalism point to end-times theology as a key component of the subculture they left. They call themselves “exvangelicals” and label teachings like this as abusive.

It’s hard to get away from the invocation of mythic narratives in American politics. They get used often and are invented and reinvented to be deployed at different times in history. While supporters and opponents of the Trump announcement agree that the results might be cataclysmic, some of the supporters are happy. That is because they are reading it through a lens that promises the return of Jesus and the establishment of God’s kingdom.

Editor’s note: in a previous version of this article the date of President Trump’s announcement about moving the US embassy to Jerusalem was incorrect. It has been corrected to Dec. 6.

Julie Ingersoll, Professor of Religious Studies, University of North Florida

Trump and GOP tax cut is handing corporations like Ford a giant incentive to move offshore

AP Photo/Alan Diaz (Credit: AP)

Ford hit Michigan and its auto workers with some crappy holiday news. Instead of building a $700 million electric vehicle factory in Michigan as promised in January, Ford will construct the plant in Mexico.

Ford reneged on its promise to Michigan workers just days after the Senate passed a tax plan intended to end levies on corporate profits made at factories offshore — in places like Mexico. News of the letdown also arrived just days before new negotiations on a revised North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) are to begin in Washington, D.C.

Ford and other giant corporations got what they wanted out of Republicans on taxes, dramatically lower levies on domestic profits and total elimination on foreign profits. That makes Mexico an even more attractive manufacturing site for them than NAFTA did. So now they’re lobbying the Trump administration hard to retain the privileges that NAFTA bestowed on them. If they win that argument, they’ll have secured double incentives to offshore.

Trump administration officials don’t sound like they’re buying the corporate line, however. And they shouldn’t. NAFTA has cost Americans nearly a million jobs as thousands of factories migrated to Mexico. As he campaigned, President Trump promised untold numbers of factory workers and their families across the nation’s industrial belt that he would fix or end NAFTA to keep jobs and industry in America. He needs to keep that promise.

That means elimination of the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) scam that allows corporations to sue governments in secret courts presided over by corporate lawyers when legislatures pass laws corporations don’t like. That means standing strong on the Trump administration demands that the new pact expire in five years if it’s not working and that a substantial portion of automobiles – including Fords – be made in the USA to attain duty-free status. It means strong protection for workers’ right to organize and collectively bargain. It means substantially raising the Mexican minimum wage, which now stands at $4.70. That’s for a day, not an hour.

What it really means is prioritizing the needs of workers over the demands of corporations, something that was not done the first time around by NAFTA negotiators. As it stands now, NAFTA places all of the jeopardy on the shoulders of workers and communities while substantially eliminating normal business risks for corporations.

The jeopardy NAFTA created for workers is that its corporate-friendly provisions prompt employers to close American factories that sustain both workers and communities and move them to Mexico. This exodus of American manufacturing to Mexico has continued apace this year, even as the Trump administration began renegotiating NAFTA, probably because corporations assume they’ll get everything they want in the end. They have, after all, always done so in the past because they are, after all, massive political campaign donors and lobby firm patrons, while hourly workers are not.

Bloomberg reported in October, for example, that firms whose function it is to help corporations move factories from the United States to Mexico had a boom year in 2017, with one reporting it had done more offshoring this year than in any during the previous three decades.

Mexico is alluring because of its dirt-cheap wage rates, the paucity of environmental enforcement and the ISDS scam that lets corporations sue the government if Mexico would regulate in a way some CEO claims would crimp his profits.

The ISDS along with NAFTA’s unlimited lifespan reduce risk for corporations. Normal business decisions in capitalist systems involve some jeopardy. A chemical company could, for example, invest in developing a new pesticide, but then lose when the government bans the product after determining it kills babies as well as bugs.

NAFTA provides corporations with investment protection because it ensures they’ll get their profits even if a government changes regulations. ISDS enables corporations to sue to recoup money the corporations supposedly would have made if the government hadn’t issued new laws or regulations. The corporate-run court can order a country’s citizens to pay tens of millions to the corporation.

Some say this government-financed investment insurance corrupts capitalism. Among the significant people who have is U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. He said corporations are insisting the government absolve CEOs of political risk. CEOs are using ISDS as a guarantee rather than buying risk insurance or factoring political risk into economic decisions about whether to move.

Lighthizer said businessmen have literally told him the administration cannot change ISDS because corporations wouldn’t have invested in Mexico without it. “I’m thinking,” he said, “‘Well, then, why is it a good policy of the United States government to encourage investment in Mexico?’”

These are the same corporate honchos who object to a five-year sunset clause for a new NAFTA, he said. They want a free eternal warranty on the provisions of a deal they describe as the world’s greatest. Lighthizer’s response is that if the deal is so great, why would the government choose to end it after five years? What are they really worried about?

The worry may be that those CEOs know NAFTA is great for their bottom line but not for the workers who elected Donald Trump President.

They know NAFTA was drafted by CEOs for CEOs. Its priorities were determined by corporate bigwigs behind doors closed to the public. Corporations designed it at the expense of workers and ordinary citizens, Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize winning economist, said in an op-ed in the Guardian newspaper this week.

It often seems, he wrote, “that workers, who have seen their wages fall and jobs disappear, are just collateral damage – innocent but unavoidable victims in the inexorable march of economic progress. But there is another interpretation of what has happened: one of the objectives of globalization was to weaken workers’ bargaining power. What corporations wanted was cheaper labor, however they could get it.”

U.S. corporations like Ford got it by writing a trade deal that gave them market-distorting profit protections, then abandoning their dedicated American workers and moving to Mexico where they could pay $4.70 a day and pollute unfettered.

President Trump has threatened to withdraw from NAFTA if his negotiators can’t get new reasonable terms that protect American manufacturing and American workers.

That is right. It’s appropriate that corporations like Ford sustain the actual risk of offshoring rather than workers bearing it all.

Doug Jones’ shock victory: Big win for black voters; major blow to Trump

Doug Jones (Credit: AP/Brynn Anderson)

Alabama was once a solidly blue state — until 1994, when Sen. Richard Shelby switched parties after being elected as a Democrat. Since then, no Democrat has won a major statewide office. But Tuesday night, Alabama voters narrowly elected Democrat Doug Jones to the Senate, in the most shocking election result since Donald Trump’s presidential victory more than one year ago.

Tuesday’s election is exactly why Democrats need to have credible candidates in every race to take advantage of unexpected opportunities. When Republican candidate Roy Moore rode his horse, Sassy, to the polls to cast his vote in the special election this morning, he was heavily favored to win the seat first left vacant when Jeff Sessions left his Senate seat after 20 years to serve as attorney general.

Almost entirely thanks to black voters, a pro-choice Democrat whose most notable career accomplishment is the prosecution of Ku Klux Klan members was elected to represent one of the most solidly Republican states in the country. Eleven Alabama counties went from red in 2016, when Trump carried the state over Hillary Clinton by an overwhelming margin, to blue in 2017.

“No Republicans in Birmingham are celebrating,” the Birmingham News noted as it reported on a dearth of election-night watch parties in support of Republican Roy Moore.

Moore, who was twice removed from his position as chief justice of the state Supreme Court, both times for flouting federal law, last won office after a hard-fought 2012 race. His performance five years later, this time faced with accusations that he molested a 14-year-old girl, sexually assaulted a 16-year-old girl and pursued numerous other teenagers, was notably depressed. Moore’s base — rural white evangelicals in Alabama’s northern counties — simply didn’t show up in large enough margins. It probably didn’t help that Shelby, the state’s senior senator, who is a staunch Republican conservative, went on CNN on Sunday and advised against voting for his own party’s candidate.

Conversely, the black share of the Alabama vote was way up compared to past elections — heavily favoring Jones, a former U.S. attorney who is well known and widely admired in the black community. 

Black voters generally comprise around one-fourth of Alabama’s electorate. On Tuesday their proportion was close to 30 percent. Black turnout is normally depressed by the lack of statewide competition, but this time they were courted by prominent African-American figures in get-out-the-vote operations leading up to Tuesday’s election. Former President Barack Obama recorded a robocall for Jones, and both New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick traveled to Alabama to campaign on behalf of the Democrat.

The outcome of the race, of course,  has national implications that could set the tone for the 2018 midterm elections. Jones’ victory diminishes Republicans’ Senate majority to 51 seats, and serves as a potentially devastating blow to Trump’s legislative agenda.

While Jones’ campaign stressed a platform of job creation and health care, the race was dominated by Moore’s antics and the Republican civil war that his candidacy symbolized.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may have avoided an awkward discussion about what to do with Roy Moore in the Senate, but he will likely be blamed for the embarrassing loss, at least by Trump-supporting conservatives. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House chief strategist and the chairman of Breitbart News, is already attempting to deflect attention from his failed role by blaming McConnell’s insufficient support for Moore’s defeat. McConnell is fighting back.

“Not only did Steve Bannon cost us a critical Senate seat in one of the most Republican states in the country, but he also dragged the President of the United States into his fiasco,” said Steven Law, president of the McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund.

When the accusations against Moore first came to light many Republicans called on him to step aside from the campaign, “if the allegations were true.” As Moore resisted, they wilted and walked back their criticism. President Trump, who originally endorsed appointed incumbent Luther Strange in the GOP primary, enthusiastically urged Alabamians to vote for Moore. They have now chosen a Democrat instead.

If the intraparty bickering gets any uglier, McConnell’s plans to pass the GOP tax bill before Doug Jones can be seated in the Senate next year may be in doubt.

After Alabama votes, what’s next? Tune in to “Salon Talks” Wednesday at 12 p.m. ET and 9 a.m. PT to watch Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, Alyona Minkovski and Jeremy Binckes break down what the results of Tuesday’s extraordinary Senate election in Alabama mean now and looking ahead to 2018. Watch “Salon Talks” on Facebook, Periscope and Salon.

Trump’s sinister plan for NASA

(Credit: AP/Getty/Star Film Company/Photo Montage by Salon)

Two news items this week — the story of a weird asteroid dipping through our solar system, and the tale of Trump’s literal moonshot plan for NASA — weren’t merely items of space news floating through the newsiverse. These two space stories are connected in a way that prophesies something profound about America’s future in space.

First, some background: Oumuamua, a rogue asteroid likely to have originated from outside our solar system which swung around our sun in October, was found to have physical properties that were so bizarre that it prompted some scientists to focus radio telescopes on the rapidly departing rock to see if it might have been an artificial object constructed by an alien civilization. Of note: the tracking and studying of Oumuamua was largely privately-funded; billionaire Yuri Milner, himself a big donor to the nonprofit SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Foundation, was behind the group interested in tracking Oumuamua to see if it is alien-made.

The other story was yesterday’s big reveal from President Trump that he wanted to refocus NASA’s budget to “reach for the moon,” and, ultimately, Mars. The press release stated that the United States’ new goals were to “return United States astronauts to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilization” and to “pursue human exploration of Mars and the broader solar system.” Sounds cool enough on paper, but as usual, these goals come at the cost of others; namely, Trump used the moonshot goal to excuse himself for cancelling four science missions, most of which were related to studying climate change.

Together, these two tales tell a story about what the GOP wants NASA to be. While billionaires were funding the astronomy to probe deeper into the mystery of Oumuamua, Trump and his administration were working behind the scenes to make NASA into a science-free organization.

It’s hard to ask a question like, “why does Trump want to the moon?” in this manner without sounding conspiratorial. Yet in the case of Trump and GOP space policy, it is not a stretch to say there is a conspiracy here, although we need not call Fox Mulder to be able to eke it out. In essence, the ostensible moon and Mars missions are going to make NASA into an agency that contracts private aerospace companies to build big rockets, while not actually doing much science (or rocket-building) themselves.

To understand NASA’s evolution, you have to know a little bit about space travel economics. There is a rule of thumb regarding robot missions and human missions: In general, robots can achieve the same amount of science as a manned mission could, at 1/100th or even 1/1000th the cost. Mars missions like the Curiosity rover attest to this: Sending a human to do the robot’s job would have cost billions more, mainly because you’d have to carry around the life support systems — food, water, oxygen, bedding, medical equipment — in addition to the rest of the scientific equipment.

Inasmuch as the idea of humans living on other planets is romantic (if you’re Ridley Scott directing “The Martian”) or terrifying (if you’re Ridley Scott directing “Aliens”), it’s not particularly practical from a scientific perspective. Our robots are really good at doing science; they don’t have to do things like sleep, breathe, eat or maintain psychological composure, all of which require far more resources than the robots need.

So then, why does Trump propose to send humans to Mars or the Moon at all? It’s not because Trump has a romantic, Sagan-esque fascination with the idea of us becoming a multi-planetary civilization. It’s just to give more money and private contracts to the makers of the massive rockets that will get us there.

In this sense, Trump’s space policy brief is actually a boon to another big Mars/moon mission advocate: Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX. As it stands, SpaceX gets about half of its contracts from the federal government, often building big rockets to move supplies to and fro the space station or to send government satellites to orbit. Yet Musk is also renowned as a hypeman for manned space missions to other worlds. That makes sense financially for him: He is basically giving positive PR to the idea, which builds public support, which leads to more contracts for him to build big rockets. (I’ve often wondered if Musk’s greatest skill is not as an engineer or a CEO, but as a marketer.)

The aerospace industry is over the moon at the chance to send rockets over the moon. That’s because a rocket going to the Moon, or Mars, is WAY more expensive than a rocket to low-earth orbit. Even to send payloads to the Moon requires a rocket of an order of magnitude larger than one that sends supplies to the ISS; remember, the International Space Station is 254 miles above us, whereas the moon is around 240,000 miles off. That requires a far larger rocket than the little Falcons that SpaceX usually sends to low-earth orbit.

To be fair, the policy agenda of privatization of NASA’s rocket contracts is one essentially inherited from Barack Obama. And indeed, rocket-building companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin and Boeing stand to make billions from government contracts, and have since the space shuttle program was axed. Yet Trump and the GOP go beyond Obama’s agenda with their commitment to strip NASA of many of its science functions. That agenda was made pretty apparent earlier this year with their appointment of Rep. Jim Bridenstine, R.-Okla., to the position of NASA administrator. Though he is not yet confirmed, Bridenstine has raised $89,000 from the defense and aerospace industry over the course of his career in Congress, and was criticized in a recent confirmation hearing for his positions on climate change; he actually once asked Obama to apologize for spending money on climate change research. In that case, having billionaires privately fund astronomy efforts — such as what’s going on with Oumuamua —  should please Trump and Bridenstine.

There’s precedent for what is going on with NASA. Just look back to the George W. Bush administration, and how he remade the defense industry in the 2000s. Indeed, a hallmark of the Bush years was his efforts to transform the military into a network of private contractors who were less accountable than the military itself; consider mercenaries like the eternally mid-rebranding Blackwater who fight alongside troops, or the outsourcing of Iraq-rebuilding efforts to Halliburton. Obama largely continued the military policies that Bush set. Now, those contractors are so deeply embedded in the Defense Department, so constantly lobbying to keep or increase their slice of the pie, that they’re essentially unremovable. They’re a cancer that keeps growing and that profits from being unaccountable.

NASA could soon become similar. Trump’s moon and Mars missions are going to be great for the aerospace industry’s ticker symbols, but not so good for science. Indeed, basic astronomy, SETI efforts and climate change research may become funded by billionaire donors, rather than supported by the government as a matter of public interest. But the Trump administration never much liked science anyway; this Brave New NASA is going to be virtually science-free if Trump and Pence get their way.

On the terror of creating year-end TV lists

According to estimates that FX provided to TV critics in August, more than 500 series will have premiered in 2017. (FX Networks chief John Landgraf made a more precise calculation: 534, not including any unexpected releases from Apple or other new services.) There’s a lot of TV on right now — far more than a single person can meaningfully digest, or even sample, while still having a life.

With that in mind, here’s a confession that won’t surprise anyone in the least: I’m not a fan of creating year-end “best of TV” lists. Reading them is another matter, especially the lists created by people who spend lots of time deeply thinking about which shows deserve a place in their top 10 — or, as is increasingly common these days, their top 20 or 25. A profoundly-considered list can be validating, illuminating and instructive all at once, allowing insight into the tastes of the list’s curator as well as providing them with viewing suggestions.

When the writer is introverted, slightly misanthropic and has no ready reply to the evergreen question of, “what are the best things on TV right now” — well, friends, welcome to me. Throw in an imperfect memory, an aversion to argument and a general sense of feeling like 2017 has kicked me in the triangle, and perhaps you’ll understand why this task has given me hives.

First, I’ll tell you what’s not on my list that likely holds a prominent place on many others: Showtime’s “Twin Peaks: The Return.” I gave it a try. Really, I did – for about five episodes. At that point, its artsy inscrutability began deflating my soul, and I chose to reclaim my time. For some of you that counts as a recommendation, and if that’s the case: “Twin Peaks: The Return” is the best show of 2017.

HBO’s “Big Little Lies” isn’t on my list either. To me, it came across as a glorified Lifetime movie. The Emmys and the Golden Globes disagree with me. Enjoy “Big Little Lies.” It is streaming on HBO Go and is the cream of the 2017 crop.

Since we’re on the topic of HBO, you may be expecting “Game of Thrones” to be on my “best of” list — and while it was exciting to have it back, the newest season was its weakest yet.

But “Game of Thrones” will do just fine regardless of how much “best of” love it gets. The same is true for two of FX’s consistently outstanding veterans, “Fargo” and a drama I included on another “best of” list, “The Americans.”  

Besides, there are many other series that I would recommend without question even if they didn’t make into my top 10 or 20. ABC’s “Speechless” is an incredible network TV comedy, for example. “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” and “Jane the Virgin” also remain woefully under-appreciated, while their CW comic book cohorts earn the lion’s share of attention from viewers who aren’t professional TV gawkers. Maybe you’ll be a part of changing that trend in 2018.

As for streaming…well. Despite bad press over its top executive, Amazon Studios kicked out some worthwhile content this year such as new seasons of “One Mississippi” and “Catastrophe” and the debut of “Sneaky Pete.” Netflix drowned viewers in bingeworthy selections including but not limited to “American Vandal,” “Mindhunter,” “Lady Dynamite” and “BoJack Horseman,” all shows you’re likely to see on the year-end best lists penned by others who excel at creating ranked order out of entertainment chaos.

However, this is a story about what would be on my year-end “best of TV” list. It’s not a “runners-up of TV” list.

Truthfully, my opinion of which series are the best shifts throughout the year and is dependent on mood. Granted, there are a few series I’ve re-watched recently, purely for pleasure, and can confirm my enthusiasm for them has not waned.

IFC’s “Brockmire” feels as ticklish, crass and emotionally raw as it did when it premiered in April, a time when I was feeling as low as Hank Azaria’s creatively foul-mouthed sportscaster. In 2017, a solidly-written redemption story feels just right. So, if I were to construct a year-end “Best of TV” list right now, in December 2017, “Brockmire” would be on it.

Ditto for NBC’s “The Good Place,” a sweet, smart comedy rooted in a sense of ethics that makes it a necessary coping mechanism for anyone disheartened by the era’s overwhelming dismissal of ethics and morality. The world in 2017 grew colder and darker indeed, and shows that make people feel better without switching off their intellect took on a keener vitality. Likewise, “This Is Us” became such a show in the back half of its first season and has maintained its honest, heartbreaking tone in season 2, further cementing Sterling K. Brown’s reputation as one of television’s most talented performers in the process. Both of those NBC series evoke what’s best about television right now.

In a contrasting view of family, AMC’s “Better Call Saul” shook its dysfunction with such force this season that it left no doubts as to why and how Bob Odenkirk’s Jimmy McGill transformed into the legal world’s heel. Creators Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan give Odenkirk ample opportunity to shine, but as Jimmy’s traitorous brother Chuck, Michael McKean consistently outdoes himself from one episode to the next.

As someone mourning the loss of a parent this year I probably won’t engage in a repeat viewing of HBO’s “The Leftovers” anytime soon, although it’s one of the highest artistic accomplishments to grace television this year.

Another site asked me to rank my top TV selections for 2017, causing much indigestion, and in doing so I placed Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” as the top slot among new series and among all TV series. If push came to shove I’d probably stand by that given how frightfully accurate it feels right now.

In terms of series that celebrate the complexity and joy of being a woman, 2017 gave us quite a few. While that aforementioned HBO miniseries about rich women stole the thunder away from FX’s “Feud: Bette and Joan,” Ryan Murphy’s series makes my list despite the energetic slack in a couple of later episodes. I can think of no more beautiful or detailed examination of how Hollywood, and male-dominated Western culture in general, pits women against one another only to toss them aside once their perceived sex appeal has waned.

The 1980s setting for Netflix’s “GLOW” inspires a substantially rowdier take on female friendship and camaraderie seen through the ruptured relationship between former besties played by Alison Brie and Betty Gilpin. But its entire cast plays a role in imparting the series with a swagger that holds up from start to finish.

Simultaneously on HBO, “Insecure” enabled Issa Rae to further inspire discussions about the maze of obstacles black women face in the working and dating worlds. The second season also thoughtfully navigated the realities of the modern black male sexuality and the expectations placed upon men by the culture at large by tagging along with Issa’s ex-lover Lawrence (Jay Ellis) in a second season that built on the spark of its first.

The sophomore run of FX’s “Better Things” is another example of an excellent series that already established itself as one of the best things on TV in its first season. Pamela Adlon plunges into the murky depths of the personal; in the doing so, the series became a loving regard of the fraught but unshakable bond her character Sam Fox has with her daughters and her friends while turning the spotlight on the cold truths about our imperfections as parents and siblings.

And Netflix’s revival of “One Day at a Time” envisions a modern take on Norman Lear’s late-1970s sitcom as the story of a single, Cuban-American mother sharing a cramped Los Angeles apartment with her mother and two children. The first season tackled issues of cultural appropriation, immigration, post-traumatic stress disorder among veterans and poverty while setting up a coming-out story that culminated in a finale that was warm, gutting and uplifting at once.

All of these shows hold prominent positions on any “Best TV of 2017” list I would make, albeit under significant self-imposed psychological duress, which is why I refuse to do such a thing.

Then there are the shows that maintained my attention for every episode, particularly extraordinary works of genre powered by intoxicating visuals and crackling dialogue. The freshman run of  Starz’s “American Gods” is entirely atmospheric, demonstrating the best of what fans of Bryan Fuller and Michael Green love about their work. It also gave Orlando Jones one of the best monologues of the entire year as Mr. Nancy. (“Angry gets shit done” should be cross-stitched on a throw pillow and gifted to every pissed-off person in America.)

People either hate CBS All Access’ “Star Trek: Discovery” or love it; I’m in that second camp, largely won over by Sonequa Martin-Green’s fiery Michael Burnham. Her performance of a disgraced former Starfleet officer holds her ground — and our attention — in conflicts with the story’s ambitious, morally-flexible starship captain (Jason Isaacs, part of an impressive ensemble ) in a story of clashing cultures that poses questions about the value of guiding philosophy in matters of war and survival.

In the realm of franchises, 2017 included several additions to Marvel’s “X-Men” universe, but none matched the imaginative scope of FX’s “Legion,” a trippy slide between reality and dreamscape, between solid truth and hallucination. Creator Noah Hawley is usually praised around this time of year for his work on “Fargo,” but the stylistic intricacy of this series, blended with engaging performances (Aubrey Plaza foremost among them) turned this series into a escapist treat each week.

On the flipside, “The Deuce” may be the most realistic series on HBO and all of television this year. As such, it’s also one of the hardest shows to watch. But that speaks to the care and mindfulness with which David Simon and George Pelecanos present this tale about pornography’s grimy birth in 1970s New York, a story that allows James Franco to further exercise his versatility in a dual role while giving Maggie Gyllenhaal ample opportunity to take command of every scene she is in.

Then there are the series that served as timely responses to the choking resurgence of bigotry and ignorance hanging over 2017. OWN’s “Queen Sugar” is a relatively unsung beauty that portrays black life in all of its variations with gorgeousness and pensiveness, allowing its men and women to embrace their flaws and celebrate their humanity its fullest.

Netflix’s “Dear White People” and “She’s Gotta Have It” speak with lightness and spirit to the modern black experience — with one confronting the existential comedy of identity politics and pain of prejudice with humor and (when appropriate) distress. Spike Lee’s remake of his groundbreaking cinematic classic as a series enables him to expansively flaunt his signature style as a director while celebrating art, music and the Brooklyn that he loves through the prism of a feminist comedy.

But if there’s one series that I wish received more attention than it did this year — and likely will in 2018 — it’s SundanceTV’s criminally overlooked “Hap & Leonard,” a Southern-fried crime drama based on Joe Lansdale’s books that changed its tone from a loopy caper in season one to the second season’s “Mucho Mojo” chapter. The second installment is a dark contemplation on race, police brutality, and the systemic denial of justice to people of color in a small Texas town where everybody knows everyone else. The fragile beauty of the loving friendship between Hap Collins (James Purefoy) and Leonard Pine (Michael Kenneth Williams) hovers above all that. As relevant and honest as the plot feels, the central relationship is one not often explored on television. It is just as much of a draw as the mystery, making it one of the best series to air on TV in 2017.

That is, if one were to engage in such distinctions. But I am not that person.