American Chivalry

It has been a long time since I reviewed a film on this blog. And this is kind of a shame because I love movies, and so did one of the principle intellectuals I studied for my MA thesis. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. loved the cinema the way George Will loves baseball, Reinhold Niebuhr loved God, and the way Driftglass loves to tell every member of the beltway's pundit class that they are full of it. Schlesinger felt that cinema was the American art form, more than jazz or rock and roll, and though he did not shoehorn a film reference into his writing very often, when he did it was to make a strong point. So in that vein I will try to make the point strongly that historical movies are fun and usually entertaining, but no substitute for real knowledge. What movies can do, however, is inspire our better angels to be better than we are. It is important that we aspire to an ideal.

Though I cannot hold a candle to the ways Rick Perlstein works movie references into his writing and successfully frames serious historical study with the tool of the theater. The way he seamlessly does here to immerse the reader who may otherwise be have no reference point for the crime wave of New York City during Trump's formative years with clips to Death Wish, Taxi Driver, and Serpico. I believe this to be one of the proper uses of film for historical purposes, to give atmosphere or big picture perspective to the past in a comparatively easy medium but not for real detail. Another way is to tell timeless tales of human struggle as allegories or even idealized notions of what our national character is. An example is our concept of chivalry. Chivalry in the Middle Ages was an ideology certainly, one that was almost universally impossible to live up to, but an idealized standard to strive for. Google defines the word as "the combination of qualities expected of an ideal knight, especially courage, honor, courtesy, justice, and a readiness to help the weak." 

So what is the American interpretation of Chivalry? My wife and I recently watched Trumbo and Bridge of Spies, and I believe we can extract from these two films some combination of qualities expected of an ideal American. At least from a liberal point of view. While I do not always buy into the notion of Hollywood being peopled exclusively with bleeding hearts, see the above films that Perlstein cited to support his idea of avenging angel conservatism, the unthinking, reflexive brand of conservatism that I often deride as authoritarianism is rightfully cast as the bad guy in Trumbo. While in Bridge of Spies the Cold War is a character in itself, with characters and institutions reacting to the boogieman. This film also, to its credit, really helps recast the confrontation between East and West as the nuanced exercise in statecraft that it was.

Americans have an ideal vision of our republic as the home of freedom, where we have the right to say and believe what we choose. We have often fallen from that ideal state of being. Only a few short years after the passage of the Bill of Rights, the government was passing laws abridging the freedom of expression and most aspects of the first amendment in the Alien and Sedition Acts. Antebellum Southern politicians passed all sorts of laws restricting the postage of anti-slavery pamphlets through the mail. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and violated many civil liberties during the Civil War. And A. Mitchell Palmer rounded up and either jailed or deported thousands of aliens after World War I in the first Red Scare. These are just a few examples of what Schlesinger called "political delirium tremons" where the proverbial "we" acted rashly and felt bad about it afterwards. Well maybe not in the case of southern slave owners.

These are official violations of the first amendment, "congress shall pass no law", but how many popular movements in American history have also violated our ideals of freedom? We had all sorts of anti-Catholic, anti-masonry, know-nothing groups in our past who discriminated, intimidated, and blacklisted anyone who didn't fit their idea of Americanism. To say nothing of the dirty and often violent tactics of corporations against their own workers. 

In Trumbo, there was a combination of official and popular repression at work. Helen Mirran's witch-hunting columnist character, Hedda Hopper, was certainly vile and much of her vitriol seemed personal, as though she were simply jealous of Trumbo's success and talent. And then J. Parnell Thomas the poster child for the separation of powers. You can just pick an adjective for why people dislike politicians and he fits the bill. Grandstanding, pandering, self-righteous, vindictive, and corrupt Thomas really was the perfect warm up act for both Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon. Whether apocryphal or not, Trumbo's snappy comeback upon seeing Thomas in prison was so perfect, "the difference between you and me is that you actually committed a crime."

I know that I am usually the first to get bent out of shape over the movies taking liberties when recounting an historical episode, but as chivalric tales of what America is meant to be I am willing to suspend my disbelief as it were. Now it will take a lot more research than that necessary for a movie review to examine the historical Trumbo's ideology, but I suspect the filmmakers softened his communism to make it more palatable for audiences and highlight both the injustice and Trumbo's triumph. The way he explains what he believes to his daughter sounds just like a run of the mill New Deal liberal. Louis C. K.'s character Arlen was a lot more believable as the humorless true believer constantly trying to insert digressions about the plight of workers into scripts that were so out of place even pig-headed Republicans could spot it. I'm not sure who's interest that angle of the story served. Perhaps just a reminder that there were communists who were serious, but just as Arlen was a pitiable and pathetic character, so were the actual American communists. In her account of the Red Scare titled Scoundrel Time, Lillian Hellman talked about how silly the communists she knew were and how they were about as dangerous to American liberty and democracy as the Greens are today. 

The point of it all was that McCarthyism was largely a partisan, grandstanding affair by Republicans, a half-assed attempt to smear Democrats and anyone on the left. The FBI, though fallible and not above political chicanery, was perfectly competent to weed out any actual Soviet agents and dangerous domestic communists. As Bridge of Spies showed. Though this film never made it plain what the spy Rudolf Abel was up to or if he was actually dangerous he was clearly working for the Soviets and was rightfully arrested. Now, nations have been spying on each other since the dawn of time. That is not really the issue of American chivalry addressed in the film, but how we behave in the great game of espionage. So, the next time your Trump supporting uncle goes off about the Muslims or whatever, ask him about this film. Do you want to behave like any other barbaric nation? Do you identify with the anonymous asshole drive by shooters trying to intimidate Tom Hanks? Or would you rather be the true American who believes in our laws and our rights, even when extended to people you don't like? That is basically what it comes down to.

All we are is what we want to be. Perhaps these two films can help some of us remember that fact. We want to be the best that we can be. We believe in justice and democracy. We believe in law. We believe in protecting the individual and we rejoice in our pluralism and tolerance for difference. That is our chivalry. That is our ideal. It's about time we start living up to it.

No Monopolies

Oh man Jeff, you are the last person I expected to hear a self destructive purity tantrum from. You and Capper are two of the people who helped motivate and inspire me to get into blogging. I have lost a lot of respect for you with this self pitying rant. I was being generous and charitable in my comments, but I don't have to be here because I know that you both stopped reading me. The thesis of this article on cognitive dissidence is that progressive media no longer exists because two writers in two publications failed to live up to your standards. Thus Jeff Simpson proclaims "the end of progressive media" without acknowledging that there exists a great deal of it even within The Nation and Mother Jones. Also anyone, even a nobody like me, can start their own blog or YouTube channel, etc to express and defend progressive ideas. Jeff, neither you nor I are the sole arbiters of what constitutes progressivism.

I know I am just too Niebuhrian in thinking about humility, tolerance, and pluralism when applying them to liberalism. But no one person should get to decide what liberalism or progressivism means. That is why we are the big tent party that can never get its act together, there are just too many issues and schools of thought to hammer out one distinctive definition. Instead we put together a loose, working definition subject to continuous updating, but no one owns progressivism. This primary season has been grueling, but the discussion has been vibrant and voters have gotten a clear choice.  It was grueling in 2008 and 2000 as well (though the real trouble in 2000 was in the general between Gore and Nader, at least this time the conflict is in the primary) but somehow most of us came together with some humility to accept differences and be the pluralist party of tolerance. Will the wounds of this primary fight heal in time to defeat the biggest, boldest monster ever to head a major party ticket? Is the bad blood between the supporters of these two eminently qualified, capable, and experienced candidates (Hillary and Bernie) going to cause a permanent schism as Jeff really seems to want?

It is a real problem in American politics that the perceived party of liberalism (Democrats) has been forced into the role of conservatism and trying to conserve the New Deal programs of government. While the perceived party of conservatism (Republicans) is utterly reactionary while trying to present itself as a force for reform that will bring back the good old days. The latter is utter bullshit of course, and just about every problem in the country can be laid at the feet of the Republican Party, and the hateful media and regressive business interests that support it. I am the first to admit that being forced in this position has caused some real schizophrenic tendencies in Democrats, but too many voters seem to think that once people are put in office that they can just ignore politics again. Then the electorate gets pissed because Democrats didn't do enough.

This "what have you done for me lately" attitude showed up among the left in 2000 and Republicans were able to sow enough discontent to steal what should have been a cakewalk for Al Gore. Then there was the "shellacking" in 2010, when enough Democrats were disappointed that Barack Obama wasn't the anti-Dubya to stay home and hand a bunch of states and Congress over to them. Simply being the party of reform is not enough for the far left, the kind of liberal activists who could be out organizing and pushing the conservative Democrats to enact the reforms we so desperately need instead push these ridiculous purity tests and refuse to work with anyone who isn't perfect.

Angry hyperbole and breathless recitations of the right wing caricature of Hillary Clinton does not make it so. Republicans have been throwing mud at Clinton for almost twenty five years, the critiques of her from the far left always seem to eerily echo those. So it might be time to forgive all the Democrats who voted for her in this primary if they did not fully believe the legend of Hillary the devil figure. At the same time, for all his passion about income inequality and big plans to radically shake up the economic structure of America, Bernie is not a messiah. They agree on so much, does Hillary just not speak in a tone you approve of?

I'm sorry Jeff, but you just did a poor job of demonstrating that somehow progressive media has ceased to be because two columnists failed to back your horse. I certainly do not want to support anyone who would claim to have the one true way by making this coarse and vindictive conclusion:

Despite all of this,the people that we thought were progressives, the people who were given the responsibility of being the voice of the people, have disappeared in order to blindly support Hillary.

We here in the heartland, and progressives all over the country, have to realize that we are on an island with no reinforcements.  Luckily for us, there is strength in numbers if we use it correctly.

Do not give your business, votes or support to people who do not give it back to us.  I have unsubscribed to both magazines and unsubscribed from every email list where the person is a Hillary supporter.   Any support or dollars from now on coming from me, will go to those who support us.

For me, this is a bigger fight than the November election.

 I wanted so badly to believe that bernie or bust was a myth, an outlier, but I keep getting proven wrong. It is too much to even ask, "hey maybe we could put our purity tests aside long enough to stop Donald Trump?" Or, "hey, maybe we could work together with the common goal of kicking the goggle-eyed homunculus out of the governor's mansion in Wisconsin?" Making enemies for no good reason, ostracizing yourself and your followers still does not give you a monopoly on progressivism. I guess the rest of the Democratic Party will have to try and soldier on without you.

Ga Ga for Radio

Back when I used to work in a factory, we were allowed to have radios at our presses to help pass the time. Working in a factory is tedious, mind-numbing, and exhausting at times and being able to listen to music or talk helped a lot. This was before iPods and all of the digital media that we take for granted these days. So it was compact discs and old fashioned radio of the FM or AM variety. Over an eight hour shift that would be a lot of switching CDs so often I would just put on a radio station and occasionally turn on a disc. This was the midnight shift, so there was not a whole lot of interesting things on and our machines interfered with radio signals but I got enough to really come to an appreciation of the idea of broadcasting. I have been cataloging stories for a while on my Facebook page about the troubled evil empire of iHeartMedia (formerly Clear Channel) and the king of hate radio, Rush Limbaugh. While no one will be cackling with more glee than I when these two pillars of what is wrong with media in America finally collapse, I instead want to explore a future after the downfall of Rush and iHeart because there could be a very bright one.

Clear Channel is the mutant abomination of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the company grew like cancer to take over radio stations all over the country. By 9/11/01, the rotten effects of this consolidation appeared in the form of playlist censorship, it was time to tamp down on the rebellious side of rock and roll. This list of unethical and tyrannical business practices is detailed Here and elsewhere, but the point is that they are a clear case of bad people with too much power. The biggest crime against democracy and music or media is something they can't be put in jail for. Clear Channel hollowed out broadcasting and homogenized music by taking over stations and sacking the staff, then centralizing playlists and computerizing/automating what we hear on the radio. Meaning that what you hear in one part of the country is the same as what you hear everywhere else. Because nearly all local content has been removed and nearly all programming is national. Finally the squares had tamed rock and roll!

This was what I objected to strenuously as well when I first started listening to talk radio. Our local station had only one program that was actually produced at that station, everything else was nationally syndicated. And that station was not even Clear Channel. No wonder so few people participate in local politics, there's so little media attention given to it. TV, newspapers, and all sorts of other media are very similar. And all for the same reason, there's no money in it. While it appears that Clear Channel's downward descent was already secured a decade ago with it's sale to Mitt Romney's vulture capitalist buddies in Bain and elsewhere, Limbaugh is still limping along, four years after his disgusting attacks on Sandra Fluke. I found it funny that Rick Ungar at Forbes jumped the gun by writing: "Has Rush Limbaugh Finally Reached The End Of The Road?", two years the three days he spent slavering over the possibility of demanding all women who want birth control be taped while having sex, for el rushbo's blathering about CBS declaring war on the heartland by naming Stephen Colbert as David Letterman's replacement.

No single event has caused the gasbag Limbaugh to finally drop dead, it is a slow and agonizing decline but the end is in sight. As Leslie Salzillo reported on Kos: "Limbaugh’s eight-year $400 million dollar contract with iHeart Media (formerly Clear Channel) is up in December." Although Limbaugh finally getting booted off the public's airwaves will be a victory for progressives even if we didn't have much to do with it, the win will be hollow as hate radio's bench is deep with Rush clones. 

No, the real prize will be when the big radio station owners start to crumble. As stations go to the auction block, progressives should be ready. It will finally be time to do what Air America could never do, buy in to broadcasting. It doesn't matter if we can't all coordinate like a progressive network, the point will be to wrest control over radio from the big corporations and propagandists. I will save the reasons for a subsequent post, I just want you to think about the possibilities. Owning a little piece of your local station and having a say in the music they play and the talk shows they produce or syndicate. Rush's audience is literally dying off, there is a whole farm team of well-produced and high quality podcasts out there, the trouble is how new digital and online media is financed. Tying non-corporate radio stations that can actually produce revenue could really broaden the types of voices on the radio. Just breaking the stranglehold of giant corporations owning everything and getting some local voices back on the air, even if they are conservative, could really make a difference in how Americans get informed. 

At least you could hear something other than the "top ten recycled pop songs played over and over until you relent and like them and start singing along because you have no other choice on the free public airwaves." I mean I look at this chart and there is nothing there, I'm not that old, music has just gotten worse. Same thing goes for the "latest right wing screaming asshole old white man from far, far away from where you live!"

Still not having this fight. Eyes on the prize.

Sometimes I cannot believe that it was only a few short months ago that I did not even believe Bernie or bust people existed in the wild. But I have become educated in the meantime. Okay, yes, they exist. And yes, they are not all paid trolls or any other kind of trolls. Short-sighted rebels making perfect the enemy of the good, immature children throwing a purity tantrum, and instant gratification-seeking dilettantes with no memory of the bush crime syndicate perhaps, with their heels securely dug into the ground far, far from where the rest of the Democratic party is but sincere in their principles. Unfortunately their principles may include letting Donald Trump or Ted Cruz become president, just to teach the rest of us corporate sell-outs a good lesson. 

Oh to be young and irresponsible again! I have already written about the time I was young and irresponsible during the 2000 election, and that I will never do that again. Anyone older than I am and this passionately committed to teaching Democrats a lesson by monkey-wrenching the first succession of Democratic administrations in my lifetime is deeply irresponsible and unable to put their ideology behind the public interest. After all, that is what it is, a rigidly held belief system that assumes you know best. That just like in 2000, it is time to shoot the moon and leave behind the "good enough" for the "revolution".

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Bernie or bust movement, what makes you think this country even deserves your version of "revolution?" You may be riding high in this primary season, and you may retain that pompous prestige as useful idiots for the right for a bit but if the republicans ever got power or even had to face your revolution in a general election it would be wholesale slaughter. 

This is all on my mind because somehow a Bernie or buster found the meme below that I shared to my Facebook page at the beginning of March, right around the time I wrote the "Getting the House in Order" post in the first link above. She left this lengthy comment on something that has been buried for almost two months on the Facebook page for a blog that has a relatively small audience (not that I don't keep plugging away), that is unlikely to be read by anyone but me. I can't imagine how much effort it took to find this post for one, for another why would someone spend time writing this much about Merrick Garland in a place that will have no impact?

Don't lose sight of the goal. The next President will appoint as many as FOUR Supreme Court Justices. Think of what will happen to civil rights if Donald Trump or Ted Cruz is responsible for those nominations.

Remember to LIKE Winning Democrats and VOTE BLUE in November!

Now, I admit that this meme is just an appeal for party unity and the public interest with no sources of evidence. And yes, it is meant to head off the kind of division that Ms. Owen is presenting and that is exactly why I shared it. If I had made a meme like this (which after several postings ranting against memes I would probably never do) it would include something for further reading to try and back up the claims. I assume the Winning Democrats page or site has something like that. But this meme also displays my priorities, I am willing to compromise, accept the good enough over the perfect, and work for incremental change in order to keep from going backwards.

So let's take a look at her comment. I have not looked hard before starting this post but I suspect that this is a series of USUNCUT or MOVEON talking points, which is fine but would explain why she bothered to put on my page; no effort needed, just cut and paste. 

People say that the Supreme court is a reason to vote for Hillary instead of Bernie or any independents, and here's why that's wrong. Merrick Garland is Obamas choice for the supreme court, Hillary Clinton has already said that she will NOT ask Obama to withdraw his pick, which means that she would support Garland. Sure, Obama picked Garland, he's gotta be a good choice, WRONG, Garland has cited Citizens United in multiple decisions, and he generally sides on the sides of corporations in his decisions, you can almost guarantee that if an opportunity to overturn Citizens United that Garland will vote pro-Citizens United, instead of against it (the reason Dems say Clinton is the better choice), so there really is no reason to support Hillary over Bernie. Would a republican pick someone more conservative? Probably, but Merrick Garland sure as hell is NO defender of liberal values, in fact he is very pro-business, anti-union, and has some unclear views on socially liberal opinions, so he is a terrible choice for Supreme Court justice and ONLY Bernie has said he will ask Obama to withdraw his choice.
#BernieorBust

Given that Driftglass encountered and knocked down an insufferably long attempt by a political dilettante to paint all liberals as smug, I will try and emulate him. Because there are several similarities in this argument. 

First, who is Merrick Garland? He is a 63 year old Judge with a great deal of experience on the bench, is a Democrat, and is eminently qualified to serve on the Supreme Court. He is significantly to the left of the man he was chosen to succeed. Meaning he is a good choice and acceptable to possibly the vast majority of Americans outside of the tea party or Berniebro fringes.

Second, he was nominated after the republicans under Mitch McConnell had already defiantly proclaimed that they would never consider even holding hearings on anyone Barack Obama nominated. Therefore, simply stating that he is "a terrible choice" because he doesn't pass your litmus test (without providing any evidence, yes, if you make the claim it is up to you to provide evidence to support it) without considering the larger picture is irresponsible.

Third, there are numerous logical fallacies in this argument. "People say" is a weasel phrase, which is then used to construct a straw-man argument of "the Supreme Court is a reason to vote for Hillary instead of Bernie". Then a series of unsubstantiated assertions attempt to demolish the straw-man. All the while attempting to manufacture false equivalence between a SCOTUS nominee of Hillary Clinton and a Republican nominee. There is more than simply Bernie's pick and all others being bad. The false dilemma of Garland as being the only choice by cutting off the possibility of the pick being political maneuvering by Obama and solidarity with the leader of the Democratic Party by Hillary Clinton. Finally the No True Scotsman that only a pick by Bernie could meet your approval and would be acceptable for SCOTUS.

This is why I replied only that your argument was unpersuasive. 

Voting your conscience

I would like to stake a position about this issue that the Bernie or bust crowd is not going to like. Voting in the general election, while an individual right, is a public responsibility and not just a personal choice. The time to build a movement, plan a revolution, organize like-minds into a coherent vision for the future; that time is between elections. We are stuck with the hodge podge mashup of precedent, tradition, and the push-pull of various interest groups in the present. Voting your conscience sounds good, but like so many sound byte, bumper sticker slogans used by the Right, it means less than nothing. In fact, treating your vote like your virginity, only to be surrendered to the perfect candidate, is actually surrendering the nation and yourself to the forces of darkness. Anyone throwing a purity tantrum now, when the country actually has a chance at a Democratic successor to the presidency, is acting like a child.

I don't care how many fussy dilettantes unlike my page or send nasty emails, you have had eight years to build an alternative to the Democratic establishment, and you didn't. It is time to grow up and realize that the establishment was here before you and I were and there's no silver bullet to destroy it. Do you think progressive taxation, minimum wage laws, Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, anti-trust laws, the National Labor Relations Board, workman's compensation, and all the rest happened overnight or easily? No, liberal reform has always been a work in progress. Vote for Bernie in the primary, work for his campaign, protest real injustice, and work to persuade people to take an interest in issues that matter. But have a little dignity, show some humility, and for crying out loud listen to yourselves. Have the Democrats been so awful for the past eight years that you are willing to surrender the presidency to Donald Trump or Ted Cruz because you believe the three decade smear campaign against Hillary Clinton?

I was on the fence about this Bernie or bust business until I got a chance to hear some of them call in to the Brad cast recently. Up to that time I had only seen a few dingbats write about how they will never vote for Hillary Clinton if she is the Democratic nominee. They never come across as being particularly knowledgeable or wise, but in print the anger and screaming doesn't come through. So now I know that the idiot tea party paranoid style is not just on the extreme right. When I heard these people yelling and ranting about Hillary, it became clear that tea baggers are not the only gullible authoritarian followers out there.

Before you turn up your nose and dismiss me as part of the establishment or a sell out or whatever, I did vote for Bernie Sanders in the primary. I respect his integrity, his positions on issues that matter to me, and I respect him as a man of the people. However, you people out there, who were all in for the ReLOVEution or whatever that was for Ron Paul. You who stood with Rand Paul because President Obama is worse that Bush; and you who are now claiming that the only thing you can do in good conscience if Bernie doesn't win the nomination of a party he still does not belong to is to stay home and pout or vote third party, are not worthy of any respect. I dealt with a lot of you in the Army, we called them blue falcons, the ones who refused to ever admit a mistake or something they did wrong, and were willing to let the whole unit be punished because they couldn't own up and take responsibility. Yes, if you could put aside your juvenile idealistic standards for the moment it would take to pull the lever for the socially responsible act of keeping a fascist like Trump or a theocrat like Cruz out of the White House there would be no problem. But you have to keep going on about this as though it is somehow noble to throw away a perfectly good chance at keeping momentum going for a progressive future. 

No, of course Hillary Clinton is not perfect and neither is the Democratic Party. Why? Because she is human, and the party is made up of humans. People who have flaws, people who have different views, different experience, and yes, different levels of involvement in the special interests and corrupting influences of money. No one in politics has exactly the same perspective, that is why we have parties. The objective is to get as many people's ideas as possible aggregated into as coherent a platform as possible. It is unfortunate that basic political science is not dropped into our political discourse very often. So rarely in fact, that when I tried Google searching for some of the ideas I studied many moons ago in poli sci 101 I could not find them so I'll have to paraphrase. Our electoral system is called single district plurality or first past the post, meaning that only the candidate with the greatest vote total wins. Therefore, rational office seekers coalesce into a mere two choices as close to the center as possible with one party going one way from that center and the other going the other way. The two party system, while sounding like the least number of choices outside of a one party dictatorship, actually presents the greatest choice in a winner take all election. The problem is that republican so-called conservatives have pulled that center further and further to the right, and then run candidates who start on the far right and only grudgingly move to moderate their stances and thereby increase their constituency. Democrats like Hillary Clinton start at the center and generally get pulled to the right. This is not a good situation I grant you, but threatening to pout and stay home is not going to help anyone but the Republican candidate. 

Right now, Bernie or bust people are nothing but lonely, alienated voices in the wilderness. You have no money, no organization, and no leverage; nothing really to offer. Screaming on social media or call in shows does nothing but alienate you further from people who actually have something to lose if a republican takes the White House. And that is why I'm saying that voting your conscience is a self-defeating fallacy. Make your voice heard constructively, build something, move the center in a more progressive direction. But simply screaming about how you will refuse to vote if your demands are not met will alienate you not only from the people you claim to be making your noble claim about defending but the Democratic Party as well.

Again, a personal campaign to make the political system more just, to fight for equality, and society more fair is best conducted between elections. The stakes are too high to pull this crap right now. The last eight years would have been a golden opportunity to organize all the people hurt by bush's wars and financial collapse, to educate people on why big changes were needed. That didn't happen, but there is no reason why you can't try again.

After the election, no matter who the Democratic nominee is. Patience, we can do this right. And it won't mean selling out, it just means being a team player. Aim lower, if the tea bag authoritarians can take over their local parties and put bible-thumping weirdos or monsters like this guy into office, imagine what we could do with good ideas. 

Organize. Labor.

Lincoln Log penned this little ditty four years ago and I thought it would be fun to share.

I fail to understand why people see unions as anachronistic and dangerous to the economy. Yes, they can be cumbersome and also corrupt. But no less than any other human institution dedicated to shared power. Certainly we do not have track record of corporate integrity as the basis for comparison.

Unions came into existence to fight for a better life. People were hunted down, beaten and shot in the pursuit of an eight-hour work day in 1886. Public and private armies bayoneted, shot and killed coal miner, burned the gathering places of copper miners, and attacked striking textile workers--the majority of whom have been women and children. We finally got the 40 hour work week by 1950.

Unions represent the values of a democratic society where people are permitted to join together for their economic self-interest as much as capital is permitted to do so. Why are unions any different than monopolies of money, machinery, or transport? Why should government help chiefly the rich and powerful while turning its back on the needs of the vast majority?

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed." Karl Marx? No. Abraham Lincoln. The GOP has turned so far to the right as to be another party than its origins suggest, much farther to the right than England's own Tories. The GOP is more akin to some third-world elite that seeks to subjugate its own people to enrich themselves.

The current policies in this state assailing women's equity in the workplace will soon become an assault against *all* equity in the work place. If you can reduce due process for discrimination based on gender, then why cannot you stop the same discrimination based on color? Religion? There is an assault on the wage-dependent workers.

'nuff said.

Exactly.

The KKK in the 1920s

Many allusions to Trump rallies as modern versions of Klan gatherings have been made by commentators in recent weeks. Let's look at what the Klan was really like during its last big appearance on the American political scene.

While the immigration restriction movement drew on the apprehension that America might be transformed ethnically by an invasion of alien elements from without, the Ku Klux Klan preyed on the feeling that the country was already in peril from elements within. The KKK was organized on Stone Mountain in Georgia on Thanksgiving night, 1915, in the light of a blazing cross, by William J. Simmons, a former Methodist circuit rider and organizer of fraternal associations. Modeled on the hooded order of Reconstruction days that murdered blacks, the Klan admitted "native born, white, gentile Americans" who believed in white supremacy; by implication, they could not be Catholics. Although it took the name of an old Southern society, the Klan owed more to the nativist tradition of Know-Nothingism, having its greatest appeal not to the deep South but to the Midwest, Southwest, and Far West, where people were worried less by blacks than by the encroachment of "foreigners," especially if they were papists.

The Klan attracted its chief support from the sense of desperation experienced by old stock Protestants who felt themselves being eclipsed by the rise of the city with its polyglot masses. Though the Klan had a following in some cities, especially ones undergoing rapid growth, two-thirds of its members lived in places with a population of less than 100,000, and the KKK found metropolises with large proportions of the foreign-born hostile territory. In cities such as Boston and San Francisco, the Klan got nowhere, and in New York it did not dare show its face at a public gathering.

"The reason there is a Klan in America today," said Colorado's grand dragon, "is to make America safe for Americans." Those attracted to the KKK thought themselves engaged in a battle which their falling birth rates doomed them to lose. "The dangers," Simmons explained, "were in the tremendous influx of foreign immigration, tutored in alien dogmas and alien creeds, slowly pushing the native-born white American population into the center of the country, there to be ultimately overwhelmed and smothered." In its elaborate ritual, its stark pageantry, its white hooded sheets, its titles of "Exalted Cyclops," "Klaliff," "Klokard," "Kligrapp," and "Klabee," the KKK appealed to the lodge vogue of blue collar and middle-class America. When the Klansmen sang "klodes" with his neighbor and klasped his hand in a secret grip, he felt reassured.

In the early years of the 1920s, the Klan, which had less than 5,000 members as late as 1920, experienced a phenomenal growth, and, with probably a few million adherents at one time or other during this period, made its weight felt in politics. In Youngstown, Ohio, the KKK elected the mayor and the entire city government, and in Texas, where it ousted a four-term U.S. Senator, the Klan dominated the legislature and the cities of Dallas, Fort Worth, and Wichita Falls. Candidates running with KKK backing were elected to the United States Senate in six states, and the Klan controlled municipal governments in cities such as Denver and El Paso. In Oklahoma, the governor called all the citizens of the state into military service and declared martial law in an effort to put down the organization; the Klan-controlled legislature retaliated by impeaching him and removing him from office in November, 1923. In staunchly Republican Oregon, a state settled by Eastern and Midwestern Protestants, the Klan helped elect a Democratic governor, Walter Pierce, by the largest majority in state history and supported a law that wiped out parochial schools by requiring parents to send all children between eight and sixteen to public schools. (In 1925, the Supreme Court {Pierce v. Society of sisters} declared the law unconstitutional.) For the most part, though, the Klan did not know, once it had power, what to do with it, for it was more a vehicle to express resentment than a movement with coherent policy aims.

Where the Klan entered, in its wake too often came floggings, kidnappings, branding with acid, mutilations, church burnings, and even murders. In the South, the Klan sometimes used terror to preserve a social system that was swiftly changing. Yet even in the South, intimidation, although it was used against blacks (a bellhop in Texas was branded on the forehead with the initials "KKK," and black homes were burned in Florida to discourage voting), was employed more often against Catholics or political enemies or bootleggers or, most important, against individuals deemed immoral. In Birmingham, a Klansman murdered a Catholic priest in cold blood and was acquitted; in Naperville, Illinois, two hours after a monster Klan ceremony, a Roman Catholic church was torched. When the mayor of Columbus, Georgia, ignored demands of the KKK that he remove the city manager, his home was dynamited. After the triumph of the Klan ticket in Alabama in 1927, a black woman was flogged and left to die; a white divorcee was punched into unconsciousness; a naturalized citizen was lashed for marrying a native-born woman; and a black was beaten until he sold his land to a white man for less than it was worth.

Such episodes did not characterize the everyday routine of the KKK, but they were symptomatic. Most Klansmen never participated in violence, and not a few viewed the organization as an interest group for white Protestants or a fraternal association that sometimes carried on benevolent activities. When the Klan did resort to flogging or social ostracism, it was less likely to do so against ethnic minorities than to people thought to have broken some moral code--by trafficking in liquor, or gambling, or carrying on an extramarital affair. (One of its avowed aims was to "break up roadside parking.") Yet, as an organization exclusively of white Protestants, there was no mistaking its hostility to Catholics and Jews and to anyone it defined as "alien." The Klansmen, who thought white Protestants were being victimized, had no comprehension of the fact that it was not they but Catholics and Jews who faced blatant discrimination in employment, and blacks who, when they were not at the mercy of lynch mobs, were denied the most fundamental Constitutional rights. Furthermore, as Don Kirschner has pointed out, while there were any number of fraternal associations that promised conviviality and solace, "the one thing that the Klan offered that was uniquely its own was extra-legal or even illegal action."

Opponents of the KKK fought fire with fire. Especially in northern cities, the order encountered resistance not only from Catholics, Jews, and liberals, but also from bootleggers and other elements of organized crime. When in Chicago a Klan organizer boasted that his group would soon be strong enough to drive out the bootleggers and maintain law and order, the bullet-ridden body of an outspoken Protestant clergyman was discovered in Cicero, headquarters of the gangland boss, Al Capone. After the Imperial Wizard spoke in Carnegie, Pennsylvania, thousands of armed foes of the KKK massed at a bridge, and when Klan marchers pushed on, several fell dead. Elsewhere, KKK halls from Texas to Indiana were bombed or set ablaze.

The Klan reached the heights in Indiana, and in Indiana it toppled to its death. Hundreds of thousands of white-sheeted Klansmen took over the state. Many of them sauntered brazenly through town with their hoods flung back, not even bothering to conceal their identity. On parade nights in Kokomo, the police force vanished and white sheeted figures, bearing a striking resemblance to the absent patrolmen, directed traffic. The Grand Dragon of the Indiana KKK, David Stephenson, extended his influence in the Klan beyond the borders of the state and into the Republican Party, especially through his association with the governor of Indiana, Ed Jackson. A gross, corrupt man, who was a boozer, a womanizer, and a violent brawler, Stephenson made himself a political power and a multimillionaire overnight through his Klan activities. Finally, he overreached himself: he forced a twenty-eight-year-old State House secretary onto a Chicago-bound train and brutally assaulted her. When she took poison, his henchmen spirited her to a hotel and held her for several days without medical aid; a month later she died. In November, 1925, Stephenson was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. When his crony, Governor Jackson, refused to pardon him, Stephenson opened a "little black box" which sent a congressman, the mayor of Indianapolis, and other officials to jail; Jackson was indicted for bribery but escaped because of the statute of limitations.

As early as 1924, the Klan had been put on the run in Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Texas, and the conviction of Stephenson sealed its doom. It brought into bold relief both the hypocrisy of the Klan (Stephenson had denounced petting parties and had warred on vice) and the corruption that threaded the history of the order. Many of the KKK leaders had joined the organization primarily for personal profit; many who preached righteousness were corrupt. Feeding on a millennial lust for rule by a league of the pure, the Klan, once in power, sometimes licensed the very evils it said it would exterminate. Its ugly side lay in the fact that it appealed to many who were frustrated by the rigid moral code of the small town. Klansmen often felt tempted by that which they were condemning--sexual freedom, modernity--and their frustration sometimes took a sadistic turn, as when they stripped "fallen" women naked and whipped them. The Stephenson episode revealed everything that was seamy about the organization. The KKK never recovered.