Donald Doughface

This year has seen the return of open racism and misogyny to American politics. It has come about because of one man, a vulgar talking yam who rode the vicious populist wave, voter suppression, and Russian intervention all the way to the highest office in the republic. While this has huge contemporary repercussions, it has also opened a clear view of the fact that for many people the Civil War never ended. Prior to that conflict there was a term for a Northern man with Southern sympathies, doughface, and it is time to reintroduce that name to a man who fits the definition so well, Donald J. Trump. The true battle line of the Civil War that preceded and succeeded the military campaigns of 1861-65 was between the democratic vision of America and the aristocratic one. Doughface donny lied his way into the presidency by appealing to the worst aspects of aristocratic America, not by promising the republican working class voters a better life but by promising to stomp on nonwhite and liberal America and all that it stands for without any restraint.

Two days before election day a little article was posted on the History News Network by the Presidential Distinguished Professor and Chair of the History Department at Weber State University, Susan J. Matt that flew under the radar during that chaotic time. Titled This is What Liberals are missing about Trump's appeal Professor Matt presents a very detailed and in depth look at the pre-industrial concept of personal honor and shame that dominated Southern life even after the Civil War. Now that the industrial way of life has receded in so much of the United States this primitive lifestyle has experienced a revival unnoticed by all of us "elitists" in the city. What this looks like is described as:

Southern white men worried incessantly about how others perceived them. Any insult to their reputations needed to be quickly parried lest they lose face. Historian Keith Thomas noted that among English elites, the concern with honor “generated extreme touchiness, and hypersensitivity to any form of slight. As a result, honour was invoked as justification for almost any kind of self-aggrandizement.”

Some of that aggrandizement could be based on sexual prowess. Men could boast of their sexual exploits, for lust signaled virility and strength. Reputation also depended on outward carriage, for Brown writes, “honor was a state of grace linking mind, body, blood, hand, voice, head, eyes, and even genitalia.” Consequently, southerners were concerned with their own bodies as well as their ancestors’, for bloodlines and racial purity affected the ability to embody honor.

Those who believed in honor engaged in physical, sometimes violent displays of power to defend it. Historian Elliott Gorn found that to display honor, poor men had vicious brawls, gouging out each others’ eyes, as well as biting off ears and windpipes, while elites relied on duels as a more genteel way to defend reputation. To be honorable required men to take risks, display bravery.

Men were also supposed to risk their pocketbooks, for gambling too was a display of nerve. If men ran up debts, they must repay them, for those they gambled with were presumably honorable gentlemen; however, they need not pay back people below them on the social scale. William Grayson of South Carolina noted, “A gambling debt is a debt of honour, but a debt due a tradesman is not.”

Southern whites who subscribed to this cult of honor lived publicly, and when possible grandly, boasted about their sexual prowess and bravery, focused on outward appearances and reputation, and took forceful, even violent action when that reputation was assailed.

- See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/164299#sthash.t9Y7fcRD.dpuf

This barbaric way of life persists in nearly any American community that is unencumbered by Enlightenment principles or even the industrial installation of bureaucracy or professionalism. The brutes may not be "biting off ears and windpipes" anymore but scratch the surface in any military base or impoverished small town and you will discover hypersensitive man-children endlessly bragging about their sexual conquests, the many slights suffered and punishments or humiliations dealt out, and the intricate web of hierarchy and domination forever being challenged and enforced. This system of honor has jumped the regional boundaries of the old Confederacy in much the same way that the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan after WWI found strength in states such as Indiana and Oklahoma. It has even jumped color lines as African-American gang members on the South Side of Chicago worry endlessly about their "rep" and answer slights from others posted online with physical confrontation and often bullets. The link between this system of honor and white supremacy, however, is the focus of discussing Donald Doughface.

Thus far I have only found one other blog linking trump with the term "doughface" and although poignant it does not go deep enough to understand the causal factors, the driving force that gives so much energy to the republicans who voted against every democratic impulse to make this doughface president. The right wing in America is driven by a primitive honor system, while it may have started in the South before the republic was even founded, today this plague has spread to all points on the American map. Anywhere ruin has been visited on the American proletariat, anywhere average people have been stripped of a decent living by plutocrats in corporate America and Wall Street, the vengeful honor system has flooded in to encourage vulgarity, racism, misogyny, and hypersensitive aggression.

Donald Trump, who will never be normalized on this page nor accorded with the title he and his confederates have stolen for him, is the epitome of of this (dis)honor system. A Northern man with Southern principles, ever ready to strike down anyone who opposes or slights him, ever ready to take anything he wants and react with self-righteous fury anyone or anything that resists, Trump is the violation of everything we Americans are taught in school about what we supposedly value. And yet, his awful values are long-standing, everything that is wrong with America from racism and white supremacy, to misogyny and sexual conquest of women, this is the Civil War that eternally haunts our nation. It is a war that can only end in the complete destruction of those primitive honor-related values. Democratic America has had several chances to deal a death blow to aristocratic America, the military Civil War and the Civil Rights era to name two opportunities, but we can never bring ourselves to strike fully to excise the cancer.

And now that cancer has consumed us. The third strike has finally dealt us a permanent ascendancy of aristocracy. We, the democratic nation of America, are an occupied people. To be continued...

No More Naders

I just admitted in my last post that I was one of the three million odd voters who made it possible for George W Bush to steal the presidency in 2000. We are so close to the same scenario in 2016 that I am really scared. I really felt like the way to build on the peace and prosperity at the end of the Clinton administration was to get behind a genuine liberal like Ralph Nader. While I fantasized a little about him actually winning and what that would look like in reality, my main goal was to make a protest kind of statement that the Democratic Party cannot take "us" for granted. It was cringe-worthy watching Al Gore capitulate to his campaign consultants. First he was all wooden and passive aggressive with the smirking chimp, refusing to actually attack back and more importantly just "me tooing" all the right wing frames about taxes and immigration, etc. Then he picked Lieberman as his running mate and refused to campaign on the successes of the administration he was part of. Gore did not take advantage of having Bill Clinton stump for him, and ran against his boss by making his infinitesimally small contribution to the election narrative all about morals and his supposed superior family values. In short Gore played to the right wing's perception and did not look at the really existing state of the union.

Obviously the Clinton years were not perfect, but there was enough good there to build on in a Gore administration. The alternative was just unbelievable. But I, and many people like me who voted Green based on hope and an imperfect understanding of that really existing state of the union, did not have the cautionary tales of the past in living memory that could have given me perspective. I was only barely aware of Reagan's October surprise and Nixon's ratfucking skulduggery. I did not even understand the horrible implications of George H. W. Bush's "Willie Horton" campaign. Clinton's indiscretions did not bother me, but his violation of the war powers act in the Balkans and his continued pursuit of "free trade" that threatened my livelihood did. Gore's seemingly obsessive and puritanical drive to exorcise all the moral demons of his boss while not addressing the economic and social issues I cared about was a real turn off.

Okay, that was sixteen years ago. Today we have Bernie Sanders playing the role, however obliquely, of Ralph Nader. By 2004, it was clear that Nader's subsequent run for president was all about Ralph and the movement I thought I was a part of was dead. Now it was a matter of saving the republic and I enthusiastically supported John Kerry after he won the nomination. A common trope I heard from supposedly serious people was that you don't switch horses mid-stream. When I would answer "even if the horse jumped in that stream against your will and was trying to drown you in it?" The reply would generally be some sort of ad hominem about my intelligence, maturity, or liberalism. Such high thinkers my pals.

Nader was third party from the beginning, it was all about showing the Democratic Party that they couldn't take us for granted and we weren't going to accept republican lite. "They aren't entitled to anyone's votes" was the common refrain from Naderites, meaning the Democrats. Now, you had to be a political junkie to realize just how awful George W. Bush was before he stole the presidency. This time around there is no question that any republican winning the presidency would be an absolute disaster. And the left candidate is a long-time elected official who caucused with the Democrats for his entire tenure in congress but was never dependent on or beholden to them as Clinton style DLC triangulation tried to co-opt the republicans. Sanders is running for the nomination of the Democratic Party and has not threatened to go the third party route if he doesn't win. Therefore anyone is free to vote for him now and still have time to support Hillary Clinton if she wins instead. No problem right?

Now the joke of "don't switch horses mid-stream" is on us. As in, we either do the almost impossible task of electing a Democrat to succeed the Democratic President or we all drown. There has been so much talk about supposed Berniebros who trash Hillary Clinton all the time and refuse to vote for her under any circumstances. I have yet to witness one myself, all the Sanders supporters I have encountered seem passionate but reasonable and share my goal of keeping the republicans out at all costs. The only person I know personally to make the "I won't vote for Hillary no matter what" speech was a middle-aged woman who as far as I know is a life long true socialist radical, not a "bro." I suspect that a good percentage of these "bros" are paid or unpaid GOP trolls posing as democratic socialists and making loud noises for purity. And in the age of social media this kind of fraud is extremely plausible, it only takes a few articulate trolls making tirades to convince the weak-minded to follow them.

I for one am not going to make the same mistake in 2000. Here's my unfortunately titled post on Bernie Sanders from last May, I still believe in it. Now if we can all just act like grownups and not make hissy fits and tantrums while debating who should be the leader of the free world we might not wake up the morning after the election to PRESIDENT CRUZ.

Fifty Shades of Sanders

The big news this week for political junkies, the kind that pay attention between elections and sometimes naively believe that progress is possible, is that Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has announced that he will seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2016. He has always caucused with the Democratic members of Congress in both houses while a member there, but remains an Independent. If there is one thing you should take away from this post and every discussion about Sanders, it is that he is the real deal. It is hard to look at his life and his record and not see that this is a genuine and sincere leader who really cares about people. Average people, working people, middle-class people; Sanders stands for them and stands against the very wealthy and the powerful interests who have made it so hard to get ahead. He is exactly the kind of person who should be president.

When James Madison wrote about the checks and balances in the Constitution, he made it clear that the people who debated and formulated our government's founding laws knew that the people who would lead and make laws were not angels. Thus, many safeguards were put in place because even the best of intentions can go wrong. Madison would be shocked to see how the men who are furthest from being angels have circumvented those checks on power to ram through all the abuses we have seen in recent history. All while the checks and balances have restrained those closer to the angels from cleaning up the mess or fixing things. Madison knew all about the parasitic courtiers who wrung special favors and privileges out of monarchic governments in the name of mercantilism, he would not be surprised by the web of lobbyists and corrupting money built up around the Capitol. Nor would he be surprised that special interests are able to craft legislation while the public is cannibalized. This blog tries very hard not to believe in white knights who would govern in the public's interest. I have prided myself on being practical, skeptical, and realistic. So believe me when I say I have spent a lot of time thinking about reasons why we should not support Senator Sanders. I can't think of any.

That is not to say I do not see all the potential pitfalls. The right has made it a cottage industry to discredit any possibility of good people running for office, the amount of mud that will be slung against Bernie Sanders and anyone who supports his campaign will be unbelievable. Will any of it stick? Well if the devious and well-funded agents of fox news and the Koch brothers are able to set the terms of debate, yes. But it is a long road to November of 2016, and this time could be the one where we actually start talking to each other. Open and honest debate between real people would go further towards shielding ourselves from their lies than any mainstream campaign damage control method ever. And Senator Sanders will attract the kind of honest, big-hearted people that would never consider getting involved with the standard "business as usual" campaign.

It is high time idealism got an honest chance to change the conversation. We need big ideas with personal ramifications to cut through the usual wedge issues that divide us. It is time to remember that the younger generation are not some species apart, spoiled little brats that can easily be tarred with whatever vice happens to be on the tongue of Bill O'Reilly today, but they are our children and our friends' children, etc. Then we can remember that seniors are our grandparents, not just grumpy gray-haired monsters who believe everything fox news tells them. Instead of worrying about what others are doing that we may not approve of, a new conversation could start asking questions like "why is my cell phone bill so damn high?" "Why do I keep making payments on my credit cards and student loans but the balance never seems to go down?"

These and others are the questions we can ask in a Sanders campaign. These are the questions that need to be asked, and if enough of us start asking them we can finally cut through the supply-side, free-market fantasy and demand that the wealth needs to be shared. That there is nothing so valuable that a CEO can do to warrant their multi-million dollar compensation packages while so many of us struggle just to keep the lights on. The Koch brothers have stated that they plan to spend almost a billion dollars to lie to us and buy the government, so they can keep stealing from us. A Sanders campaign will not shy away from stating that no individual or family should have a billion dollars lying around to buy the government.

Bernie Sanders is the real deal, he has proven it time and again. This country doesn't deserve him, but maybe we can cut the crap for once and get a good leader we can believe in.