This Is the Modern GOP

 

The 26 Republicans who refused to denounce white supremacy
1. James Comer
2. Jim Jordan
3. Mike Turner
4. Paul Gosar
5. Virginia Foxx
6. Glenn Grothman
7. Gary Palmer
8. Clay Higgins
9. Pete Sessions
10. Andy Biggs
11. Nancy Mace
12. Jake LaTurner
13. Pat Fallon
14. Byron Donalds pic.twitter.com/mlcvE9rPsM

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) March 8, 2023

The next time someone hits you with how the Democratic party was a part of segregation or slavery or the Klan some long time ago, here is your answer: the GOP right now can't say "Boo" with respects to their racists. They see calling out white supremacy or the great replacement theory as a trap. Given the easy opportunity to denounce white supremacy, they did not. Given the opportunity to denounce replacement theory they could not. 

The Usual Warning Signs

This profile of James Fields, the 20-year old Nazi-fanboy who allegedly murdered Heather Heyer and injured at least 19 others, is chilling in that there were obvious warning signs that this young man was headed for violence--because he was already performing violence:

In a report sourced to police records, the newspaper said that wheelchair-bound Bloom called police in Florence, Kentucky, at least nine times starting in 2010 seeking help with her sometimes violent son.

Soon after graduating high school in 2015, Fields joined the U.S. Army but left by December after failing to meet training standards, the Army said in a statement.

What kind of person physically assaults his disabled mom? What kind of person seeks out a profession that involves firearms and violence but displays no aptitude for the actual working parts of the job description? A person with a fuse easily lit in a tiki-torch atmosphere.

I've covered this before--Elliot Rogers.  Ismaayil Brinsley. James Hodgkinson.  (There are others, but these posts stand out in my mind.) Sometimes you know someone is liable to hurt masses of people because they already hurt people, often women, they already associate with.

This violence ideation was apparent with Dylan Klebold, who dwelt upon Nazis, and Eric Harris, who dwelt upon all kinds of things, but also a dehumanized image of female sexuality.

They all failed to see people as just...people. So they resorted to violence against people. There was no understanding what the humanity of their victims even was.

There are warning signs. They just look an awful lot like our culture. We separate people by race, creed, gender, religion. We objectify people based on what they can do or can't do for us. And we depersonalize them by creating narratives about them based on our ignorance, not based on our curiosity about the Other and how those who are not ourselves even live. And I include myself in that "we". Trying to break out of that othering, dehumanizing, and situational dealing with other people is a struggle everyone deals with. But we don't talk about it intelligently, if we talk about it at all. And those who don't sort it out within themselves, do violent shit, because they never learned that people were people. And none of us are fucking special. We just live, bleed, try to get by, and hopefully find other people who will love us for our difficult and unspecial selves.

But we don't need to be special to have earned the right to live. We are all here. It's all we have. It is all we need to have. I don't understand how it eludes anyone that human beings not yourself have their hereness to justify their existence, and that life is not cheap, but a daily struggle for air and water and calories, and room to move and think and be, but it is the basic principle on which I think any kind of reality needs to be based--the other is not unlike you in uniqueness and rights. They like you are physically capable of suffering and can be injured, get sick, fear death, deserve love. And this is the best part of them, and you. Because it makes it incumbent upon us all to see one another for what we are.

Be fearless enough to love and be loved, be ready to hold back your worst until you've seen your fellow human for their best. And if their best is Nazi shit, well, I guess, bust them up until their asses get fixed. Because that way is a sunken place and nothing any good can come out of.

Two Days Later

Trump: “Racism is evil” https://t.co/3ObwqgEyor pic.twitter.com/VdXXSnQNdI

— POLITICO (@politico) August 14, 2017

If it takes Trump 48 hours to say that Nazis are bad, and can't even sound like he means it, it's about as good as saying nothing.

In other news, he is considering pardoning his Birther Buddy, Sheriff Joe Arpaio. What Trump stands for is pretty clear.

Look! Nazis!

I think when you get right down to the Nazi salutes and the "You (jew) will not replace us" rhetoric, you just have to go ahead and call these people "Nazis". This isn't an "white working class economic insecurity" thing--this is just racism and brutality. The alt-right isn't new.  It's a resurgence of the same old racism with a grotesque twist. People who claim they are joking with the "Sieg Heil" and "lugenpresse" talk aren't actually joking, they just want to ignore that this is the direction they are silly-walking their way towards. 

But when "blood and soil" and all that rot come up in earnestness, pay attention to who still carries the torch and who they are carrying it for. It isn't humorous at all.

Dylann Roof Found Guilty

Dylann Roof was charged with 33 counts in his federal indictment and found guilty for every one because he admitted as much. This killer could be called "self-radicalized", but clearly, there was material out there that helped his feeble mind exercise itself to the rage necessary to murder in the coldest kind of blood nine decent people. He read his crime into existence based on hate websites and slanted white supremacist narratives. He does not represent a rare, unheard-of, brand of disgusting hate--he is just an example of that hate being executed in a way that we take notice of.

To my mind, people who don't actually carry firearms into black churches with the intent of blowing away people they see as "part of the problem", but make that kind of act seem like "the solution" by highlighting instances of black crime (as if there was no white-identified folks out there doing things)  and denying the reality of racial discrimination as it currently exists, on the basis of  "but so much worse used to happen"--have a share of blame. Maybe not the kind where one is legally penalized.

But I remain pretty pissed about the "Dapper Racists" getting fuzzily profiled of late. They need to be socially penalized by people recognizing what they actually mean, and what they actually inspire. They aren't the grubby WWC folks who get their hands dirty, laws no! But they whisper that race war shit in so many ears and maybe they pretend to be appalled--but you know they don't mind. If they want to pretend that doesn't get taken literally, they can go ahead but not one even alleged progressive, liberal, or Democratic shit-soul should get away with pretending they don't mean their shit literally. (Please let's not ever, on the Democratic side, play this bullshit by pretending that "identity politics" means anything but "civil rights are for all folks", or "political correctness" means anything other than, "respecting the people who actually happen to exist in this world". People who think identity politics is the problem don't understand the shit some people are made to eat for being who they are, and people who use the term "political correctness" usually just want to go out of their way to be incorrect--irrespective of politics, but for the sheer dumbass transgressive joy of making somebody feel less-than.)

And yes, I called Democrats (real or imagined) or progressives or liberals or how ever they want to self-identify "shit-souls" if they don't call out racism and the spreaders of its myths and legends. If you compromise on whether a civil society respects the rights of all people, that is a problem. If you champion people who want a society that treats some people better because of course (racism)--that is a problem.

I think I want the Roof boy saved alive as an example. We need to understand where bad ideas come from, how they get adopted and retained, how they lead to terrible things. He is an example. He certainly is.  A bad one--but we can learn from his stupidity.

There are some things too serious to joke about--and real people's lives are pretty much topping that list. There is no ironic "Sieg Heil", no hilarious references to gas chambers, no amusing lynching allusions. You either deploy those references to break the race lie and shame the ignorant sociopaths who clutch their white identity politics and grievances to their bosoms or you fail to understand what grief these ideas have meant to marginalized people.

Mike Pence Gets to Hold David Duke's Bag

I would never want to be in Mike Pence's position. We recently caught him praising Putin. But what can you do when your running mate says such nice things? We could see his his failure to call David Duke "deplorable" because he just doesn't do name-calling as a funny old side effect of being Donald Trump's VP candidate. Funny as a burning cross. He also gets to defend Trump's birtherism, which might be old news, but which Trump has never disavowed.

There is an end to the sympathy, though. Because Mike Pence brought this very damaging thing upon himself. He knew what the Donald was when he picked him up. After the birtherism and ever so very much else of Trump's personal CV--what did Pence think he was getting into? He can't defend any part of what Trump stands for, because he isn't really anything but Trump's fig leaf. He's strapped in for an ugly, rugged ride and he should have anticipated it.

So we get Mike Pence trying to pretend that not having an opinion about an open racist like that wasn't sort of a validation. When what else is there to say? David Duke was happy as a baby having Christmas. That's all you need to know. Mr. Broad Shoulders has approved this pro-racism message. And Mike Pence, homophobe, can't help but play along, being role-knowing and lane-staying.

Weak as fuck.

In Defense of Robert Byrd and the Concept of Redemption

One of the dumbest things about discussions of race in the current era is trying to work out to people who actually ought to know better that shit changes. History is a study of accumulated shit changing. What used to be true stops being true. The United States of America was once a nation where slaves were owned--then it wasn't. The territories that made up the United States were colonies of other countries, then they weren't. Things change. That is what history is made up of--changes.  This king was supplanted by that. This election brought about that administration. This war was won by, which meant that...

History means change happened, and we look at what changed and why to understand how human societies work because, I like to think, we want societies to really work well. We want to be a part of a really well-functioning civilization and to continue to advance--which means understanding that people can look at what doesn't work really well and can use that information: "This does not work"--to change. The long-time Democratic Senator Robert Byrd realized that racism did not work, and he stopped being in the KKK in the 1950's. This was a long time ago. That was even before the Civil Rights Act of 1964--which he filibustered and you guessed it, he didn't support the VRA at first either. But he eventually got there. Like politicians sometimes do.

The reason I point this out is that stupidity like Hillary Clinton kissed Robert Byrd is supposed to mean that she is also touched by bigotry. You really wouldn't have had to go further than questioning her early support for Barry Goldwater (probably because her father did) to make the case that she has old timey racialist associations. But things change. Hillary Clinton has a lot of positive history with respects to making change happen.

Donald Trump is not that guy. He has never done any positive thing ever with respect to civil rights. There is a reasonable argument as to whether he even sees people as people and not exploitable resources.  Sometimes, one can look at definitional moments in a person's history and understood that their personal arc has changed. This has not happened with Trump, and any apparent "pivot" would have to be cosmetic and need-based for the sake of his political campaign.

I have long wondered why cons use "Robert Byrd was in the KKK" to try and prove anything. His example seems more like a thing that disproves everything. People change, history changes, the Democratic party changed, and racism is stupid.

Donald Trump is a Man of the Terrible People

TRUMP to @meetthepress on if he'd support a Democrat over David Duke: "I guess". pic.twitter.com/Cj5yMuf18I

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 24, 2016

Now, the thing is, Meet the Press labels this clip as "Trump Quickly Rebukes David Duke" Well sure. But he also said "depending on the Democrat."

Depending on the Democrat, the Klan guy might be okay. The reason why this matters?

Klan and other racism-adjacent people are thinking he is totally standing for them. It may not be the case, but he left this speculation wide open.

But here's another thing he's fucking up, message-wise: women should not actually be sexually harassed. See, even though Roger Ailes is a kind of monster of sexist bullshit, and yet Trump supports this asshole.

Who got tens of millions severance to reward him for not just running a partisan shit-show of a news station, but to also feel great about all the ass he caressed, the blouses he looked down, and the actual human beings he objectified and made the working life of, actual shit, creating a corporate culture that was also based in treating women like shit. But let's just luxuriate in how Trump agrees that women shouldn't complain about sexual harassment because they were given opportunities--like, men can get stuff because of their merits, but women need to go down that extra piece.

Is there any terrible shit Trump doesn't endorse? I dunno. I just don't. I think horribleness is like his batsignal, and he's always for it.