Donald Trump and The Ku Klux Klan

Ever since Donald Trump declared his candidacy for the president of these United States, I have been researching the obvious question of why in the hell anyone would support him. And then this happened:

David Duke: Voting against Trump is 'treason to your heritage'

Regardless of the timeline of events, first he didn't then he did disavow the KKK and white supremacists. And the minor dust-up about credentialing a white nationalist radio show host for one of his mass rallies. And the fawning, gushing love for the Donald over at new-nazi website the daily stormer (I'm not linking to it but if you're brave, go have a look). We have the this blast from the past. As JAMES PONIEWOZIK put it in the New York Times, "until this week, the K.K.K.’s loathsomeness had seemed to be a settled issue." 

Hopefully it will be nothing else, but Trump's campaign has certainly proved that this supposed tyranny of political correctness is a toothless tiger. If, on election day Trump secures a paltry minority of votes and his Republican Party is utterly crushed in down-ticket races all over the country, the short-fingered vulgarian and his hate-filled mouth-breathing followers will have shown us all that racism is alive and well, and that the tyranny of political correctness has no idea how to adequately deal with it. And that we are really just one rigged election away from reinstating segregation, white supremacy, and possibly even a return to slavery. Political correctness, at least in the way social conservatives yap endlessly about it, really seems more and more to be a meaningless buzzword that signifies nothing more than "why can't we dominate those non-white people the way we used to?"

Just as the plutocracy and unregulated capitalism were marginalized for a time by the Great Depression, open racism and white supremacy were marginalized by herculean efforts of the Civil Rights Movement and the intervention of the Federal Government. But the will to power and domination represented by these forces are an idea, and just as many commentators pointed out during the "war on terror," you cannot destroy an idea. Thomas Frank discussed this concept in The Wrecking Crew, in regards to the methods and tactics that "conservatives" use to try and destroy liberalism once and for all. Just as plutocracy and "free market" (basically unregulated) capitalism clawed their way back into power by displacing the labor movement and New Deal institutions inch by inch, capitalizing on every crisis to expand and legitimize corporate power, racism and white supremacy has clawed its way back into the discussion by using every shock of modernity to discredit and delegitimize multiculturalism, diversity, equal rights, and tolerance of difference.

By playing footsie with very dangerous people, Trump legitimizes for his followers a belief structure that should have died out a long time ago. The only saving grace is that the majority of authoritarian followers still do not like the label of "racist" and do not want to be associated with words like "KKK" or "Neo-Nazi" however much they hold racial resentments. The next post will describe the KKK of the 1920s and explore similarities with Trump supporters.

Good Guys with Guns are Not...

In yet another reckless and meaningless shooting spree, this time in Colorado Springs, CO a heavily armed man shot three people before being killed by the police. Halfway across the country in Chicago, a customer at a Mexican market who was carrying a licensed concealed weapon shot a man who was trying to rob the market. Both of these shootings took place on Saturday, the day before Halloween, Colorado Springs in the morning and Gage Park, Chicago that night. While firearm murders are routine and occur so regularly that the latest ones barely last more than a day as news, the contrast between these two incidents is rather striking and cries out for some examination.

Guns; as tools of death, as valuable merchandise, and as a worldview are the perfect alignment of fear and power among oligarchs and the mob. Rarely do popular and elite opinion combine around an issue the way they do with firearms. Regular people spontaneously jump to the defense of gun manufacturers in every instance of gun violence when they assert that buying as many as they want is their right. Despite billions spent propagandizing the masses on other right wing bugaboos, regular people rarely jump to the defense of other giant corporations with the same kind of enthusiasm.

Recently the enthusiasm has jumped from merely owning guns and being able to buy as many as they can without any restrictions, to actually using them. Whether the uptick in demands to open carry, concealed carry, and "stand your
ground" began with the scumbag George Zimmerman or the election of Barack Obama, there has been a definite shift from demanding the right to hunt deer to the right to hunt humans.

There is a clear implication in comments about the foiled robbery in Gage Park, Fox and Friends wrote that this was "Proof good can come from guns." Because... well, this is what the robber looked like. His name was Reginald Gildersleeve and he was not a bright kid who was going to college in the fall as many other shooting victims lately are described. No, he was kind of a bad guy with a long record of criminality. So good riddance says just about everyone commenting with one hand while the other seductively strokes their gun or concealed-carry permit.

There was a joke in the 1970's that a conservative was a liberal who'd been mugged. So many of the commenters I saw were pontificating on how awesome it would have been to pull the trigger on Mr. Gildersleeve. The Chicago Tribune reported that the police were unlikely to file charges against the shooter. The comment sections exploded with self righteous indignation. "Charges? That guy deserves a medal!" Was the oft-repeated refrain. The gun enthusiasts like to state that Chicago has the most strict gun laws in the country and that they don't do any good because 'Obama's home town is horrifically violent'. While that is a lie on many levels, what kind of a double standard is that? Gun nuts screech about how violent Chicago is, but cheer when a black guy is murdered while trying to rob a store? 

Anyway, it turns out that Gildersleeve didn't actually have a real gun. It was a paintball gun.

However, in Colorado Springs the killer was wandering around the neighborhood carrying an AR-15 but no good guy with his own gun was there to stop him. And the police were actually powerless to do anything before Noah Harpham took aim and opened fire because wandering around carrying an AR-15 is perfectly legal in Colorado Springs and many other places in our 21st Century Wild West. 

Of course, these insane perversions of law means that Harpham was a "good guy" right up until the millisecond before shooting random passersby. As opposed to Gildersleeve, who was a bad guy from the moment he got out of bed that morning, even though he wasn't actually carrying a weapon. But his killer was a licensed and perfectly legal vigilante even after repeatedly shooting an unarmed man because, gosh darn it you just can't trust those people in the city. 

So everyone make sure you study this handy guide for the next time an upstanding citizen is walking around the neighborhood in your area carrying a semi-automatic rifle.

Stupidity and the Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich

Thomas Jefferson once stated that democracy and a republican form of government will not survive without an informed and thinking citizenry to support it. The United States has thrived and approached this ideal when education and critical thinking among Americans is high, and as suffered when these qualities wane. A very good example of the correlation can be found in Esquire columnist Charles P. Pierce's book Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. On the other side are the cranks exemplified by Ignatius Donnelly, who spent a lifetime trying to prove Atlantis once existed, and the con artists like P.T. Barnum, whose career of spectacle had the goal of simply separating fools from their money. Pierce then described the phenomenon of Rush Limbaugh, who lies somewhere in between but also dangerously apart from these two examples and is described by Pierce as simply a charlatan. Donnelly had fantastically silly ideas but they existed as a harmless curiosity. Barnum sold his audience a spectacle and profited handsomely from it but was not trying to build a movement out of it. Limbaugh and his countless clones on radio, in print, and on TV however, have harmful ideas that they sell to their gullible audiences for profit and to change society in ways that destroy freedom and impoverish the masses.

What does this have to do with PB & J? This story has popped up in many people's social media news feeds, claiming with little evidence that a school principle in Oregon deemed the sandwich racist. This automatically activates frames in the minds of gullible readers. Before the internet and social media these things traveled more slowly and usually started "I heard that..." followed by some outrageous claim. It took effort to repeat, and the audience was right there to roll their eyes or challenge the claim. But in today's world of "going viral" a stupid story about what may or may not have happened far away can be presented without context and manipulated by con artists and demagogues at will; then it can be repeated nearly infinitely and almost without effort to the feeds and inboxes of idiot america. This urban legend about racist sandwiches provides an interesting insight to Twain's adage:

The invention of the telegraph in Twain's day sped up the exchange of information in a way second only to the internet. Even if access to this revolutionary medium was limited to actual journalists, one need only shout "Remember The Maine" to know how the hare of lies can do incredible damage while the tortoise of truth tries in vain to put out the fires of sensationalism and yellow journalism. Although the US is unlikely to declare war on Spain over a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich, claims such as the ones made in this story play into an established narrative drummed up by unscrupulous conservative culture warriors going back at least to William F. Buckley's God and Man at Yale. This is the contest of tradition stubbornly resisting change that picked up a great deal of speed and followers during the Great Backlash against desegregation, social justice, and other values of the 1960s.

The only link provided in the conservative post article is to another, exact replica of the story on Mr. Conservative.com. This one provides no links or source material whatsoever, but it does feature a gawdy proliferation of ads. So, while a google search for "peanut butter and jelly banned" produced a plethora of hits from right wing sources including fox news and the daily caller that are slightly more informative that the two wannabes first cited, they proceed from the same mistaken assumption that political correctness and racial tolerance has gone too far and an out-of-touch bureaucrat took arbitrary and unnecessary action that will slippery slope it's way into and across the entire nation. The actual story is from 2012, but seems to have flared up again in the wake of actual outrage over the official presence of the confederate flag on statehouse property in Charleston after Dylan Roof shot 9 people in a church there. "What next?" is the usual refrain, what next will you out of control liberals that have so much power to disrupt tradition do to wreck schools and things?

Politifact first debunked the story in 2012 because right wingers were clutching their pearls over that other great sin of liberals, spending tax money on frivolous projects. It was rated "pants on fire" then, it is still a ridiculous lie, but that does not matter. Two of the first comments on the undated mr conservative story debunk the misrepresentation but are ignored by the other commenters. Snopes rates the story completely false and fabricated out of deliberate manipulation of the principal's comments.

I wish it were as easy to say "use common sense" when exposed to the propaganda of charlatans but even the idea of "common" sense is gone when a significant number of the gullible simply make up their own facts and reject anything that does not conform to their existing prejudices. The worst part is that on line, the gullible idiots who fall for it every time just do not suffer the shame that once afflicted people in public. On the internet you can be insulated from any point of view you don't like, and experience no consequences for being fooled. On that note, it is perhaps best to quote Twain again; for he was the Great American Jester, telling the foolish uncomfortable truths during our last "Gilded Age." 

*Fingers comfortably but firmly inserted in ears* Nah, nah, can't hear you.

Ur-Fascism in the USA

When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross - Attributed to Sinclair Lewis

While the author of It Can't Happen Here may not have actually said this, the spirit of the quotation is more poignant today than it was even in the 1930s when fascism really was on the rise. While everyone should read the cautionary tale of how fragile democracy can be, how the masses can be manipulated by would be dictators, and how difficult it can be to distinguish a real dyed-in-the-wool fascist from a dangerous but ineffectual bully, praising this story is not the primary goal of this essay.

So many words have been written about the bad ideologies; authoritarianism and its offshoots, fascism, Nazism, totalitarianism, communism, and so many images placed in popular memory about them that so many people are guarding the wrong gates. The first misconception to address is that fascism does not equal Nazism. Being on the lookout for fascism in America, you can more or less safely ignore the occasional skinhead. While they may be dangerous in person, in close proximity, someone in a Neo-Nazi uniform is not likely to attract a mass following. A real fascist in America is likely to be the one denouncing the skinhead louder than anyone else, and public racism, government spying, censorship, etc. because words and actions in fascism are inherently out of joint. This is a chameleonic philosophy that can say or do anything because the end is what is important. Fascism is intolerant of everything except its own contradictions and that is why Orwellian doublethink functions so well in fascism and its enablers.

Before the mass rallies, before the book burnings, before the violence, fascism creeps in among the disaffected as an underlying second layer behind the words. Like a virus slips in undetected to take control of a cell, fascism waits under conscious thoughts until the time is right for it to ignite. This is the eternal fascism as analyzed by Umberto Eco. Ur-fascism is very difficult to spot because it mutates so readily within a culture, but any one of the fourteen features Eco identified is enough to allow undiagnosed fascism to fester until it strikes. The reason guarding against Nazism, as so many on the American Right do to the point of absurdity, is practically useless is that ur-fascism is exactly that, eternal. Eco noted that ur-fascism is not grounded in any historical expression but is obsessed with a primordial truth that was revealed and then lost. There are no empirical examples that ur-fascism needs for expression, it is both new and ancient at the same time and thus tolerates contradictions because any document or myth can only reveal a sliver of that truth.

For the common American fascist, that truth is revealed in his understanding of our foundational documents. The Constitution is a part of that primordial truth, it exists outside of history alongside that other ahistorical document, the Holy Bible, and they both contain the elementary essence of humanity. No thinking or understanding needed. As these documents are interpretations of truth larger than any mortal author can grasp, the "mistakes" that do not say what he wants to hear can be explained away by his superiors who possess the gift of divining the secret truth. That the secrets just happen to line up exactly with what he wants to believe simply confirms the universality of his beliefs.

The leader who can convincingly preach the truth will earn a following of true believers who will defend his every horrible action and attack the unbelievers who dare question his motives. Adorno and his colleagues may have been criticized for many of their findings and conclusions in The Authoritarian Personality but it is undeniable that fascists exist, both leaders and followers. It is also undeniable that their ranks swell during periods of upheaval and/or shock. The great irony is that American fascists scream the loudest about freedom and liberty but are the most willing to submit and obediently surrender their freedom.

The freedom most dear to the American fascist is the freedom to conform. Second is the freedom from worry that comes with thinking. Perhaps not unique to American fascism but vitally important is the freedom from responsibility towards your fellow citizens; in other words the freedom to be selfish. Eco characterizes many features of ur-fascism as cults, the cult of tradition, the cult of action, the cult of technology, the cult of heroism, and of permanent war. These contradictory ideals are never settled but as Bob Altemeyer discovered during decades of research on the authoritarian personality is that fascists are okay with that. The secret to accepting so many contradictions is in compartmentalized thinking, and this is a feature the American system excels in. We are taught from kindergarten that there is a time for everything, play time, learning time, nap time. Later this is expanded in school and bells chime when it is time to drop everything and switch subjects. It is a short leap for the mind to start putting conflicting concepts in separate mental boxes and only draw on one at a time. Thus can the fascist hold racist views and react with violent anger when witnessing racism, because another box tells him that racism is bad.

There is no way around the another very important point of applying Eco to American fascism, contempt for the weak. Fascism is both popular as a mass political movement and elitist as a hierarchical system. This is what differentiates fascism from simple authoritarianism, it must originate in a democratic or parliamentary system where voters can choose their government. Similarly, that government must be perceived as rotten. It does not matter that the system was broken by the fascist leaders themselves. The government is so broken that we need a strong leader who will unite us and purge the degenerates and filth from the land. It is simply amazing how strongly the myth persists that government taxes the productive, sober, white men and gives to "them." How often does the bumper sticker slogan "work harder, millions on welfare are depending on you" appear? American fascists are so angry at the poor while claiming to be good Christians. In recent years this hatred and contempt has expanded to government workers, especially teachers. Why?

It would be best to simply end this essay with Eco's words verbatim.

The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life. The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake.
Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Hermann Goering's fondness for a phrase from a Hanns Johst play ("When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my gun") to the frequent use of such expressions as "degenerate intellectuals," "eggheads," "effete snobs," and "universities are nests of reds." The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.
4. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism.
In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.
5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity.
Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.

Everything that has come out of the American Right in recent years has been witnessed by history before. We simply need to understand it for what it is and stop reinforcing their frames by pretending the radical reaction coming from national GOP leaders, traitorous industrialists like the Koch brothers, all the way down to your angry uncle who screams about welfare cheats and illegal immigrants is "conservatism" because it is not.

Sniping Michael Moore

The latest, though probably not by the time this post is published, clash between the "Left" and the patriotically correct culture warriors has involved filmmaker Michael Moore basically standing alone against former military snipers and the entire right wing media attack machine. This particular skirmish, as all of them do, has the poor, put-upon "Real Americans" (TM) against the vicious anti-American Left. Let's get one thing straight before plowing ahead, Michael Moore could say it is a nice day outside and trigger this kind of hatred and attacks on his patriotism from the holier than thou crowd of authoritarians in this country, so the substance of his tweet that caused the uproar is almost immaterial. And by now it should be clear that any criticism or even benign remark about the military from a liberal will be met with the harshest condemnation and character attacks from these same culture warriors and their enablers in the media. So what does all the vitriol say about the state of our nation?

The tweet that kicked things off went as follows: "My uncle killed by sniper in WW2. We were taught snipers were cowards. Will shoot u in the back. Snipers aren’t heroes. And invaders r worse.” Moore later noted, correctly but immaterially, that he does not mention Chris Kyle or the film American Sniper in the tweet. But in the court of public opinion, especially when viewed by the patriotically correct culture warrior, the implication is clear, Moore was bashing our service members and most likely crapping in your cornflakes while kicking your dog. A always includes B, soldiers defend our freedoms so how dare you use your freedom to say something we disagree with. The torturers at Abu Ghraib were defending our freedom, the drone that bombed the wedding party in Afghanistan was defending our freedom, even I defended our freedom.

Yes, I am a veteran too. And when people I meet learn this and inevitably spout the obligatory "thank you for your service" I am sure they have internalized this meaningless phrase that soldiers defend our freedom. It is knee-jerk to say thank you to a veteran, no matter what he or she did. I signed up to be a tanker, or 19K Armor Crewman as my MOS stated, but all I got to do was the exhausting and thankless task of maintaining M1A1 Abrams tanks for other people to use. Then "support" these students by having to sit at the range or maneuver area babysitting them while they wrecked our tanks. How exactly did I "defend our freedom?" I did not do any defending, it is a meaningless phrase. The more remote you are from the military and its culture the more you fail to understand this. The civilians around my post "got it", they never thanked us, they only wanted to separate us from our money. The point is just that I have some perspective on this debate, however small.

A big problem in the debate is that Americans are so polarized and divided that any clique claiming that "all" or "everyone" feels a certain way is disingenuous at best, conniving an agenda at worst. Because American culture has no permanent foundations beyond something amorphous like "liberty" or "freedom" the manipulation of public opinion is big business. We do not have a King or Queen that can speak to our tradition and keep public opinion and policy rooted in some semblance of reality. Moore was wrong to argue that "most Americans believe..." because we simply don't. I expect this kind of derp from Sarah Palin, whose word salad on the subject you can look up for yourself, when she blurts on Facebook that: “Hollywood leftists: while caressing shiny plastic trophies you exchange among one another while spitting on the graves of freedom fighters who allow you to do what you do, just realize the rest of America knows you’re not fit to shine Chris Kyle’s combat boots...”

But that is Sarah Palin. What about criticism from an actual service member? A couple of them appeared on that fount of high intellectualism Fox and Friends to discuss what Michael Moore's words meant to them.

"The fact that he [Moore] would say something about America's military, snipers in particular, goes to show his abundant lack of intellectual capability that harnesses any value," retired U.S. Marine Corporal Jacob Schick, who appears in the "American Sniper" film, said during a visit to "Fox and Friends." 

Former Army Ranger and sniper Nick Irving also weighed in during an appearance on "Fox and Friends," saying, "I don't think [Moore] deserves the breath that I'm about to give, but I'll just say Michael Moore wasn't there in Afghanistan and the last time I checked, he's never shot anybody with a scoped rifle."

I do not know exactly why shooting someone with a scoped rifle in Afghanistan is a necessary prerequisite for commenting on American foreign policy and military tactics. Nor do I have a clue what in the world Schick meant. He sounds like someone trying to impress a graduate student with big words. At least these two veterans were trying. Then you have a former drug dealer who goes by the name Kid Rock posting on his website "(Expletive) Michael Moore, you’re a piece of (expletive) and your uncle would be ashamed of you. Seth Rogen, your uncle probably molested you. I hope both of you catch a fist to the face soon."

The culture war is alive and well.