Triggering My Hippie-Punching Reflex

 

Yes, the anti-war left is starting to rise! Here we are in Detroit calling for negotiations in Ukraine. We are holding teach-ins, marching, lobbying Congress. Join us. #peaceinUkraine pic.twitter.com/LYfQIf6FcJ

— Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin) October 17, 2022

I am the part of the left that actually thinks you should actively fight aggressors because oppression is bad and human rights violations are always wrong, and I think the people who don't understand that are actually unprincipled cowards who stand for pacifism at any cost because they can't fathom any cause worth fighting and even dying for.  Me, I fight fascists. I support the fight against the rashists. 

Russia is a terrorist state. They oppress Ukraine, and their own people. They are press ganging people in ethnic minority enclaves to fight this war and are basically intentionally using them as cannon fodder. They have announced militia law in the "annexed" territories which I think means press-ganging Ukrainians to fight other Ukrainians. This might go as well as the event where a low-level officer harangued ethnic Russians about their religious affiliation, to a sound and fatal fragging. 

There is no negotiation with people who have left behind all decency, and even mouthpiece Lavrov is telling us that Russia isn't open to negotiating with "the West".  Not if we're all hung up on who started what and committed genocidal activity upon whom and all that. They can send their useful idiots to talk about negotiation against the day they need it, but they are still on the brutal path that merits no quarter.

Bella Ciao

 

Persian version of the 19th century Italian protest folk song, Bella Ciao. #MahsaAmini #IranProtests pic.twitter.com/DZq4MHJbbU

— Habib Khan (@HabibKhanT) September 24, 2022

Bella ciao,

Ukrainian soldiers singing the the Italian anti-fascist resistance anthem 'Bella Ciao'.pic.twitter.com/918S2NQK9o

— The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) September 28, 2022

Bella, ciao, ciao, ciao.

UPDATE: So, I have always associated this song with anti-fascism, but there is some historical doubt whether the Italian antifascisti used it during WW2 (it certainly became a thing afterwards), but I came across this neat thing when checking Wikipedia about the melody:

A possible origin of the melody was identified by researcher Fausto Giovannardi, following the discovery of a Yiddish melody (Koilen song) recorded by a Klezmer accordionist of Ukrainian origin, Mishka Ziganoff, in 1919 in New York. According to the scholar Rod Hamilton of The British Library in London, "Koilen" would be a version of "Dus Zekele Koilen" (The bag of coal), of which there are various versions dating back to the 1920s.^[13][14]

So, in being sung by the Ukrainian soldiers, it was like the song found its' way home. The song Italians know as being a song that was about field workers in Italy, is in Yiddish about finding coal to heat one's home because without it, it means disaster for everyone's health. 

And Russia is threatening Europe about interrupting a part of their winter heating supply in order to try and gain some kind of leverage they have no business asking for over other peoples' freedom and right to choose their government.  It is beautiful to me that this song has been used by movements for human dignity all over the world. Because what it speaks to, in the Italian lyrics, is resistance. It means there are conditions under which no one would want to live, and the fight against the intolerable.

My support is always with those who fight for their dignity, and against the oppressor. Fuck Putin. Fuck the Ayatollah. Fuck Christian Nationalism. Fuck every death-dealing oppressor of the human spirit and denier of human dignity. 

Did You Find a Message of Unity and Anti-Violence Divisive Today?

 

This night, President Biden talked about the values of our Founding Fathers; about how all people are created equal in dignity and in their rights. He decried violence and said that this was oppositional to a functional democracy. He did not smear all Republicans, and in fact went out of his way to say he didn't even think the violence-inclined MAGAs were the majority of their party--

And I perused the response on Twitter and elsewhere and heard the sound of a million or so hurt dogs being very, very hit. NO! They want to believe he just demonized HALF THE WHOLE COUNTRY. And this means WAR!!!!!

I think it might be asking too much of Biden's extreme detractors to actually pay attention to the words he said, because words trip them up. They can't hear Biden's words, simply because of where they ideologically came from. This is how their minds work. Just like they can't see the classified docs Trump took as being problematic, they can't imagine anything a Democrat has to say about where we are going as a country can be relevant. It's like a programming problem. They fail to read what it means because liberalism is just an alien program to their hardware and they can't bootstrap compatibility. 

This is largely the fault of conservative media for firewalling them from outside influences, but mainstream media isn't exactly helping, here, dwelling on optics over content and failing to use historical context to appreciate the message being sent.  Why no--it isn't partisan to appeal to all Americans to live up to what were supposed to be our shared values, and I don't understand why bills that benefit our citizens are supposed to be seen as "partisan" even if it should be clear based on voting records that Democrats are more likely to use their office to do things that actually benefit people. 

But They Keep Admitting It, Though.

 

It took me a minute to settle into words what rubbed me the wrong way about MD Gov. Larry Hogan being upset that President Biden referred to a portion of the GOP--the MAGAs, as "semi-fascist. I guess it comes from addiction consciousness--a drunk will deny they have a problem even when confronted with the number of "empties" in their trash. A problem gambler will deny they are out of control even when they are cataloguing their property for what can be sold to cover their debts. It sounds to me like denial--a state of mind just hardened into coping every day with a problem so big it has to hit bottom to finally confront, despite the well-intentioned interventions of others. 

Larry Hogan is what you might call "one of the good ones"--a Republican with which we still can speak. But he's still off in the idea that his party has a temporary illness, and doesn't want to say aloud the bad thing that happened to his party. 

It's not as bad as NH Gov. Chris Sununu wanting an apology from Biden for saying it.  How about--no? If I tell a friend her dress is too short and the world can see her whole panties when she bends over, I mean it. Facts don't care about someone's feelings. And Governor Sununu's party has got a fascism problem. 

Mayberry RIP

 

I know this was a rerun, but I did not see it in its original airing, so it struck me with a weird kind of uncanniness--the CBS Sunday Morning show did a piece on Mount Airy, NC, which is sort of acknowledged as the model for the fictional town of Mayberry, the home of The Andy Griffith Show.  It originally aired 9 months after 1/6.  I knew at once I wanted to blog about it. 

I live in one of the big cities that one of the Mount Airy people seems to believe get "burned down every day". It does not. No big cities are getting burned down every day by either BLM or antifa. We are very intact, thanks! If we were not, we are not stupid and would move or something. We would extremely fund the police. We'd be electing really harsh prosecutors. Actually, when they find the arsonists fucking up stuff during BLM protests, it's false flag shit from white supremacists. 

Sincere Believers in Their Own Bullshit

 

Just a little bit in advance of Mark Meadows being held in contempt of Congress (unless he realizes that he has little choice but to, shall we say, be less contemptible?) and interesting item comes to light from the trove of documents already handed over the the 1/6 Committee: an email indicating that the National Guard was to be put on standby to protect Trump supporters. From whom?

Just to put a pin in the whom question--this is what Former Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller already testified that Trump told him. They were to protect Trump's demonstrators. 

From the hordes of antifa super-soldiers bearing soup cans and malice, once has to assume. After all, it was goldurn liberals and whatnot who were going to go hog wild according to the Claremont war games, and the police would need to take shocking bloody measures to put them down. Especially the antifa and BLM elites in their upper middle class urban enclaves.

That's what they were counting on. Outlandish stereotypes detached from reality. Their own people were the thugs, but they never thought that was how Trump supporters would be viewed.  That's how sincerely they believed their own bullshit.

UPDATE: And I will not stop laughing that part of the referral for Meadows' contempt charge is due to his having written a book partially covering the subject matter. It's just very choice. Stable genius, even.

Where I Defend Kyle Rittenhouse

 

Let me take a departure for a minute from what you know are my stances to acknowledge a handful of things: the overlap between justice and the law is not a perfect circle. A judgement can be legally accurate while still being ethically or morally disappointing at best and supporting a dangerous or untimely precedent at worst. We don't have to love the outcome of the Rittenhouse decision to come away with the idea that the right to self-defense, even if it is broad and subject to conjecture about state of mind on the part of a person who has taken life, isn't something that should be denied someone just because their background doesn't comport with our ideas of the ideal self-defense scenario. 

I'm going to perform a teeth-gritting exercise about what we can know from this case, and I don't think anyone will be happy with it, not even myself. Kyle Rittenhouse is an under-parented kid who thought he was doing something he needed to that he entirely did not. He was on the side, to the best of his teenage education, of law and order. The side where the cops were. He was not any more racist than the people he was surrounded with (you know, regular white folks). He considered the city of Kenosha his community even though he did not live there, because he had family there and had worked there. And he acquired an AR-15 because guns are for self-defense, and he was in a place he competently understood to be dangerous based on his understanding of what he had read and seen on the news, and wanted to also be dangerous. Because self-defense. The thing he went into danger to do. 

To be exact, even if no son of mine would ever, etc., Kyle Rittenhouse looks like he could be my kid. So I get what his sources of information were and the biases he grew up with. And this isn't a privileged kid in spite of his whiteness. He was only privileged in that our laws were so constructed to be very broad with respects to self-defense and the Castle doctrine has, over the years with the help of the NRA and other pressure groups, made the frontier logic of the Wild West, the duty to never retreat anywhere if you happen to be armed, the law of the land. In a gunfight, it privileges the one who lives and can take the stand to testify to his state of mind, As the survivor of a gunfight, Rittenhouse has emerged from a gantlet to arrive at another kind of challenge. 

His lionization by the actually worst people. Like the Proud Boys, the association with which, while Rittenhouse was out on bail, was something not viewed by the jury, and also, it was irrelevant to his case, having happened afterwards. 

Die Fahne Hoch

 

At the rally last night for GOP VA Gov candidate Glenn Youngkin, they said the ‘Pledge of Allegiance’ to a flag that was carried during the insurrection on Jan 6, as if it was sacred or something. pic.twitter.com/NGEaFFAvdF

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 14, 2021

History might not repeat itself, but it rhymes, isn't that how the saying goes? Anyway, the opening line to the Horst Wessel Lied is "The flag is high and our ranks are closed...". Consider the flag that of the blutfahne. A flag from a failed coup attempt, raised high? Ranks closed around a certain big lie? So Trump offers birthday sentiments to his own Horst Wessel to rally, one shouldn't wonder, his shock troops. (Yes, shock troops: SA. Stormabteilung. Paramilitary street fighters and shit stirrers. They aren't even being fucking subtle with it.)

But I mean, people have pledged their support to Trump in this sort of abjectly personality cult way, before, right? 

And it supposed to be ridiculous. Don't be ridiculous, why would people be doing Nazi stuff in plain sight, right?  It's liberals being paranoid, obviously. Of course the kind of Kulturkampf spoken about by conservatives like Pat Buchanan is just a blind for disdain for jazz music, wild women, effeminates,  wacky tobaccy and pro-religion to appeal to the real working class values, and not a challenge to people of various ethnic and religious and sexual minorities. 

And yet in Texas, a school district thinks maybe being anti-CRT (which is stupid on its face) should mean giving equal time to Nazis if you are teaching the Holocaust. Because teach the controversy, right?  (Except, you don't get far into Nazi literature before you get to their admiration for the US racial science--eugenics, and the exact kinds of lawmaking CRT is exactly the study of.) It's like they want to direct you to "Mein Kampf", but downplay the struggle for Civil Rights. They don't want you to know Letter from a Birmingham Jail.  They want people to see BLM as Communists because that's who they want to blame for unrest, not the lawless lawmen who fail their communities by not upholding the peace. And I don't feel charitable enough to think it's unwitting on the part of the astroturfers who spawned the movement against our school systems.

They already tipped their hand by demonizing antifa. I mean--canary in the coalmine, much? (They wanted to blame antifa for a capitol attack, but cell phones and social media fucked that up.) But as to the curriculum: Children must be carefully taught, after all. The future belongs to them, etc. 

It's the obviousness and the preposterousness and more that makes people fail to say it aloud. But the GOP has decided to lean in on evil. Actual, palpable, destructive evil.  They don't care if people experience passive eugenicide by Covid-19. They think weird things about their purity of the body. They are beset with superstitions (Q--which is exceptionally anti-Semitic and centers blood libel.). 

This trajectory sucks. I'm no pedagogue, but how did so many people fail to know any of these signposts of upcoming extremist fuckshittery as we were sailing right through them to the "between coup attempts" stage of US history? 

I also know the answer to that--they didn't want to know, or didn't want to believe.  But we can talk about it now and fight better and harder, right? Because for so many of us, the outcomes of the Trumpists winning are fatal. Just literally, not figuratively, not hyperbolically, fatal. 

Little Noted, But Long Remembered

 

It strikes me as no small thing that the actions yesterday by supporters of the Republican president resulted in a Confederate banner being carried in the halls of the US capitol, because this nation found itself once again under a test: whether a nation conceived in liberty under the proposition that all men are created equal, could long endure. And that president told his supporters, basically, "You are more equal than them sons of bitches, so let's go fuck shit up." 

So Trump, a little man standing in the shadow of history, who ginned up his supporters with tales of the vast disrespect done to our flag when anti-racist protestors took a humble knee, sent his folks over in broad daylight to the capitol, where they broke glass in the halls were great statemen have walked and they carried not only the Confederate stars and bars banner*, but tried to replace our flag, the US flag, with one bearing the name of a single man: Trump. They did this in great umbrage that the Vice President and members of congress were gathered to do what the Constitution to which they pledged themselves to do required, and no more.

And they called themselves patriots, then, and even took selfies while being egged on by comrades on social media, where insurrectionist language has been used for ages, since even before Trump began his run for office.

Once these people, these barbarians inside the gate, had terrorized our lawmakers, their apologists trotted out a lie that had been pre-planned: "Blame the Comintern Antifa."

Nice try. We know very well who these people are. We don't forget the faces of Traditionalist Workers Party and Q-Anon and Proud Boys folks who have been to Trump rallies and who Trump weakly damned with faint praise after Charlottesville. We won't forget what happened, or who is responsible. 

We have a republic, if we can keep it, but the price of it is eternal vigilance and its defense must be married with a long memory for what has been sacrificed to protect and defend it from its enemies. We can not and must not forget.

*See comments re: "stars and bars" below.

STAY THE F*CK CALM!!

On one hand, Trump doesn't want people to PANIC about COVID-19, like the Churchillian stateman that he calls himself, but on the other hand, liberals are going to ban energy (because with wind, you know, on a breezeless day you won't be able to watch your seven-eight hours of Fox News), take your guns, shutdown the economy and auto production, destroy the suburbs, get rid of cows, and kill you with soup. (And apparently do a "reverse racism" by teaching kids history I think he's saying, right?)

I feel like we are getting very mixed and very silly messages here. Is it possible that Trump....always lies? Wow. Stay tuned, folks.

UPDATE: Brief addendum--Trump has said a shit-ton lately about the destruction of the suburbs and about Democrat-led cities being "on fire". You know what can destroy suburbs? Wildfires. You know what's on fire? The fucking West Coast. If Trump wants to do presidenting, now would be a pretty good time to pull his big-boy pants up and try it, right?

Soup of the Day

Today, Trump most strenuously denied that he had had a series of mini-strokes, and got a doctor to back him up on that, and I am personally not the one to claim otherwise, because for one thing, I can't retrace the scoop that Michael Schmidt choose to put in a book about the president's abrupt trip to Walter Reed from last year, and for another, I choose to grant the occupant of the White House some measure of privacy regarding what might actually just be a minor health kerfuffle that is merely embarrassing.

I mean, like, let's say he got himself caught in his zipper? Or had a perfectly normal bagel-cutting mishap? Is that actually necessarily for everyone's public consumption?

An Ally of the Light

FULL SPEECH: Joe Biden has accepted the Democratic nomination, using his address to tear into Trump for his "unforgivable" coronavirus response.

"Our current president has failed in his most basic duty to this nation. He failed to protect us." https://t.co/h2pzLWxWVW

— Axios (@axios) August 21, 2020

No generation ever knows what history will ask of it. All we can ever know is whether we'll be ready when that moment arrives.

And now history has delivered us to one of the most difficult moments America has ever faced.

Four historic crises. All at the same time. A perfect storm.

The worst pandemic in over 100 years. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

The most compelling call for racial justice since the 60's. And the undeniable realities and accelerating threats of climate change.
So, the question for us is simple: Are we ready?

I believe we are.

We must be.

All elections are important. But we know in our bones this one is more consequential.

America is at an inflection point. A time of real peril, but of extraordinary possibilities.

There is something about a speech delivered to, not a mostly empty room, but in its lack of a massive live audience, anyone of us, directly, that is personal and affecting. This speech was Joe Biden at his best, and revealed why he is here and better by far than Trump ever could be:

History is tragic. The story of humanity is written in blood and tears. Biden has experienced tragedy close at hand and pulled himself through by deriving from that a sense of purpose and empathy for others. Trump might see opportunities in tragedy, but only for himself, and I've yet to see him ever be empathetic. Biden acknowledges the people who have changed and affected his path, and gave thanks to his friend Barack Obama for the chance to be his Vice-president on a day when Trump also blamed Obama for his own path to the White House--because he was looking for someone to blame for his difficulties and failures.

Biden recognizes the ghastly bigotry and the autocratic threat Trump represents, and presents himself as the antidote to a virus every bit as dangerous as the one the Trump also, through ignorance and perhaps bigotry, allowed to kill 170K-plus Americans. And he is. Because he means to be. Bcause his intentions are right, and he will with all fidelity try to do what's right.

And I can't ask for anything more, but someone to just try to do the right thing. And with all our help, fate willing, he'll do good and well. Biden will at least try, and has the right intent. He will be an ally of the light.

We've Seen This Before

The President of the United States is campaigning for reelection with a Nazi symbol. Again.

On the left: an official Trump/Pence “America First” tee.

On the right; the Iron Eagle, the official symbol of the Nazi party.
⁰It’s not an accident. Bigotry is their entire brand. pic.twitter.com/mSOBxwf7Wa

— Bend the Arc: Jewish Action (@jewishaction) July 1, 2020

You know, I really have to hand it to the Trump folks--they genuinely have given up on subtlety, but even as "wow, WTF" as this is, I have definitely seen the same general design before, quite recently, with a different Republican:

So, that was a thing that definitely happened, and we all had to get quietly studied about it. Sure, Trump's eagle is facing right not left. But, look, deep into my baby-blues here: no, Trump and them are playing a game with you all, and in his case, it is what you think it is. The point of the game is baiting us into calling him on it. Because, take this:

Like, why $88, exactly, and not a nice, round figure like $90? We all know that 88 means "heil Hitler" in certain circles, but surely that, like a statement with 14 words exactly, is just a coincidence, right? We're not like those QAnon dopes out here, just practicing numerology and conspiracy theories, yes? The Trump Administration and/or campaign wouldn't just be dropping 1488 references to fuck with us, like, I dunno in documents released by agencies regarding immigration? The campaign wouldn't quite accidentally use a Nazi concentration camp symbol for political prisoners to identify Antifa?

No, not accidentally. I don't think these things happen accidentally, at all.

President Bunkerboy Has a Theory

In Trump's stable genius mind, a 75 year old man would crack his skull on purpose to make the cops look bad:

"He fell harder than was pushed."

And was apparently doing some antifa super soldier stuff to police radios. Because why not?
Also, he tags in OANN: to back up this nonsense, I suppose.

His mind is a series of trapdoors--just when you think Trump can get no lower, there's just more and nastier below.

UPDATE:  Oh. It's disinfo. Got it.

BRB--Attacking and Dethroning God

Apparently, this was a thing on Laura Ingraham's show the other night, which is really weird, because Weather Underground hasn't been a thing since the 1970's and this curious to-do list, culminating in, amusingly enough, "Attack and dethrone God" doesn't necessarily line up with all of the goals of the group--like, I wonder about "The weapon of choice--systemic racism and police racism." Pointing it out would be the actual weapon here since it's part of the structure that has to be changed, but I quibble. 

Look, it's 2020. We can literally turn on a device we carry in our pockets to view evidence of police brutality and racism. Human beings are miserable to one another. And I don't even think the people who uphold that viciousness do it for the sake of upholding capitalism--they do it because they can. Because it fits a hierarchy that needs to exist for them, a pecking order, if you will. A top-dog, bottom bitch order, a cosmology into which one can also fit misogyny and homophobia and transphobia.  They do it because it gives them, for what it's worth, purpose. 

I don't decry systemic racism and police brutality as a leftist--I do it as a moral person. To my mind, all persons are equal in their humanity and the fragility and dignity at once of their lives. Religion can decry racism and support human dignity.  It doesn't always, and has been used to reinforce the hierarchy as well. I just don't happen to believe. But viewing The Left as "attacking and dethroning God" strikes me as being an awful lot about calling liberals "socialists" and "godless commies" and claiming that leftism lacks a moral impetus. It's a pretty long-standing trope. 

It's one I've seen the White House use, lately. Kayleigh McEnany recently described the WH press pool as a room full of people who desperately wanted churches to stay closed, trying to play on the idea of the so-called "liberal media." White House counselor Kellyanne Conway actually dressed-down a cleric for her opinion of Trump's photo-op, by trying to pose as morally superior for being able to temporarily forget what a photo-op is. 

To both of them, a part of me even came close to wanting a deity, to presume upon them: "If you do believe, don't you think your god can hear you lie?" 

I mean, are we really in 2020 going to arm wrestle about the Great Chain of Being and all that? 

*Sigh* Not me, babe. I'm all about the Enlightenment values all day, everyday. I thought we already won this one. But since I'm off-gassing about the right-wing fuckery once again, what about the Antifa hoaxes?  And does Trump and them actually believe that shit or what?

I'm for yes. Paranoid style and all that. After all, poster child of "whatever happened to" once decent journalist Lara Logan is straight-up passing on Antifa bullshit like a MAGA hatted Qanon Facebook aunt no longer invited to the family reunion. And apparently elected officials close to TrumpWorld just trust and believe in random circulars 

stuffed under their windshields, so good for you, future Tony Alamo fan club guy. (And this dude tagged in all of right-wing media like "Yes, please, report on this thing I found like it was real because um hm! Real!") (No I'm back in my parentheticals--"Fascist Republicans must not be allowed to live!" all caps wow! This is serious business worthy of your immediate attention! YES! It reads like a Bronner soap label taken over by Glen Beck's blackboard: scary shadow Soros operative, only very obvious and projecting.)

My blog's too short to box with God. I used to do more atheist posts maybe a decade ago. But I could goof on dumbasses who think the Antifa hordes of "The Left" including Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi and the Squad and lots of other, mostly female and POC folks, are attacking God and man all day. And I remain, as ever, antifascist. 

So, In Other Words, a Trump Rally?

Tourists say they thought the “Straight Pride Parade” in Boston was a Trump rally #WCVB pic.twitter.com/n3YdXjK9sG

— John Atwater (@AtwaterWCVB) August 31, 2019

It's no real big shock to see a big-ass Trump float urging people to vote for Cheeto Christ and "Build the Wall", because GASP! this freak show was really not about being straight, because people who are okay with their straight selves don't really need to take anything away from people who are currently, this minute, here in the US, still being told they can be discriminated against because somebody's God doesn't like them. That's not a pride parade, assholes, that's an end zone dance over people's lives, and yes, we did get to see some of that choreography during this hatenanny.

But, by and large, this was a not-so-friendly, mostly white supremacist thing, as the organizer of a similar (also sparsely attended) event in Modesto basically gave away in Freudian fashion, accidently calling it a "totally peaceful racist group." And so it was with the Boston event, thus, the appearance of chuds dressed as "Honkler" :

Speaking of McCarthyism

Just to follow on from the preceding post, where I noted that Sen. McConnell is a bit off with respects to what McCarthyism is, I regret to inform that Sen. Ted Cruz probably knows exactly what it is, because he's basically practicing it with his proposition that Antifa be treated as a domestic terrorist organization. And for what it's worth, President Trump also seems to be onboard with the notion (even if people who understand these things somewhat better than Trump find it ridiculous at best, chilling at worst). 

Demonization of anti-fascists (remember, folks, the "fa" in Antifa stands for "fascism" and fascism is bad!) is happening at a very awkward time--it has been reported that white supremacist violence is on the rise, but Antifa, as a response to white supremacy, which takes several forms including nonviolent action, is the movement being singled out. What grips me about this is that there are numerous loose groups that protest fascism and racism (not a single, centralized organization) but there is a good probability that language that simply calls this activity "left wing activists" or "affiliated with Antifa" will be used to target any "fellow traveler". (One might recall that HUAC looked into civil rights groups, but kept their paws off the Klan.)

I don't like the implications of it--and with McConnell crying about McCarthyism, I guess I'm just saying it seems to me to be a case of one side accusing the other of the very thing they'd like to do.  And I guess I could just be misreading red meat for a red scare. Except there's also this denunciation of socialism proposed by Sen. Steve Daines.  For some reason, he associates socialism with lack of freedom as opposed to being an alternative to unregulated free market capitalism, but again, this is a denunciation specifically of "the left". 

The Curb Problem

I've seen the video of PA State Rep. Brian Sims confronting anti-abortion protesters outside of a Philadelphia Planned Parenthood, and I am honestly a little conflicted. I'm extremely on his side regarding the good work that PP does for community health, especially for reproductive health, that sometimes social shibboleth. I also view anti-abortion protesters as basically busybodies who want to tell other people what they can do with themselves, without ever having to weigh and consider the life stories of the people who have bodies with histories, with health issues, with any human, entirely personal matter that is not up for some curbside "counseling". 

I get it. What they do is intrusive and constitutes personal harassment of people living their own lives according to their constitutional rights.  If they gave such a shit, camp out at a legislative office or work harder on educating people about not getting pregnant in the first place if you want to stop abortion, but getting in the face of regular folks with their own problems has always been bullying (and sometimes the harassment of clinic personnel goes even further--so there's definitely that). Sims, a lawyer and LGBT rights activist who has also worked as a PP escort, has all the experience he needs of these judgmental, "doing more harm than good" people, praying at (not for, oh, make no mistake) patients as if to try to shame them out of claiming their bodies' needs.

I think of this really excellent video of a man who was being curb-shamed by these so-called "counselor" activists, when it was not at all the right time for them to insert themselves (and yes, I know it never really is).  They didn't understand the trauma a young family that wanted children could be going through, and were callous and defensive. These protestors are full of self-importance and relative ignorance about why people are even visiting a clinic, and I don't disagree with the idea that they are the ones who should find something better to do. Adopt a kid, if you think unwanted babies need love. Fund people with at-risk pregnancies and support universal health care. Support well-family programs for nutrition and day-care. But just don't holler in people's faces. 

But I also feel like there's a rule about what public servants should be doing vs civilians. Is a persona with a public platform as an elected official in the right place using his social media to shame a protester? Or to use that platform to crowd source doxing? I'm not as cool with that, and not just because it gives license to right-wing pols to dox leftist protesters. It's just, you have access to better tools--use those! Bring that energy--without personally getting up in the activists' spaces because that deal is unequal. 

I also think he got unnecessarily personal in addressing the old white lady as an old white lady. I know, I'm starting to radiate some serious "Talk to your manager" energy myself, but while I don't see "white" as a slur, please don't get all up in someone's case about whether they are old. Yes, some of the protesters are post-menopausal and don't need to consider their own likelihood of coming down with a case of baby on board. But also, some people just have old faces and can get caught out in their fifties. 

Trump's Revisionism Isn't Pretty

ICYMI: Trump says 'many generals' think Robert E. Lee is 'their favorite general' pic.twitter.com/OD3GVPJ1Fs

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) April 28, 2019

In the Twitter clip from Reuters, above, President Trump is explaining his "fine people on both sides" bullshit regarding what happened in Charlottesville by not just performing revisionism on what he had said, but also on what the Charlottesville demo was about, who was there, and, weirdly, also what Confederate General Robert E. Lee was about. It's like revisionism Inception, where you can see multiple layers of fucked-up thinking about what he was trying to say, who he's trying to appease, and the hazy southern strategy Confederacy whitewash all going on, like a dream within a nightmare within a delusion.

I'm going to have to treat Trump's statement that "many generals" think Lee is their favorite is a fib on a par with Sarah Huckabee Sanders' claims regarding the "many" FBI personnel who told her they were grateful and whatnot about the Comey firing--it isn't based on anything. It's a weird embellishment on the idea that the March to Unite the Right was primarily about boosting history appreciation by being all misty-eyed about Lee statues coming down--but the fact that the posters and the speakers and all were noted white supremacists should serve to remind us that, well, the Confederacy and the lost cause Lee served was also all about white supremacy, and shit, that was not great! and also, fuck everyone who turned up, (except for the antifascists who let them know they were opposed) including the anti-Semites who went on about Jews, because how was that even about Civil War history, amirite?

What did Trump do back then? Pretend the real baddies were Antifa, who he doesn't mind condemning because, I guess, violence against fascists really tears him up inside? And Trump apologists like Dana Rohrabacher and the Dilbert guy just ran with that. But a girl died because a fucking fascist ran his car into a crowd (also injuring many others), and neo Confederates physically beat an African-American man nearly to death. Those people were not there for any good purpose in the first place, and let's get one thing right even if this was only and primarily about Confederate statues--General Lee wasn't such a winner.

This guy, right here, was a jumped-up Southern aristocrat who didn't just have slaves but tortured them, violated his oath as a US military officer to support treason in the defense of slavery, and is best memorialized by the seizing of his land to create a consecrated space for actual US heroes. Statues raised to memorialize the losers of the bloody secession attempt have always seemed like a nostalgia for the continuation of good ole dirty people-owning and feeling good about it. Brought to you by the same people who want voter suppression and still prefer law enforcement that overwhelmingly punishes poc's.

Biden struck a nerve by calling out Trump about this, and Trump reacted after his native (ist) reflexes.  Good on Biden. Because Trump doesn't have a good answer for his behavior here and never ever will.

Something's Happening Here

Domestic terrorism in the US has been on the rise. There has been a rise in hate crimes in the US, as well.  The current head of the FBI, Christopher Wray, warns that white supremacist extremism is "a persistent, pervasive threat." 

But how does the Department of Homeland Security respond to this "persistent, pervasive threat" to the security of the US? Why, naturally, they virtually disband the unit of intelligence analysts looking into domestic terrorism. 

Wait? They stop looking into the actual terrorism that is happening right here in the Homeland? Doesn't that sort of sound like exactly the sort of thing Homeland Security should be doing? 

They are too busy not uniting little children with their families when they have been separated at our border, and too busy finding inadequate facilities to hold these people, and too busy tracking the menstrual cycles of teen girls. These things shouldn't seem as important and meaningful to DHS as addressing actual violence and terror head on, and, well, violence and terror are still very near to hand. 

(And I hear you, people who buy Trump's line about MS-13 and tattoos and "not the best people". Did you know gangs in Central America recruit at knife-tip and gunpoint? That even people who are affiliated with crime might have reasons to try and change their life? That some people want "not a life of crime" to be an actual valid choice for themselves?)

A White Power symbol was found near the burned-out Highlander Center.  Three black churches burn in Louisiana. And political figures receive serious threats--former Senator Jeff Flake describes multiple threats to himself and his family. Congressman Eric Swalwell shared a phone message of a death threat.  A man was arrested for threatening to assassinate Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. 

We are seeing a remarkably hate-charged atmosphere, but there is a theme, and it's one I have been seeing for some time--the rhetoric of Trump, and his racist, anti-journalist, anti-democracy views, that have made his red hat a symbol for far-right extremists. Even if not intended as a symbol for terror or hate, it has become a marker for disruption.  There is a reason why Trump superfans at Fox News demonize a congresswoman in a hijab, or regularly spew the exact line of hate regarding "replacement" that the Christchurch shooter used to justify his massacre, that the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter used, that the Charlottesville tiki-torch folks chanted. 

Maybe there is a reason, also, that the NRA supports far-right groups regarding how to manage their message after a massacre. I don't think it's too far-fetched to say that they, too, have become pro-terrorism. 

There is a sickness here born of dehumanization and othering. But it is supported by people who have become perhaps so cynical and nihilistic that they dismiss these terrible signs as just another form of negative political rhetoric, and can't see it for what it is--fascism, here and now.  The people who support this crap are, naturally, as Hannah Arendt would say, banal--grifters, attention-seekers, losers. But their dedicated and destructive mediocrity, inadequately challenged, is simply appallingly dangerous to any kind of democratic and free way of life. 

I am deeply distrustful of what is happening here. 

But if you were to ask certain DHS folks who the real villains were, perhaps they would say Antifa. And they might very well be patted on the head for their service to the state.