Last year seemed to be marked by a flood of celebrities passing away early, this year seems to be marked by a flood of sexual harassment and abuse accusations. A few other important things happened too. Right now though I am specifically angry with a writer and online publication that I had always previously supported, Ben Cohen and The Daily Banter. He just posted an article calling for Senator Al Franken of Minnesota to resign in light of a second accusation that he touched a woman inappropriately. An accusation. So Franken has to go "because he is a serious liability for Democrats." Upon reading the headline, I immediately imagined the corpse of Chez Pazienza clawing out of his grave, shambling to Cohen's house, and kicking him square in the nuts.
This is part of the problem, Chez was something of the anchor of The Daily Banter who refused to submit to the politically correct flavor of the moment. His influence served as a restraining force on the other Banter members, now that he has passed away that restraint is gone. I'll throw out my entire bias list and let you decide how much it influences my thoughts here. Ben Cohen started the banter as an independent progressive news and analysis source, his own writing tends to be shorter, less insightful, and more to the point than any other writers I regularly read. As such, his opinion is not as well reasoned or supported and in calling for Senator Franken to be thrown under the bus he is just falling for the bait. If the right wing authoritarian media complex stumbles on this attack campaign and the oxygen is sucked out of it, we'll all look pretty silly for giving it any attention.
By jumping in full force like this and leaving no possibility of saving face in the light of further information, Cohen has exposed himself and the credibility of his business on a possible scandal du jour. Before the banter, before podcasts, before the progressive blogosphere congealed into a source of comfort and strength for liberals during the dark, dark days of the bush crime syndicate, there was Al Franken. His book Lies: And the lying liars who tell them was one of the first audiobooks I ever bought and it got me through many a night at my boring, repetitive job at the time. Then I got some of Franken's other books and started listening to his radio show on Air America.
The rules do not apply to republicans... at all. And for some reason, liberals want to apply them double to Democrats. An elected or even appointed Democrat has to be as pure as new fallen snow or they get the Hillary Clinton treatment. And what does Team Blue gain from constantly giving in to republican whining? Let's recall the case of Van Jones and Shirley Sherrod, two scalps claimed early on by the powerless and utterly discredited right wing at the time. The Obama administration gained absolutely nothing by throwing those two qualified officials under the bus and republicans were empowered by the administration's weakness.
Say Cohen gets his wish and Senator Franken does resign, does anyone really think that will end the "controversy"? No, "Al Franken" will be the screech of choice for any right wing authoritarian follower who is even asked about the potential "problematic" nature of claiming to be so "pro-family values" while supporting the pussy grabber in chief or the possible Senator pedophile from Alabama no matter how far Franken may go from public life. Just as Rod Blagojevich is the first and last word from republicans about Illinois and political corruption. Just as "Chicago" is synonymous with lawless immigrants and African-American violence while simultaneously a knee-jerk deflection about gun safety laws. Just as the "tax cuts will unleash growth" myth never dies, neither will any of these myths. The right wing noise machine penetrates and permeates all truth, bending it to its will. Without Senator Al Franken (who also has several female staffers swearing that he treats them will utmost respect) and other Democrats standing up to lawless authoritarianism, these women coming forward to accuse anyone of misconduct will find it "problematic" to do so in the future.
Shame on you Ben Cohen for taking this reckless stand.
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
Don't get it done
"My donors are basically saying 'get it done or don't ever call me again."'
It is odd to hear such a blunt statement of truth from a member of the death cult of human suffering still strangely referred to as the "conservative" Republican Party. But Representative Chris Collins of New York made it nice and obvious who his master really is. A year into selling their souls to the orange carnival barker and his entourage of Russians and Nazis, thus abrogating any claim to patriotism or protection by the Constitution, what do the billionaires have to show for it? A stolen Supreme Court seat, poo flinging monkeys running the executive departments, and a crackdown on the cheap labor supply most of them count on to fuel their profits. The attacks on healthcare, education, and overall security and well being are simply problems for us mortals. As is the utter embarrassment of having a game show host as president and white supremacy somehow considered a viable option for public support.
Tax cuts; the end all be all of our self-proclaimed masters. And if they don't get them they will let the rogue's gallery of manics, sycophants, and religious nuts they put in Congress whither away on their own merits. Which means, without a huge stream of "campaign donations" to misdirect, confuse, deflect, and simply overwhelm rational public debate; Republican members of Congress might have to answer actual questions from real journalists and constituents. Sure, there would still be the fine work they have done stifling democracy through suppressing the vote and gerrymandering their districts but without the carpet bombing of money it might be a fairer fight than these fucking cowards can handle. And the loss of all that advertising revenue for the networks might finally force the executives there to rethink their commitment to the "both sides do it" narrative that lets liars get away with it on TV constantly.
Might. Hope is a poor substitute for actual strategy but those of us out in the hinterlands of America without any real leverage over network corporate news need something to hang onto in this crazy time. What actually compels the news executives to run the same script day in and day out, "sure the republicans are traitorous liars who are driving the entire country off the cliff but here's some Democrat somewhere who may have worn the wrong color suit so both sides are just as bad." Driftglass always says that it's an act, news shows are a play put on to distract and confuse people who have little time and energy to commit to understanding the labyrinth of American politics. Pundit A represents this tribe, pundit B represents the other, and the moderator referees their arguing and yelling. Nothing is solved, nothing advances, and no matter what the liars win. So maybe, just maybe, if the republicans can't get the giant tax giveaway through congress for doughfacedonny's tiny fingers to sign, the billionaires really will close their checkbooks.
And that would probably be the most patriotic thing they've ever done.
It is odd to hear such a blunt statement of truth from a member of the death cult of human suffering still strangely referred to as the "conservative" Republican Party. But Representative Chris Collins of New York made it nice and obvious who his master really is. A year into selling their souls to the orange carnival barker and his entourage of Russians and Nazis, thus abrogating any claim to patriotism or protection by the Constitution, what do the billionaires have to show for it? A stolen Supreme Court seat, poo flinging monkeys running the executive departments, and a crackdown on the cheap labor supply most of them count on to fuel their profits. The attacks on healthcare, education, and overall security and well being are simply problems for us mortals. As is the utter embarrassment of having a game show host as president and white supremacy somehow considered a viable option for public support.
Tax cuts; the end all be all of our self-proclaimed masters. And if they don't get them they will let the rogue's gallery of manics, sycophants, and religious nuts they put in Congress whither away on their own merits. Which means, without a huge stream of "campaign donations" to misdirect, confuse, deflect, and simply overwhelm rational public debate; Republican members of Congress might have to answer actual questions from real journalists and constituents. Sure, there would still be the fine work they have done stifling democracy through suppressing the vote and gerrymandering their districts but without the carpet bombing of money it might be a fairer fight than these fucking cowards can handle. And the loss of all that advertising revenue for the networks might finally force the executives there to rethink their commitment to the "both sides do it" narrative that lets liars get away with it on TV constantly.
Might. Hope is a poor substitute for actual strategy but those of us out in the hinterlands of America without any real leverage over network corporate news need something to hang onto in this crazy time. What actually compels the news executives to run the same script day in and day out, "sure the republicans are traitorous liars who are driving the entire country off the cliff but here's some Democrat somewhere who may have worn the wrong color suit so both sides are just as bad." Driftglass always says that it's an act, news shows are a play put on to distract and confuse people who have little time and energy to commit to understanding the labyrinth of American politics. Pundit A represents this tribe, pundit B represents the other, and the moderator referees their arguing and yelling. Nothing is solved, nothing advances, and no matter what the liars win. So maybe, just maybe, if the republicans can't get the giant tax giveaway through congress for doughfacedonny's tiny fingers to sign, the billionaires really will close their checkbooks.
And that would probably be the most patriotic thing they've ever done.
Thursday, November 9, 2017
The Return of the Clean-Up Crew
Don't get me wrong, I'm ecstatic that Democrats won lots of seats and offices on Tuesday. I won't go so far as to claim that Democratic victories in New Jersey, Virginia, Washington, and elsewhere proves that the authoritarians do not have elections sewn up so tight with their anti-democratic restrictions and gerrymandering. Or that this means Russia has stopped monkeying with our elections. Or that republican ratfckers were unable to hack the system and rig the totals. For all we know this is part of the traitors' plan, letting the marlin run a bit before yanking it back in during the midterms. But now that the voters in those states have hired Democrats to run their governments it will be more difficult for the authoritarians to manipulate them. The coming months will be an interesting test case as to whether Democrats can actually make anything out of their wins.
Let's be honest, for the next generation at least, we will be digging out of the hole that the republicans dug and then pushed us into. The last three Democratic presidents were nothing but caretakers of tradition, attempting to hold up the banner of good government and trying to clean up the mess left behind by their republican predecessors. Jimmy Carter had to whether the storm of distrust in government left be Watergate and Nixon's crimes. Bill Clinton seemed like a new beginning as he was the first president elected after the Cold War supposedly ended, but he had to deal with the incredible abuses of power by the Reagan/Bush regime and by corporate America's smash and grab job done to the average citizen. In retrospect the Clinton administration, with its deal-making and appeasement of republican monsters and the monied elite didn't actually do that well. The go-go Nineties left out enough people that the professional ratfckers in the "conservative" movement were able get away with incredible cruelty while cheered on by the re-programmable meatbags who are just too fucking stupid to realize how much they were played for suckers. The republican party, reformed into a vicious machine loyal only to itself and the right-wing billionaires they work for, has no interest in what's best for America. They are the definition of Niebuhr's children of darkness, for they recognize no law that is not in their self-interest and the rest of us be damned.
After the lying and thievery was propelled to new heights along with the national debt during the George W. Bush years, with anyone who stood up for the constitution being attacked as disloyal traitors, you would think the next turn at bat would have found Democrats finally willing to lead with their chins and unilaterally disarm. But then Nancy Pelosi said impeachment was off the table when people mobilized enough to finally push Democrats into the majority and Democrats did nothing to counteract the brazen sedition and vandalism of the public sphere by right wing media and elected officials. Dubya left office, the only good thing he ever did, and left the country in ruins. Did republicans show any remorse for what they did? Of course not, they committed to obstructing Barack Obama's agenda at all costs. An agenda which basically consisted of cleaning up the mess their guy left and trying to help all the people who got run over by authoritarian cruelty and corporate abuse.
Was Tuesday the turning point? Where the people finally wake up that republicans are ruining their lives and they have to get involved, stay involved, and show up to vote each and every time? If we the people push enough Democrats into office, even if they won't fight for us, at least the bleeding could finally slow. It has to be us, the average citizens, who educate and help each other to push back. Authoritarianism and right wing extremism will never go away, even at the accelerated rate that boomer republicans are dying off, American citizens who believe in democracy and the rule of law have to show up and keep pushing it back into the shadows. If Tuesday was the turning point, I will be the first one to cheer and congratulate all of the hard-working volunteers who put in the time and effort to get republicans out of office. But what if it was just a psyche-out? If the authoritarian elite just let this one slip by so they can dash our hopes in the mid term elections with all of their voter suppression, gerrymandering, and gobs of money? Similarly, what if activists rest on their laurels and decide the average voters are stirred up enough to keep going? Or if those voters figure it's in the bag and they can stay home, "somebody else will take care of it."
Hillary Clinton's administration was supposed to be the one that finally allowed Democrats to stop being janitors and start making progress. It would have been the first time a Democratic administration succeeded another one since before the Civil War. We would finally see if all those horrible things Thomas Frank said about Democrats in Listen, Liberal were really true or if they would have the courage and confidence to tackle the big problems. The basic objective that Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. set out over seventy years ago still holds, liberalism must become and maintain itself as a "fighting faith". If we the voters show up and push Democrats to embrace that faith, find their backbones and challenge the right wing myth of submission, then it will be clean up crews no more. Eat my dust you authoritarian vandals!
Let's be honest, for the next generation at least, we will be digging out of the hole that the republicans dug and then pushed us into. The last three Democratic presidents were nothing but caretakers of tradition, attempting to hold up the banner of good government and trying to clean up the mess left behind by their republican predecessors. Jimmy Carter had to whether the storm of distrust in government left be Watergate and Nixon's crimes. Bill Clinton seemed like a new beginning as he was the first president elected after the Cold War supposedly ended, but he had to deal with the incredible abuses of power by the Reagan/Bush regime and by corporate America's smash and grab job done to the average citizen. In retrospect the Clinton administration, with its deal-making and appeasement of republican monsters and the monied elite didn't actually do that well. The go-go Nineties left out enough people that the professional ratfckers in the "conservative" movement were able get away with incredible cruelty while cheered on by the re-programmable meatbags who are just too fucking stupid to realize how much they were played for suckers. The republican party, reformed into a vicious machine loyal only to itself and the right-wing billionaires they work for, has no interest in what's best for America. They are the definition of Niebuhr's children of darkness, for they recognize no law that is not in their self-interest and the rest of us be damned.
After the lying and thievery was propelled to new heights along with the national debt during the George W. Bush years, with anyone who stood up for the constitution being attacked as disloyal traitors, you would think the next turn at bat would have found Democrats finally willing to lead with their chins and unilaterally disarm. But then Nancy Pelosi said impeachment was off the table when people mobilized enough to finally push Democrats into the majority and Democrats did nothing to counteract the brazen sedition and vandalism of the public sphere by right wing media and elected officials. Dubya left office, the only good thing he ever did, and left the country in ruins. Did republicans show any remorse for what they did? Of course not, they committed to obstructing Barack Obama's agenda at all costs. An agenda which basically consisted of cleaning up the mess their guy left and trying to help all the people who got run over by authoritarian cruelty and corporate abuse.
Was Tuesday the turning point? Where the people finally wake up that republicans are ruining their lives and they have to get involved, stay involved, and show up to vote each and every time? If we the people push enough Democrats into office, even if they won't fight for us, at least the bleeding could finally slow. It has to be us, the average citizens, who educate and help each other to push back. Authoritarianism and right wing extremism will never go away, even at the accelerated rate that boomer republicans are dying off, American citizens who believe in democracy and the rule of law have to show up and keep pushing it back into the shadows. If Tuesday was the turning point, I will be the first one to cheer and congratulate all of the hard-working volunteers who put in the time and effort to get republicans out of office. But what if it was just a psyche-out? If the authoritarian elite just let this one slip by so they can dash our hopes in the mid term elections with all of their voter suppression, gerrymandering, and gobs of money? Similarly, what if activists rest on their laurels and decide the average voters are stirred up enough to keep going? Or if those voters figure it's in the bag and they can stay home, "somebody else will take care of it."
Hillary Clinton's administration was supposed to be the one that finally allowed Democrats to stop being janitors and start making progress. It would have been the first time a Democratic administration succeeded another one since before the Civil War. We would finally see if all those horrible things Thomas Frank said about Democrats in Listen, Liberal were really true or if they would have the courage and confidence to tackle the big problems. The basic objective that Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. set out over seventy years ago still holds, liberalism must become and maintain itself as a "fighting faith". If we the voters show up and push Democrats to embrace that faith, find their backbones and challenge the right wing myth of submission, then it will be clean up crews no more. Eat my dust you authoritarian vandals!
Wednesday, October 4, 2017
...And then the tax cuts
My tentacles hurt from trying to keep up with all this nonsense. The other day I actually got a moment of free time and sat down to try and put down some thoughts on doughfacedonny's war with the NFL:
Then a "retired grandfather," as I have seen him described on Twitter, started shooting at people from from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas and many, many people got a shot of adrenaline to start talking again. About gun control. I hate to say it guys, maybe it's just the gloomy historian bobbing to the surface again but that term is a complete loser and will not go anywhere. Just as Donny's fans seemed to start losing interest and drift away, he got them all riled up with the racism everyone can love; ragging on the spoiled, overpaid thugs on the football field. Sure, a normal person is quite activated when news hits about the most deadly mass shooting in American history but nothing liberals have tried thus far has moved the needle one inch on gun control. So we'll lead with our chins once again, shout at trees, tilt at windmills, whatever your preferred metaphor for the futility of passing even the most basic public safety measures into law that could have at least hindered the ability of an individual to acquire an arsenal of deadly weaponry.
Meanwhile, the real payoff of all the lying, chicanery, ratfucking, treasonous footsie with the Russians, truckloads of money spent, and voter suppression has finally arrived. Third time is the charm, the US Federal Government has been dealt two knockdowns by past Republican administrations, this one will be the Technical Knockout if Donny can get those tiny fingers around a pen to sign every billionaire's fantasy of a tax cut. It almost doesn't matter what the specifics of the giveaway are, if it's republican and it has to do with taxes it will blow out the deficit and hugely benefit the filthy rich and corporations. Yes, we have to mourn the dead in Las Vegas. Yes, we have to express condolences and support the survivors. Yes, it would be great if some public safety action came out of this but the bottom line is we cannot get distracted from the entire point of republican "governance" i. e. bankrupt government with tax cuts and force it to stop doing anything to help American citizens that aren't rich.
As tragic as the shooting deaths were, this last weekend the GOP death cult of human suffering was so busy polishing tax "reform" turds that they "forgot" to reauthorize CHIP. As Brother Charlie Pierce put it:
How many hurricanes and superstorms has the United States been hit by lately? Cities destroyed, Puerto Rico without power and practically leveled, escalating tension with North Korea, and we just barely survived another attempt by the death cult of human suffering to take health insurance from millions of Americans. But what is really important that we have to endlessly debate this week? The NFL, and growing protests among players to seriously address the systemic racism and violence by police because they are "disrespecting the flag and the country" by kneeling during the national anthem. In a democratic society we could actually address the above problems and discuss in a civil manner how to reduce racial tensions. But the democratic society in America has very little power, instead we have an aristocratic constellation of the very wealthy and corporations constantly waging war on democracy. The eruption of AstroTurf counter-protest this week starting with doughfacedonny against the "spoiled young millionaires" used by the aristocrats to instill discipline in the right wing authoritarian followers shows what a raw nerve the protests have touched.Ugh, that's as far as I could get. Some kind of block just set in, like "by the time you finish this it will be old news" and then that new news will be old and so on. News cycles in the age of the doughface have turned into gerbil wheels that just spin faster and faster while getting bigger. While there is no shortage of things to write about and no shortage of readers ready to consume it, writers far above my pay grade seemed to be slowing down. As though fatigue at the breakneck pace of outrage generated by doughfacedonny and his minions in the death cult of human suffering is starting to catch up with them. I do not blame them one bit.
Then a "retired grandfather," as I have seen him described on Twitter, started shooting at people from from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas and many, many people got a shot of adrenaline to start talking again. About gun control. I hate to say it guys, maybe it's just the gloomy historian bobbing to the surface again but that term is a complete loser and will not go anywhere. Just as Donny's fans seemed to start losing interest and drift away, he got them all riled up with the racism everyone can love; ragging on the spoiled, overpaid thugs on the football field. Sure, a normal person is quite activated when news hits about the most deadly mass shooting in American history but nothing liberals have tried thus far has moved the needle one inch on gun control. So we'll lead with our chins once again, shout at trees, tilt at windmills, whatever your preferred metaphor for the futility of passing even the most basic public safety measures into law that could have at least hindered the ability of an individual to acquire an arsenal of deadly weaponry.
Meanwhile, the real payoff of all the lying, chicanery, ratfucking, treasonous footsie with the Russians, truckloads of money spent, and voter suppression has finally arrived. Third time is the charm, the US Federal Government has been dealt two knockdowns by past Republican administrations, this one will be the Technical Knockout if Donny can get those tiny fingers around a pen to sign every billionaire's fantasy of a tax cut. It almost doesn't matter what the specifics of the giveaway are, if it's republican and it has to do with taxes it will blow out the deficit and hugely benefit the filthy rich and corporations. Yes, we have to mourn the dead in Las Vegas. Yes, we have to express condolences and support the survivors. Yes, it would be great if some public safety action came out of this but the bottom line is we cannot get distracted from the entire point of republican "governance" i. e. bankrupt government with tax cuts and force it to stop doing anything to help American citizens that aren't rich.
As tragic as the shooting deaths were, this last weekend the GOP death cult of human suffering was so busy polishing tax "reform" turds that they "forgot" to reauthorize CHIP. As Brother Charlie Pierce put it:
Christamighty, these gossoons spent so much time trying to strip health care from 32 million Americans that they ran out the clock on health care for nine million kids. This is terrible if it represents simple legislative incompetence, but it’s even worse if—as I suspect—it was deliberate...I don’t think it unreasonable to assume that they will use it as a bargaining…er…chip in the upcoming slanging match over the budget, thus making the health coverage for nine million kids a hostage to, say, the elimination of the estate tax. Are they above doing this? Are you kidding me?As has been making the rounds on social media this week, the cyclical nature of republican administrations in my lifetime has been:
- Cut taxes for the rich and corporations
- Cut social spending
- Increase military spending by far more
- Send the economy into recession and leave the mess for the incoming Democrat
- Raise hell about the deficit
- Scream about the need to cut Social Security
- Repeat
Friday, September 8, 2017
All The Little Things
Occasionally it is good to step away from the mania coming from the White House or the sociopaths sent to Congress and state offices by right wing authoritarian follower republicans. Usually it is no less crazy, horrible, or outrageous but at least on a smaller scale with fewer repercussions to society at large. Almost three years ago I witnessed first hand the Ministry of Truth altering the past for true party members. The manager at a Florida hardware store put up a bunch of little American flags on the public right-of-way in front of the store and the city asked him to move it when copy cats littered other right-of-ways (inspired of course by Fox News, who then got to report on the outrageous and oppressive local government overreach). Next time I checked, poof, gone. That was funny. Then the minor pearl-clutching by loonies about the imminent banning of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which was fun for seeing giant straw men careening down the slippery slope of right wing fever swamp water slides. Amazingly enough that one disappeared too from the link I used, but Huffpost saved the story for posterity. Finally the too smart by half thought leaders of tier 4 internet 'wingers that took the "socialist" part of national socialism literally and pasted it onto Bernie Sanders, admittedly one of many and there's no reason to believe it didn't originate in Russia.
Then there are more important stories that sometimes tangentially relate to my research. Such as when Ben Carson took a big, derpy swipe at Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood. Or very serious trolls try to pin a lie about Sanger on Hillary Clinton. I mean, dang, the authoritarians just throw any lie they can dribble out of those diseased brains out there in the never ending war on liberalism and empirical truth. After Charlottesville it is going to be a little harder for Nazi sympathizing trolls to take this particular line of attack, but you know it's going to keep going.
About a month ago I posted this story to the blog's Facebook page about a judge in Tennessee offering thirty days off of prison sentences to convicts who agree to long-term birth control. As I was writing about the American origin of many Nazi race laws and practices the other day it popped back into my mind and I realized I hadn't heard any follow-up stories about it. Progressive sources treated the story like it was the first step towards coercive sterilizations and the rebirth of eugenics. But it fizzled out because the judge immediately rescinded his order when the health department said they weren't offering vasectomies or Nexplanon long acting birth control. Or that they withdrew the offer, it seems a bit he said/she said. So it's all over but the shouting, in this case the shouting is a lawsuit. That seems to be as far as the story went to date.
So next I went looking for some interpretations of the story and found two essays written by different lawyers. The first is from Jeffrey Carr of Grossman Law Offices and Attorney Carr, who used a personal anecdote to illustrate that people in jail are desperate and would jump at any chance to get out early but then focused on the practical and legal implications of the program. It was a good chance to think about the nature of coercion and society's options for "freeing poor people from the burden of raising children," without being overly preachy and morally outraged. On the other hand is Daniel Horwitz writing at the Supreme Court of Tennessee Blog, whose outrage knows no boundaries. He did hold out until the seventh paragraph before breaking Godwin's Law, but receives strong style points for coining the term "eugenics discount" in the first. Horwitz writes that involuntary sterilization is defined as a crime against humanity in the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court without noting that the United States is a conspicuous non-signatory to the Statute and furious opponent of the ICC. He continues that:
Here's the thing, when Sir Francis Galton invented eugenics he was much more concerned with increasing the birth rate among smart and capable people than of reducing it among the degenerate. When a third of conscripts failed their physical to fight the Boers in South Africa, English eugenicists were concerned with strengthening the working class men of draft age who would be called upon to defend the Empire. There is nothing intrinsic to eugenics that must be genocidal. It is a question of the relative value of life. When eugenics caught on among certain Progressives before WWI their goal was to reduce the number of imbeciles in the next generation by segregating the unfit of this generation, those with fair skin tone. Though my research is far from complete, it generally seems that life became less valued after WWI and the Spanish flu epidemic. This led to the rounding up and deportation of thousands of "dangerous radical aliens" and clampdowns on immigration in this country. That is also when involuntary sterilizations took off, the general zeitgeist seemed to be that there are too many people around and too many of them are stupid and unworthy so we the worthy are just going to eliminate their proliferation. Life in general seemed to become more valued after WWII and the holocaust.
Do we face a similar situation today? With the loud and growing chorus of anti-immigrant sentiment and weakening of taboos against white supremacy that doughface donny and his ilk represent? Is the country and the world growing so crowded that people are getting less sentimental about the value of life? This could be part of the reason that I couldn't find any fundamentalist "christian" pro-life, pro-forced birth, pro-rapists' rights assholes decrying the loss of reproductive capacity for druggies in Tennessee. That is a little story for another day though.
Then there are more important stories that sometimes tangentially relate to my research. Such as when Ben Carson took a big, derpy swipe at Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood. Or very serious trolls try to pin a lie about Sanger on Hillary Clinton. I mean, dang, the authoritarians just throw any lie they can dribble out of those diseased brains out there in the never ending war on liberalism and empirical truth. After Charlottesville it is going to be a little harder for Nazi sympathizing trolls to take this particular line of attack, but you know it's going to keep going.
About a month ago I posted this story to the blog's Facebook page about a judge in Tennessee offering thirty days off of prison sentences to convicts who agree to long-term birth control. As I was writing about the American origin of many Nazi race laws and practices the other day it popped back into my mind and I realized I hadn't heard any follow-up stories about it. Progressive sources treated the story like it was the first step towards coercive sterilizations and the rebirth of eugenics. But it fizzled out because the judge immediately rescinded his order when the health department said they weren't offering vasectomies or Nexplanon long acting birth control. Or that they withdrew the offer, it seems a bit he said/she said. So it's all over but the shouting, in this case the shouting is a lawsuit. That seems to be as far as the story went to date.
So next I went looking for some interpretations of the story and found two essays written by different lawyers. The first is from Jeffrey Carr of Grossman Law Offices and Attorney Carr, who used a personal anecdote to illustrate that people in jail are desperate and would jump at any chance to get out early but then focused on the practical and legal implications of the program. It was a good chance to think about the nature of coercion and society's options for "freeing poor people from the burden of raising children," without being overly preachy and morally outraged. On the other hand is Daniel Horwitz writing at the Supreme Court of Tennessee Blog, whose outrage knows no boundaries. He did hold out until the seventh paragraph before breaking Godwin's Law, but receives strong style points for coining the term "eugenics discount" in the first. Horwitz writes that involuntary sterilization is defined as a crime against humanity in the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court without noting that the United States is a conspicuous non-signatory to the Statute and furious opponent of the ICC. He continues that:
To be absolutely and unequivocally clear: eugenics is illegal. In America, reproductive freedom is a fundamental constitutional right, and the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution forbids the government from treating people differently based on whether or not they choose to exercise their right to reproductive freedom. Tennessee’s criminal code also contains several specifically-designated mitigating factors and enhancement factors that judges are permitted to consider during sentencing. Whether a defendant has submitted to sterilization is not among them.While providing links to the Rome Statute in the previous paragraph and to his previous writings on the outrage of jail time for minor traffic offenses, Attorney Horwitz couldn't even point the reader to a Wikipedia article on the constitutional or legal status of eugenics while making his point. Then he calls for the judge to be impeached, disbarred, and have his law degree revoked. And surprise, surprise Attorney Horwitz is the leader of the lawsuit against Judge Benningfield. The whole tone of the article is "you either agree with me with enthusiasm or you're wrong!" It's at least mildly humorous. Personally, depending on the day, I'm not sure we don't do enough to encourage people to get sterilized before leaving high school, but it might just be that confirmed misanthrope Chez Pazienza talking through me from beyond the grave.
Here's the thing, when Sir Francis Galton invented eugenics he was much more concerned with increasing the birth rate among smart and capable people than of reducing it among the degenerate. When a third of conscripts failed their physical to fight the Boers in South Africa, English eugenicists were concerned with strengthening the working class men of draft age who would be called upon to defend the Empire. There is nothing intrinsic to eugenics that must be genocidal. It is a question of the relative value of life. When eugenics caught on among certain Progressives before WWI their goal was to reduce the number of imbeciles in the next generation by segregating the unfit of this generation, those with fair skin tone. Though my research is far from complete, it generally seems that life became less valued after WWI and the Spanish flu epidemic. This led to the rounding up and deportation of thousands of "dangerous radical aliens" and clampdowns on immigration in this country. That is also when involuntary sterilizations took off, the general zeitgeist seemed to be that there are too many people around and too many of them are stupid and unworthy so we the worthy are just going to eliminate their proliferation. Life in general seemed to become more valued after WWII and the holocaust.
Do we face a similar situation today? With the loud and growing chorus of anti-immigrant sentiment and weakening of taboos against white supremacy that doughface donny and his ilk represent? Is the country and the world growing so crowded that people are getting less sentimental about the value of life? This could be part of the reason that I couldn't find any fundamentalist "christian" pro-life, pro-forced birth, pro-rapists' rights assholes decrying the loss of reproductive capacity for druggies in Tennessee. That is a little story for another day though.
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
From Reagan to Trump
Another day in the crisis of American democracy. Where are we in this drama so far? Robert Reich posted this video today and does a good job summarizing at least part of the problem. How many hoops do we have to jump through to finally nail the trump/Russia treason down? Will it ever happen? Will it be sudden and unexpected or long and drawn out? Will the con man simply resign after pardoning everyone he can or will he have to be arrested and dragged out? At this point no one knows for sure but real damage is done every day. Let's be honest, despite some bright shining moments, mainstream corporate media has been absolutely atrocious in dealing with republican sedition for a long time. And today they seem to feel as though they cannot comment on each new day's atrocities without lamenting how pure and patriotic past republican presidents were. It is expected on cable or broadcast news to always try to balance and treat liars as though they have something worth our time to say. At every step the constitutionally-enshrined protectors of our republic pull punches, treat lightly, fail to challenge the lies, reach for something, anything that the Democrats have done to claim a false equivalence, and give an undeserved deference to some of the greatest villains our society has produced.
Democrats then bring butter knives to fight against the mechanized armor division that the republicans have spent so many years building. One of their worst offenses is appealing to the center and for unity, George Lakoff has spent years trying to convince Democrats and Progressives to stop playing into authoritarian hands in this fruitless endeavor. There is no "Center" where the left and the right meet and people could agree to rational solutions to real problems. There isn't even a spectrum or sliding scale of left to right according to Lakoff, but that one is kind of tough to get our heads around after so many years of hearing about that spectrum. So the piece I want to look at today is Vice President Joe Biden's call for the rest of us to reject doughfacedonny's crap and be the good nation we aspire to be. It is good, he hits all the right notes of keeping and building on the moral conscience that elected he and President Obama, and rejecting the hate and racism that donny has dredged up. The only problem is that he doesn't call out donny by name, a small one for sure as I can't even use his name nor put the title of "president" in front of it. Brother Charlie Pierce put it well, "say his name when you denounce his bigotry", though he was addressing the crocodile tear-shedding republicans who mouthed words to the effect of "this will not do donny." But it is the same product.
As evidenced by the naming of neo-nazi marchers in Charlottesville and their subsequent firing, it is effective. It is personal, the so-called alt right and their fellow republican base voters WANT US DEAD, so shaming and shining a spotlight on individuals is the right thing to do. It has to be made so toxic to even be associated with nazis that republicans can't get away with ambiguous statements like what Lyin' Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin made after donny tried to falsely equate "many sides" for violence by broadly generalizing about all hate and all bigotry is bad. No, we're talking about what actually happened, real people with real names who gathered together to support monuments to confederate traitors, the neo-nazis whose antecedents nearly succeeded in exterminating all of the Jews in Europe. It was a big step for Vice President Biden to actually refer to the current president, not some generalization, even if he didn't say the name. Unlike the Democratic Party's latest slogan of "a better deal" that doesn't even acknowledge the existence of an opposition party that made it this bad for regular Americans and constantly try to make it worse. Of course the better deal platform was a response to the fact that the Democrats really don't stand for anything, even if Progressives want to believe and continue to work in the direction of equality, social and economic justice etc., as polls reported in July.
Really, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. If you act as though current conditions are something that just happened, like a bolt of lightning hitting your home, instead of something that was done deliberately as in a burglar stealing everything before burning it down, then yes people are going to believe that you don't stand for anything. It makes the current state of the union to be fate, instead of something that was consciously made over decades. Which brings me to the response to Biden's article from Ben Cohen of The Daily Banter. Now I don't mean to single Ben out or come down on him too hard, his heart is in the right place and I generally support his positions. And I hear the same sort of thing from his colleague at the banter, Bob Cesca, and from the Stephanie Miller show to name two examples. The problem is letting past republicans off the hook because they weren't the unbelievable shit show that doughfacedonny has been.
Ben starts his analysis like this:
Then the gut punch that sucks all the wind out of any Progressive impact Ben Cohen could have with this article:
So why commit an unforced error like this? To achieve some sort of artificial balance? Appeal to the brain dead reprogrammable meat sacks that still support donny? Please stop doing this, anyone on the left. I have seen enough sentiments to "George W. Bush is so happy he's not the worst president in history" that I want to tear my own tentacles off. This accomplishes nothing positive and only legitimizes past republican crimes against the American people. I know so many activists and writers are desperately trying to break the cycle of "normalizing" Trump, but letting everyone from Nixon to Bill Kristol off the hook for the harm they did to discourse and society isn't the way to go.
It really has been an almost straight line of crimes from Reagan to Trump, each successive republican raised the bar of awfulness to where we are actually seeing democracy fade away and racism become just another political opinion. They are different only by degrees, not in kind. There is no set goal, Reagan most likely never thought he was pointing us in the direction of a fascist dictatorship, but his actions and the words and deeds of subsequent republicans have led us to this point. Stop falling for it!
Democrats then bring butter knives to fight against the mechanized armor division that the republicans have spent so many years building. One of their worst offenses is appealing to the center and for unity, George Lakoff has spent years trying to convince Democrats and Progressives to stop playing into authoritarian hands in this fruitless endeavor. There is no "Center" where the left and the right meet and people could agree to rational solutions to real problems. There isn't even a spectrum or sliding scale of left to right according to Lakoff, but that one is kind of tough to get our heads around after so many years of hearing about that spectrum. So the piece I want to look at today is Vice President Joe Biden's call for the rest of us to reject doughfacedonny's crap and be the good nation we aspire to be. It is good, he hits all the right notes of keeping and building on the moral conscience that elected he and President Obama, and rejecting the hate and racism that donny has dredged up. The only problem is that he doesn't call out donny by name, a small one for sure as I can't even use his name nor put the title of "president" in front of it. Brother Charlie Pierce put it well, "say his name when you denounce his bigotry", though he was addressing the crocodile tear-shedding republicans who mouthed words to the effect of "this will not do donny." But it is the same product.
As evidenced by the naming of neo-nazi marchers in Charlottesville and their subsequent firing, it is effective. It is personal, the so-called alt right and their fellow republican base voters WANT US DEAD, so shaming and shining a spotlight on individuals is the right thing to do. It has to be made so toxic to even be associated with nazis that republicans can't get away with ambiguous statements like what Lyin' Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin made after donny tried to falsely equate "many sides" for violence by broadly generalizing about all hate and all bigotry is bad. No, we're talking about what actually happened, real people with real names who gathered together to support monuments to confederate traitors, the neo-nazis whose antecedents nearly succeeded in exterminating all of the Jews in Europe. It was a big step for Vice President Biden to actually refer to the current president, not some generalization, even if he didn't say the name. Unlike the Democratic Party's latest slogan of "a better deal" that doesn't even acknowledge the existence of an opposition party that made it this bad for regular Americans and constantly try to make it worse. Of course the better deal platform was a response to the fact that the Democrats really don't stand for anything, even if Progressives want to believe and continue to work in the direction of equality, social and economic justice etc., as polls reported in July.
Really, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. If you act as though current conditions are something that just happened, like a bolt of lightning hitting your home, instead of something that was done deliberately as in a burglar stealing everything before burning it down, then yes people are going to believe that you don't stand for anything. It makes the current state of the union to be fate, instead of something that was consciously made over decades. Which brings me to the response to Biden's article from Ben Cohen of The Daily Banter. Now I don't mean to single Ben out or come down on him too hard, his heart is in the right place and I generally support his positions. And I hear the same sort of thing from his colleague at the banter, Bob Cesca, and from the Stephanie Miller show to name two examples. The problem is letting past republicans off the hook because they weren't the unbelievable shit show that doughfacedonny has been.
Ben starts his analysis like this:
Whatever you might think of Joe Biden and his politics, he never sought to divide Americans or appeal to their hate. Biden didn’t use minorities as scapegoats, insult women or deride allies, and while he wasn’t perfect, Biden was a man of dignity who always appealed to our better nature.Why the weasel words? Who do you think this kind of appeal will win over? People aren't perfect, there's no reason to state this. And even the comparison of donny's antics to what Biden stood for in office is ridiculous, that's not the bar of statesmanship. Lakoff would point out that there's no reason to qualify Biden or his politics, that simply gives the right ammunition. And it deactivates the frame of what he's talking about, nothing that is happening today has anything to do with Joe Biden.
Then the gut punch that sucks all the wind out of any Progressive impact Ben Cohen could have with this article:
I’m not a fan of Ronald Reagan and completely disagree with his politics, but he did not appeal to hate while in office. He did not vilify immigrants, demean women, or equate Neo-Nazis with anti-fascist protesters. This is why many conservatives and almost all liberals recognize the danger in Donald Trump. This isn’t so much about policy, it’s about politics and the devastating effect divisive language and demagoguery has on the psyche of a nation.First, what the hell does any of this have to do with Reagan? Why bring him up? That just activates the frame of divinity surrounding Reagan that obviously liberals give some credence to as well. Trying to negate a frame by invoking a supposed "good conservative" only reinforces it. And you might want to check with an actual Reagan scholar like Rick Perlstein before making these claims. Reagan began his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi by talking "states' rights" clearly dog whistling his continuation of Nixon's southern strategy. Then as president he visited the nazi cemetery at Bitburg despite strong opposition from Jewish groups. What about the lying stories about "welfare queens", did those not demean women? Reagan was really hot to "reduce labor costs" (i.e. Your Pay) by breaking unions and deregulating everything, the undocumented immigrant amnesty was a big part of that and contributed to the anti-immigrant backlash today.
So why commit an unforced error like this? To achieve some sort of artificial balance? Appeal to the brain dead reprogrammable meat sacks that still support donny? Please stop doing this, anyone on the left. I have seen enough sentiments to "George W. Bush is so happy he's not the worst president in history" that I want to tear my own tentacles off. This accomplishes nothing positive and only legitimizes past republican crimes against the American people. I know so many activists and writers are desperately trying to break the cycle of "normalizing" Trump, but letting everyone from Nixon to Bill Kristol off the hook for the harm they did to discourse and society isn't the way to go.
It really has been an almost straight line of crimes from Reagan to Trump, each successive republican raised the bar of awfulness to where we are actually seeing democracy fade away and racism become just another political opinion. They are different only by degrees, not in kind. There is no set goal, Reagan most likely never thought he was pointing us in the direction of a fascist dictatorship, but his actions and the words and deeds of subsequent republicans have led us to this point. Stop falling for it!
Monday, August 21, 2017
They are all Nazis
Is there a word for a feeling of surprise at something that was completely predictable? That was my feeling after the white riot in Charlottesville, VA last weekend. Something like that was bound to happen with 'god-emperor' trump embedded in the White House like a tick. So now that it has, the three quarters plus of Americans who oppose the republican reign of terror are presented with a choice of how to deal with the other quarter whose white supremacy has been exposed to the world like a festering boil of hate and bigotry. It is as though now that the veneer of ambiguity has been ripped away to reveal swastikas and Nazi slogans alongside the confederate stars and bars it suddenly got easier for mainstream media to drop, at least partially, their go-to defense of both sides are equally bad. Good for them, yes hating Nazis should be something we all agree on and as the new meme goes "antifascist should be the default setting for Americans". So finally we can stand up to the republican menace that sympathizes with white supremacy by calling them what they are. Or can we?
This Vox article crossed my feed when published on August 18th but I didn't get a chance to read it. Written by a PhD student named Lindsay Jones whose project is on female African-American education in Virginia and a native of Charlottesville, she is also an intellectual historian and it is on that score that I have to critique her article. Jones probably knows more about Nazism than I know about African-American education but in the realm of current events the former is more valuable. She argues that the very term that permits corporate media to finally blame these assholes for their violence and hate should be dropped because white supremacy is as American as apple pie. However the weasel words start right from the title:
American white supremacy historically took two forms; exclusionary in the North, and dominating in the South. Yankees just didn't want Black folks living anywhere near them. Southerners wanted separation of the races but also wanted to exploit Black folks' labor so they built the convoluted system of segregation, and a system of intimidation through outright KKK style vigilantism all the way to building the monuments to confederate leaders as an ever present reminder of who was in charge. Nazism in Germany borrowed from both of these traditions, even the Lost Cause mythology through their "stab in the back" theory. Though admittedly if you search for any kind of consistency in Nazism you'll be hard pressed to find any. They worshiped technology and strove to return to the land for a simpler life. The only thing that really held them together was the shared hatred of out groups. It is completely understandable that hate is hate from the victims' point of view, but as intellectual historians we must dig deeper no matter how distasteful it may be.
This hatred towards the Other really isn't different than the various strands of derpitude displayed by the mass rally (ho ho) in Charlottesville of white supremacists. Maybe this group hates Jews a little more than immigrants, maybe that one puts Islam at the top of their hate list. Does it really matter? This is one time where generalization is warranted. At a time when good jobs are hard to find and most manual labor has been eased by machines and technology, does the old Klan ideology of keeping African-Americans on the land and in their place hold true? If the Klan no longer seeks to dominate but chants the same slogans of extermination that self-proclaimed Nazis bluster about, is there really any difference between home grown hate and imports?
It is not expedient to lump them all together, it is necessary. In order to get the elite media to pay attention to this disgusting underbelly we need to shock and sensationalize, or they will just get back to blaming both sides and normalizing the fascist takeover of America. If Hitler and the Nazis in Germany were inspired by what they saw in America, then it is correct to tar them all with the same brush. What word would you like to use instead? This is the area of the internet where we actually can debate ideas. Yes, the hate is real. Yes, it comes from right here in white America. And yes, we absolutely have to shine as bright a light on it as possible so it will slither away again. But to say Nazism is simply an exotic foreign import and puts too much distance between the idea and the actions is doing a disservice to intellectual history.
This Vox article crossed my feed when published on August 18th but I didn't get a chance to read it. Written by a PhD student named Lindsay Jones whose project is on female African-American education in Virginia and a native of Charlottesville, she is also an intellectual historian and it is on that score that I have to critique her article. Jones probably knows more about Nazism than I know about African-American education but in the realm of current events the former is more valuable. She argues that the very term that permits corporate media to finally blame these assholes for their violence and hate should be dropped because white supremacy is as American as apple pie. However the weasel words start right from the title:
Don’t call all American white supremacists “Nazis.” Their ideology of hate is homegrown.
Using the term distances us from our reality.
I have some bad news to share with you candidate Jones, National Socialism in Germany was highly and extensively influenced by exactly that homegrown hate you are describing. And shame on you as a scholar to write this article without even a sideways glance in this direction. Far be it for me to explain racism or hate to you, your story is moving and I have no reason to doubt it's sincerity, but the neo-confederate white supremacy has more in common with nazism than you'd think. James Q. Whitman wrote a whole book on the American roots of nazism that I discovered after less than thirty seconds of searching on Google. Much like the African-American blues men that went to England and enjoyed success, in turn leading to the British Invasion, Hitler looked at American race relations and found much to expropriate. Tortured metaphors aside, Indian removal, westward expansion aka Manifest Destiny, slavery, Jim Crow, Eugenics, the Creel commission propaganda during WWI, the Palmer raids, expulsion of Alien radicals, and immigration quotas were parts of American history that the Nazis wanted to emulate and largely did execute....“Nazis” are easily legible as a long-since-conquered enemy to human decency. Neo-Nazis are easily dismissed as clinging to an antiquated ideology of white racial superiority in an age when the idea of a “master race” has long been banished in polite society.To utter the term “Nazi” is to invoke universally condemned images of death camps, terror. To say “Nazi” is to imply backwardness — that this ideology is a throwback to a more ignorant and intolerant age in human history. To say “Nazi” is to disavow the Americanness of anyone who dons a swastika or gives a Nazi salute, to reflexively cast them as counter to the values of tolerance and diversity that our nation holds dear.To say “Nazi” in reference to the mobs who wrought havoc on Charlottesville this weekend, arguably, is expedient. After all, reasonable Americans have reached a consensus that the genocidal violence of Nazi Germany was some of the worst the world has ever seen and that the ideas and actions of today’s neo-Nazis are abhorrent. Why split hairs in a search for more precise terminology? Why not refuse to adopt the terminology of “alt-right” and “white nationalist” and instead use a label that we can all understand and that ultra-effectively resists euphemism?Some people at Saturday’s rally identified as actual members of the American Nazi Party and carried flags with swastikas. But the label doesn’t encapsulate the people who showed up representing America's homegrown ideology of white supremacy.For me, as a scholar and a resident of Charlottesville, the Nazi label erases the ordinariness of this impulse to display and defend the symbols of a fallen iteration of white patriarchy. The people I grew up with — the families that fly the flag on their property, the teenage boys who wear the flag stitched onto their khaki baseball caps — are not Nazis. They are ordinary white people who deny that their veneration of a mythologized South amounts to white nationalism. The spectacular displays of violence characterizing Charlottesville’s conflicts over Confederate monuments, when viewed in local and historical context, point to white racial pride that has its source right here in Virginia, not Nazi Germany.
American white supremacy historically took two forms; exclusionary in the North, and dominating in the South. Yankees just didn't want Black folks living anywhere near them. Southerners wanted separation of the races but also wanted to exploit Black folks' labor so they built the convoluted system of segregation, and a system of intimidation through outright KKK style vigilantism all the way to building the monuments to confederate leaders as an ever present reminder of who was in charge. Nazism in Germany borrowed from both of these traditions, even the Lost Cause mythology through their "stab in the back" theory. Though admittedly if you search for any kind of consistency in Nazism you'll be hard pressed to find any. They worshiped technology and strove to return to the land for a simpler life. The only thing that really held them together was the shared hatred of out groups. It is completely understandable that hate is hate from the victims' point of view, but as intellectual historians we must dig deeper no matter how distasteful it may be.
This hatred towards the Other really isn't different than the various strands of derpitude displayed by the mass rally (ho ho) in Charlottesville of white supremacists. Maybe this group hates Jews a little more than immigrants, maybe that one puts Islam at the top of their hate list. Does it really matter? This is one time where generalization is warranted. At a time when good jobs are hard to find and most manual labor has been eased by machines and technology, does the old Klan ideology of keeping African-Americans on the land and in their place hold true? If the Klan no longer seeks to dominate but chants the same slogans of extermination that self-proclaimed Nazis bluster about, is there really any difference between home grown hate and imports?
It is not expedient to lump them all together, it is necessary. In order to get the elite media to pay attention to this disgusting underbelly we need to shock and sensationalize, or they will just get back to blaming both sides and normalizing the fascist takeover of America. If Hitler and the Nazis in Germany were inspired by what they saw in America, then it is correct to tar them all with the same brush. What word would you like to use instead? This is the area of the internet where we actually can debate ideas. Yes, the hate is real. Yes, it comes from right here in white America. And yes, we absolutely have to shine as bright a light on it as possible so it will slither away again. But to say Nazism is simply an exotic foreign import and puts too much distance between the idea and the actions is doing a disservice to intellectual history.
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