Worth repeating

On a recent video, the poster mentioned how one thing that distinguishes the left and the right is that we want even those we politically oppose to obtain the help they need. That prompted me to pull this out which I know I have said in a few different ways but which I think bears repeating from time to time. This version is from 2011 but the original is from a letter to a friend the 1990s. Here we go:

It's the right that says "I," the left that says "we." It's the right that says "gimme," the left that says "we'll give." It's the right that says "compete," the left that says "cooperate."

Where the left says "us together," the right says "me first." Where the left says "hope," the right says "fear." Where the left says "you can come for help," the right says "you can go to hell."

Time after time after time, the left argues for choices that primarily benefit the needy. Time after time after time, the right argues for choices that primarily benefit the needless.

Time after time after time, when folks on the left benefit from their proposals it's because they're part of a broader community. Time after time after time, when folks on the right benefit from their proposals it's because they're part of a narrow clique.

It is the left, not the right, that knows that the real answer to Cain's question is "Yes."

064 The Erickson Report for October 27 to November 10, Page 3: The CPC letter

064 The Erickson Report for October 27 to November 10, Page 3: The CPC letter

So. On October 24, 30 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent a letter to the White House that in effect suggested trying to open a conversation with Russia about a potential diplomatic end to its war on Ukraine.

The result was what Politico called a "firestorm" of hostile reaction, one fueled to no small degree by how the Washington Post described the letter, as one urging Blahden to "dramatically shift his strategy on the Ukraine war," calling it a break with official policy and a rupture in the party.

The reaction was swift enough and hostile enough that by that evening caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal was issuing a "clarification" and by the next day it had been withdrawn altogether.

But it wasn't a break; in fact the letter was quite anodyne, including praise and reasserting support for Blahden and insisting that no agreement can be reached without the approval of Ukraine.

So what got it in so much trouble? It comes down to this sentiment, quoting the letter:

[I]f there is a way to end the war while preserving a free and independent Ukraine, it is America’s responsibility to pursue every diplomatic avenue to support such a solution that is acceptable to the people of Ukraine. The alternative to diplomacy is protracted war, with both its attendant certainties and catastrophic and unknowable risks.

In other words, as The Intercept put it, "That the letter was met with fierce opposition is a measure of the space available for debate among congressional Democrats when it comes to support for the war and how it might be stopped before it turns nuclear: roughly zero."

So invested have the Democratic hierarchy and particularly its hack sycophants become in the glories of war and the shimmering image of outright military defeat of Russia that simply proposing the idea of talking about the possibility of a settlement is beyond he pale.

Indeed, it often seems those hack sycophants are more intested in "decisive victory" through "overwhelming force" than that hierarchy is. Bluntly, I believe that's because they see such a victory as proper retibution for Russia's having, in their minds, been single-handedly responsible for inflicting Tweetie-pie on us.

Among the worst of those hack sycophants is Markos Moulitsas, founder of DailyKos, someone fond of calling people "tankies," a 1950s-era anti-communist smear accusing people of maintaining blind support of the Soviet Union even after its invasion of Hungary in 1954. Referring now to the letter, he charged the signers "are now making common cause with Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Green, JD Vance, and the rest of the MAGA crowd. Which Ukrainians do these ‘progressives’ want abandoned to mass murder and rape, in their attempt to prop up a flailing Russia?"

Thus in one statement accusing them both of lining up with the worst of the GOPpers and of being on Russia's side in the war - siding with enemies both domestic and foreign.

But there is another point, which is that part of the reason for the "firestorm" is not what was said but who said it, that at least part of the response was the desire of the party hierarchy to smack down party progressives, who have gradually been gaining in influence.

The letter noted that Blahden himself has echoed some of what it said, having repeatedly expressed that only negotiations can ultimately end the conflict, that nuclear war is more imminent now than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis, and that he's worried about the fact that Putin "doesn’t have a way out right now, and I’m trying to figure out what we do about that.”

What's more, on October 15, Saint Barack said during an interview on the podcast “Pod Save America,” that he is concerned about the fact that, quoting, "lines of communication between the White House and the Kremlin are probably as weak as they have been in a very long time. Even in some of the lowest points of the Cold War, there was still a sense of the ability to pick up a phone and work through diplomatic channels to send clear signals."

And precisely because Putin has so centralized decision-making, quoting again, "us finding ways in which some of that communication can be reestablished would be important."

Which is hardly different from what the letter said, just without the reference to Ukraine.

Meanwhile, just under a week earlier, retired Adm. Mike Mullen, former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during an appearance on the ABC show “This Week” that the possibility that Russia might use battlefield nuclear weapons "speaks to the need to ... do everything we possibly can to try to get to the table to resolve this thing," adding that it’s up to Secretary of State Blinken and other diplomats “to figure out a way to get both Zelenskyy and Putin to the table.”

Which in some ways goes beyond what the letter said.

Even former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, who was one of Obama’s key advisers and a staunch supporter of Ukraine, said he agreed with the idea of making the effort, doubting only it would get very far.

None of those statements - from Biden, from Obama, from Mullen, from McFaul, produced anything like the reaction seen here, in fact hardly any reaction at all beyond some tut-tutting that Biden may have overstated the probability of Putin actually going nuclear.

But no matter. It was members of the CPC that said it and they needed to be smacked down. So effective was that smackdown, so complete the capitulation, that not only was the letter withdrawn, the announcement of the withdrawal included the statement "Every war ends with diplomacy, and this one will too after Ukrainian victory." (That is, of course, my emphasis because it definitely needed to be emphasized.)

And the hierarchy smiles and the hack sycophants go back to scanning for hints of dissent.

Finally something not directly related to the letter and the reaction but something related to Ukraine and something you should be aware of.

Note that Biden said he's worried that Putin "doesn't have a way out." Well, a legitimate question is, once Ukraine didn't collapse immediately upon the invasion, did they ever want him to have one.

First, never forget that the US alone has to date given Ukraine $17.5 billion in direct military aid since the invasion. You can argue that every penny of that was fully justified, but point here is that you can't say we are passive observers of events or merely moral backers of Ukraine. The US and rest of NATO are directly involved. This is not a war of Russia versus Ukraine, it is a proxy war between Russia and NATO, with Ukraine the battlefield on which it is being fought.

With that in mind, recall that back in mid-March, as I noted at the time, there were some negotiations going on between Ukranian and Russian officials with some expressions of optimism coming from both sides. Not that a settlement was imminent but the progress toward one was being made.

Then on April 9, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a surprise visit to Kyiv, where, according to the Ukrainian news outlet Ukrayinska Pravda ("Ukranian Truth"), he brought two simple messages to the capitol:

One: Putin is a war criminal; he should be pressured, not negotiated with.
Two: Even if  Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements with Putin, NATO is not.

Three days later, Putin said negotiations were at a dead end.

Maybe the timing was coincidental, but the fact that Zelenskyy also lost all interest in negotiations right around the same time, a time, remember, well before Ukraine's recent battleground successes, gives a rather obvious interpretation at least some weight, further bolstered by the fact that at the same time - the first week of April - the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft was reporting that

there are several lines of evidence that suggest that the U.S. is inhibiting a diplomatic solution in Ukraine,

including, significantly, it's total absence from those very March negotiations, lending no assistance, offering no support.

Now, it's not certain the conclusion this points to is true but there is reasonable cause to believe it, a conclusion that creates the image not of the US and NATO causing the war, one of the US inviting or perhaps more accurately baiting Putin to attack - although that would not be unprecedented in US foreign policy - but one of the US and NATO allowing it to continue to take advantage of an opportunity to "pressure" Putin.

But "cause" versus "allow to continue" is somthing I would call a distinction without a difference. It surely makes difference to the homeless and the refugees; it even more surely makes no damn difference at all to the dead.

So we don't know if this idea is true, and in fact you have to hope it's not true because it would be quite heinous if it is.

Then again, war usually is.

 

064 The Erickson Report for October 27 to November 10

064 The Erickson Report for October 27 to November 10

This episode of The Erickson Report looks at what and who is behind the attacks on transgender youth before discussing the reaction to the letter from the Congressional Progressive Caucus about trying to talk to Russia about Ukraine.

Sources:

- transgender youth
https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/doctors-agree-gender-affirming-care-is-life-saving-care
https://transhealthproject.org/resources/medical-organization-statements/
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home
https://theintercept.com/2021/04/01/trans-kids-rights-arkansas-gop/
https://twitter.com/patriottakes/status/1558596561461968900
https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/equality/3607955-marjorie-taylor-greene-introduces-bill-to-make-gender-affirming-care-for-transgender-youth-a-felony/
https://theintercept.com/2022/10/13/anti-trans-bill-michigan/
https://michiganadvance.com/2022/10/13/parents-providing-gender-affirming-care-for-their-kids-could-get-life-in-prison-under-gop-bill/
https://www.thetrevorproject.org/survey-2022/
https://www.thetrevorproject.org/survey-2022/assets/static/trevor01_2022survey_final.pdf
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/11/2115986/--Groomer-rhetoric-s-toxic-spread-on-social-media-revolves-around-10-key-far-right-influencers
https://hrc-prod-requests.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/CCDH-HRC-Digital-Hate-Report-2022-single-pages.pdf
https://twitter.com/anthonyLfisher/status/1539335893189804034
https://www.csusb.edu/sites/default/files/2022-08/Report%20To%20The%20Nation8-4-22.pdf

- footnote
https://www.prri.org/research/americas-growing-support-for-transgender-rights/

- the CPC letter
https://theintercept.com/2022/10/25/house-progressives-letter-russia-ukraine-diplomacy/
https://theintercept.com/2022/10/26/obama-ukraine-congress-progressive-caucus/
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/10/26/23423574/congressional-progressive-caucus-ukraine-russia-letter-diplomacy
https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1584921101020209152?s=20&t=nkp2E8WfEDpUTxTvcuHLEA
https://www.state.gov/625-million-in-additional-u-s-military-assistance-for-ukraine/
https://whoviating.blogspot.com/2022/03/050-erickson-report-for-march-17-to-30_69.html
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/05/06/boris-johnson-pressured-zelenskyy-ditch-peace-talks-russia-ukrainian-paper
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/04/09/is-the-us-hindering-much-needed-diplomatic-efforts/

The Erickson Report is informed news and commentary from the radical nonviolent American left. Comments and questions are welcome. Please observe rules of courtesy.

036 The Erickson Report for April 22 to May 5, Page Three: Noted in Passing

036 The Erickson Report for April 22 to May 5, Page Three: Noted in Passing

Next, an occasional segment called Noted in Passing, where we touch on a couple of things we wanted to make sure got mentioned even if only quickly.

First up, the Ohio legislature is considering a GOPper-backed bill to change the name of an Ohio state park from Mosquito Lake State Park to Donald J. Trump State Park.

So basically changing the name from referencing one disease-carrying pest to another. Doesn't seem like much of a change to me.

It does remind me of the earlier efforts by GOPpers to have something named for Ronald Reagan in every single county in the US. But at least they had the decency to wait until he was dead.

-

And here we go again: Sen. Witless Romney is proposing legislation to deal with the - according to the right-wing - supposed looming financial crisis of Social Security and Medicare, a disaster that is forever imminent but never actually arrives.

This time it's to be bipartisan 12-member "Rescue Committees," one for each of the trust funds with a deadline of 180 days to draft legislation to "improve" each program while securing long-term funding, with any such legislation receiving "expedited consideration" in, that is, to be rushed through, Congress.

It's claimed that this is a "bipartisan" effort because three of the 12 co-sponsors in the Senate are Democrats. The three are Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and Mark Warner. Truly a varied group.

Oh, and we have long known the way to secure the long-term funding for SS and Medicare: remove the cap on income subject to the taxes, a change that would only affect those making over $143,000, that is, the richest 8% of Americans.

 

But wait, that's the rub: It would mean taxing the rich, so that's obviously off the table.

-

Elizabeth Warren

On a happier note, here's another sign that Israel is finally losing its stranglehold on US policy in the Middle East, as progressives and even liberals become more open to questioning the so-called "special relationship."

On April 19, Elizabeth Warren, while continuing to support military aid to Israel, proposed conditioning the aid on none of it being used in the occupied territories. Quoting her: "By continuing to provide military aid without restriction, we provide no incentive for Israel to adjust course."

Not a very radical proposal by any means - personally, I would simply end military support altogether - but it wasn't that long ago that even suggesting Israel had to "adjust course" was beyond the pale.

-

On an unhappy note, the Arkansas House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed a resolution specifically allowing the teaching of creationism in public schools.

Federal courts - including in a case directly involving Arkansas - have repeatedly held that teaching creationism in the public schools is unconstitutional on the grounds that it is religious instruction, a fact to which the bill's main sponsor responded by saying she hoped the newly reactionary SCOTUS might feel differently.

-

Finally, while most Americans have weathered the pandemic financially, about 38 million say they are worse off now than before the outbreak began in the US.

Overall, 55% of Americans say their financial circumstances are about the same now as a year ago, and 30% even say their finances have improved, but 15% say they are worse off.

Not surprisingly, the problem is more pronounced at lower income levels and among non-whites. Some 29% of Americans living below the federal poverty line say their personal finances now are even worse that they obviously were a year ago, while 47% of Hispanics and just 39% of Black Americans say they have been able to put aside some money recently, compared to 57% of whites, and. Black and Hispanic Americans are about twice as likely as white Americans to say they have come up short on bill payments.

Despite some recent degree of recovery, the United States still has 8.4 million fewer jobs than it had in February 2020, just before the pandemic struck.

The Erickson Report for December 9 to 22, Page Nine: Some good election news for progressives

The Erickson Report for December 9 to 22, Page Nine: Some good election news for progressives

We end this time with one last quick look at the election to note not only that according to one analysis, the Democrats may have done about as good as they might and the predictions of large gains were more a matter of over-optimism than facts on the ground but more importantly that, as Jim Hightower points out, for all the hand-wringing about down-ballot losses 2020 was hardly a debacle and for progressives in particular, it was not all that bad a year.

For one thing, there are about a dozen more progressives in Congress than there were before, making it harder for the establishment Democratic Party to continue its long practice of sidelining progressive proposals - not that they won't continue to try.

Progressives also won hundreds of local offices including, significantly, a number of races for sheriffs, district attorneys, and other criminal justice positions, including across the south.

It's an illustration of the growing - slowly growing but growing - progressive prosecutor movement, taking criminal justice reform, a publicly-popular and, 2020 showed, election-winning program, directly to the nuts and bolts of the system.

Not only in not so unexpected areas as California, but, the New York Times reports, in cities and counties in Geogia, Florida, Michigan, Texas, Colorado, and Ohio, overcoming the predictable resistance from police unions.

So we should, plagerizing Joe Hill, not mourn but organize. Think of 2020 as one of the 101 blows in the old parable of the stonemason. And carry it on.

027 The Erickson Report for December 9 to 22

 

027 The Erickson Report for December 9 to 22

This time:

A Longer Look at Yemen
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29319423
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/20/yemen-civil-war-the-conflict-explained
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/3/25/key-facts-about-the-war-in-yemen
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/war-yemen
https://www.codepink.org/bidenyemen
https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/yemen-integrated-food-security-phase-classification-snapshot-october-2020-june-2021
https://www.vox.com/2019/4/4/18293954/war-powers-resolution-passes-congress-yemen-bds
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/16/politics/trump-vetoes-yemen-war-powers-resolution/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/11/politics/uae-arms-sales-formal-notification/index.html
https://www.defenseone.com/business/2020/12/us-officials-say-they-can-seal-f-35-sale-uae-trump-leaves/170516/
https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-emirates-arms-ngos-int-idUSKBN28A29T
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-12-08/u-s-shouldn-t-designate-yemen-s-houthis-as-foreign-terrorist-organization
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-yemen-designation_n_5fca9306c5b6787f2a97c771

Police training document calls Antifa, BLM "terrorists" and civil right protesters "useful idiots"
https://www.kold.com/2020/12/04/police-guide-that-calls-blm-terrorist-group-draws-outrage/

Rhetoric of right wing becomes more violent as auto coup attempts fail
https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-election-2649108314/
https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/right-wing-hypocrisy/
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/12/trumps-allies-are-growing-increasingly-dangerous-and-calling-for-violence-as-his-coup-attempt-drags-on/
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/11/federalist-reporter-claims-stacy-abrams-is-dangerous-for-promoting-voting/
https://www.newsweek.com/pastor-urges-trump-admin-shoot-democrats-journalists-if-they-conspired-rig-election-1551246
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2017/02/113-rules.html

SCOTUS says religious groups can spread COVID
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/26/politics/supreme-court-religious-restrictions-ruling-covid/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/27/opinions/scientifically-illiterate-scotus-covid-decision-sachs/

New US Citizenship Test slaps immigrants
https://www.uscis.gov/citizenship-resource-center/the-2020-version-of-the-civics-test/128-civics-questions-and-answers-2020-version

COVID relief still stalled
https://www.aol.com/finance/senator-says-trump-mcconnell-likely-052924035-110824213.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/07/coronavirus-stimulus-update-congress-tries-to-reach-relief-deal.html

Pennsylvania GOPpers fail (again!) to overturn election
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/08/politics/supreme-court-pennsylvania-trump-biden/index.html
https://www.aol.com/news/texas-asks-u-supreme-court-160839530-162356499.html

More unsatisfactory picks for Blahden administration
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/11/30/citing-past-calls-social-security-cuts-progressives-not-pleased-biden-pick-neera
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-neera-tanden_n_5fc599d0c5b63d1b770eeddf
https://prospect.org/cabinet-watch/blackrock-executive-brian-deese-could-get-major-white-house-position/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/climate/biden-climate-change.html
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/11/17/citing-her-ties-agribusiness-and-fossil-fuels-160-groups-tell-biden-heitkamp-wrong
https://www.thedailybeast.com/biden-weighs-mike-morell-as-his-cia-chief-a-key-dem-senator-says-dont-bother
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/former-cia-leader-defends-drone-strikes-torture
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/12/6/2000325/-Joe-Biden-to-nominate-Medicare-For-All-proponent-Xavier-Becerra-to-be-next-HHS-secretary

Some good election news for progressives, including in the "progressive prosecutor movement"
https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/did-democrats-really-underperform-down-ballot/
https://jimhightower.com/2020/11/my-post-election-message-what-progressives-won-this-year/
https://eji.org/criminal-justice-reform/
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article243730927.html
https://www.npr.org/2020/11/24/938593052/election-results-show-voters-nationwide-ready-for-criminal-justice-reform
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/us/george-gascon-la-county-district-attorney.html
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/jacob_riis_107072

The Erickson Report for November 11 to 24, Page 5: The election and the Democrats

The Erickson Report for November 11 to 24, Page 5: The election and the Democrats

Okay, the election. Right at the top, my reaction to Joe Blahden's victory is not joy or excitement. It is relief. The very fact that I refer to him as Joe Blahden should give you a sense of how excited I am by his becoming president, but the prospect of, the threat to our very continuance as a democracy presented by, a second term for Tweetie-pie was too frightening to countenance. So I am tremendously relieved by the result.

But I also fear that just like what happened in 2008, we will decide that the arrival of a Democrat in the White House means the work is done and just like we did then, we will tie our star to the new administration and embrace the idea that their policies mark the outside limit not only of what is politically possible but what is politically acceptable, what is open for discussion, what can even be on the table.

And that is exactly what will happen if we don't push back hard.

Forget the presidency for a moment. After getting the candidate they wanted an running the races they wanted, in both the Senate and House, the Democrats did worse than predicted. Not only did they not win the Senate - unless, that is, they pull off a long-shot double win in the Georgia run-offs on January 5 and reach a 50-50 break - they actually lost six or more seats in the House after thinking they could flip up to a dozen.

So what happened during a conference call of the House Democratic caucus two days after the election? Nancy Pelosi and her top lieutenants along with so-called "centrists" knew exactly who to blame: progressives.

It wasn't that they themselves did anything wrong, it wasn't that the DNC did anything wrong, it couldn't have been their campaigns were screwed up or poorly run or didn't address the actual concerns of their constituents or ignored widely popular proposals in favor of pleasing party bigwigs and big donors, oh, no. It was all because some candidates dared breathe the word "socialism" and because some people, not even candidates but some other people out there somewhere, used the phrase "defund the police" and those became the basis for GOPper attack ads which, apparently, neither those "centrists" nor the entire structure of the national Democratic party were capable of refuting or countering.

So no, they didn't do anything wrong. It was all the progressives' fault. Not just progressive candidates, but progressives in general. All of who, apparently, should just shut up.

Listen Up, people! Get it through your heads: The Democratic party establishment is not on our side. Not on the side of average working people, or of the unemployed, or of the poor, or of the struggling, or of the victims of discrimination and bigotry, or even of the future of this plant.

Yes, certainly there are individuals in the party who have been and are fighting and will continue to fight the good fight and certainly, there are individuals who were or are on our side on specific issues. But as a group, as a whole, the establishment Democratic party is not. They are on our side insofar as and only insofar as its necessary to protect their power, their positions, and their perquisites.

They'll ignore us, fight us, resist us, and then for the sake of their own benefit, they'll try to take credit for what we gained by our efforts.

After his victory in the 2020 Nevada caucuses, Bernie Sanders tweeted of the Republican and Democratic party establishments "They can't stop us." In response, longtime Democratic party strategist Joe Lockhart tweeted "The Democratic establishment gave us civil rights, voting rights, the assault weapons ban, social security and Medicare. What have you done Senator?"

Hey Lockhart: You didn't "give" us anything! We won it. All of it. Every one of those things came as the result of years, usually decades, of organizing, marching, protesting, lobbying, petitions, letters, phone calls, court suits, civil disobedience, and yes, voting. We did it. Not you. So I turn the question around: Can you, can anyone in the establishment Democratic party, name one gain that has come without significant outside pressure? Can you name one advance that genuinely originated in the upper echelons of the establishment Democratic party? You can't because you didn't "give" us squat.

And you're not going to "give" us single-payer health insurance, a living wage, or a livable future for ourselves and our children. Remember Nancy Pelosi snidely calling the Green New Deal "The green dream, or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they're for it, right?" Remember that? None of that will happen, none of those gains will be made, without us constantly, constantly, pushing you, taking what we gain and coming back again and again for more.

They are not on our side.

They are not on the side of the underdogs, the victims, the outsiders, the have-nots, the oppressed the hungry the landless. And they never will be.

They are not on our side. And they will continue to not be on our side, to ignore us, to dismiss us, to deny us, to deny us even when we represent the majority, as we do on a whole laundry list of issues from health care to the environment to the economy and back again. It will go on until we make it impossible for them to continue to do so.

There is yet much to be gained, much to strive for, allies and alliances to be made and lost, and undoubtedly many unhappy compromises to be made along the way.

So can they - at least some of them - be useful allies on particular causes at particular times? Yes, surely. So they still should be lobbied, petitioned, pressured. But do it knowing that when those causes are pushed to the point where they really impact the prerogatives of the powerful, you will suddenly find your assistance is no longer required, your counsel is no longer desired, your opinions are no longer regarded as having merit.

Can sufficient political and social pressure move them beyond that point, move in ways and to extents they would prefer to avoid? Absolutely. But again, know going in what will be required. Because never forget: They are not on our side.