One Rough Hour, One Rough Beast

 

Trump says his idea for stopping crime is to allow for “one really violent day”: “One rough hour, and I mean real rough...” pic.twitter.com/6XeVXL6R8b

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 29, 2024

When someone shows you who they are the first time--believe them. This is Trump, ostensibly talking about crime. But what I think he means here is--what he calls "a crime". And that could be any damn thing. Making his hair look bad on television.  Saying he didn't win in 2020, or that Russia helped him in 2016. Crimes are crimes in the run-up to a dictatorship, and then things the dictator doesn't like are crimes. 

It's a "crime" that people believe him capable of crimes. It's a "crime" that his rallies aren't attended to his liking. They have a fix for that, in North Korea. 

I remember thinking that the Telegraph and other right-wing comms in advance of 1/6 reminded me of "The Turner Diaries"--specifically, the "Day of the Rope" part. Multiple posts from Trump-affiliated right-wingers were looking to do something to "antifa". And I don't think they were at all confused that "antifa" means "anti-fascist". This is why there was only Trump fans there.

And We Never Mention 1/6 Again?

 

Donald Trump was shot at. I guess. Luckily, he only got a bloody ear out of it. One Trump fan died protecting his children. It's a terrible thing. A 20-year-old registered Republican with an AR-15 climbed up to a shed roof, was not stopped by local law enforcement, and fired in the direction of the stage.

That's very certainly a terrible thing. We have a problem with gun violence in this country. Senseless deaths and horrific injuries occur all the time. 

The knee-jerk response of many Trump Republicans was to immediately blame "The Left", President Biden, DEI, CRT, the Jews and Ukraine, because all the money intended for the Secret Service apparently went to missiles and now they have to hire dumb girls, or something. That's right, before they even knew who the shooter was or had any idea why he was shooting (which we still don't know).

Oh, and one more thing: we better not criticize Fearless Leader or bring up January 6th ever again. 

Needless to say, that's not something I'm about to do. Donald Trump getting shot at isn't going to make him a better person and this shooting certainly doesn't cancel out what happened on January 6th. I still believe he has no business being president and the reckless lying about election fraud that led up to the massive violence of that day, the bloodshed, the Confederate flag being led through the Capitol, the violence intended to our political system. is something the Republican party must atone for--

A Civil War Over the Texas Death Moat?

 

My statement on Texas’ constitutional right to self-defense. pic.twitter.com/seNFZdmujP

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) January 24, 2024

The governor of Texas seems to really be pushing this states' rights issue a bit hard in Biden's direction, but it's very curious to me that he's doing so precisely when congressional talks over a possible immigration deal are breaking down because Trump doesn't want them to do Biden any favors.  

“Trump wants them to kill it because he doesn’t want Biden to have a victory,” said the source. “He told them he will fix the border when he is president… He said he only wants the perfect deal.”

Trump’s meddling generated an “emotional” discussion in a closed door meeting between Senate Republicans on Wednesday, as senators vented their frustrations for hours about the largely secret negotiations over emergency aid for Ukraine, Israel and immigration. The conference is splintering into two camps: those who believe Republicans should take the deal, and those who are opposed at any cost.

“The rational Republicans want the deal because they want Ukraine and Israel and an actual border solution,” said the source. “But the others are afraid of Trump, or they’re the chaos caucus who never wants to pass anything.”

“They’re having a little crisis in their conference right now,” the source added.

(I know, I know, anonymous source and all that--but this is exactly what they seem to have been telegraphing they're doing, too.) 

And we're going to see other Republicans stand with Abbott even though he's grandstanding over his death moat, not an actual solution to the immigration problem because, like I've said, it's partisan dick-slappery. Just with increasing levels of potential death and constitutional crisis, because Republicans aren't just unserious people--they are truly terrible unserious people.  And this is Greg freaking Abbott, whose other answer to the immigration situation was shipping migrants from Texas to other states which is also not responsible, a total stunt, potentially dangerous, and not a serous solution to anything. 

For a party that wants to make immigration a signature issue, the Republicans genuinely aren't interesting in doing anything sensible about it, but grandstanding and making things worse. 

They should own every little bit of that. 

And keep in mind that in part, this is also about Trump, who has long associated himself with Civil War ideation. He would rather see this country broken if he isn't to rule it. No person who thinks like that can be said to love this country. I strongly suspect that he doesn't, and neither do his confederates. 

The Plant and the Plantation

 

In a clean-up attempt earlier today that cleaned up exactly nothing, Nikki Haley complained that she was set up by the question she had indicated was an easy one, and that the questioner was clearly "a plant":

"Yes, I know it was about slavery," she added. "I'm from the South, of course, you know it's about slavery."

Along with defending her answer, Haley also pointed blame at the man behind the question, accusing him of working for the opposing major political party.

"(He) was definitely a Democrat plant. That's why I said 'What does it mean to you?' And if you notice, he didn't answer anything," Haley said. "We see these guys when they come in, we know what they're doing."

It's really such weak horseshit, because if she saw him coming and knew what he was doing, she could have answered the question correctly.  It doesn't matter if the person asking the question is a Democrat supporter, a CNN reporter, a debate moderator, a space invader, Joe Biden himself or the Grand Wizard of the KKK: the answer would be the same. The questioner could be anyone at all, and their answer doesn't affect the one Haley needed to give. 

She wasn't jammed up by a sabotage. She did it herself.

But wait, she gets worse:

Wow. Nikki Haley goes full MAGA, says she would pardon Trump if he were convicted of a crime in a court of law.

She says it’s not in “the best interest of our country to have an 80-year-old man sitting in jail.” pic.twitter.com/cpoAWLXMBz

— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) December 29, 2023

She would pardon Trump. But she doesn't clearly think she'd be in that position, because she also won't rule out serving as his VP. This is because she lacks moral clarity. She's spread thin trying to cover all the GOP bases. 

But all I'm saying is: this is the conundrum for the entire party. Every last member. Where do you stand on the truth? Where do you stand on the undermining of our republic? What does law and order mean to you?

The Freedom to do What, Nikki Haley?

 

Asked what caused the Civil War, Nikki Haley refuses to mention slavery: “What do you want me to say about slavery? Next question.” pic.twitter.com/cEMW3Cn9ku

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) December 28, 2023

It shouldn't have been considered a trick question, but we know that for Nikki Haley, it kind of is. Here's the exchange:

Q: What was the cause of the United States Civil War?

 Haley: Well, don’t come with an easy question or anything. I mean, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run. The freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do. What do you think the cause of the Civil War was? 

Q: I’m not running for president. I wanted to hear you view on the cause of the Civil War. 

Haley: I mean, I think it always comes down to the role of government. We need to have capitalism, we need to have economic freedom, we need to make sure that we do all things so that individuals have the liberties, so that they can have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do or be anything they want to be without government getting in the way. 

Q: Thank you. In the year 2023, it's astonishing to me that you'd answer that question without mentioning the word “slavery.”

 Haley: What do you want me to say about slavery?

Q: You've answered my question. Thank you.

 Haley: Next question.

The freedom to do what? The articles of secession of South Carolina and all the other Confederate states make it clear--to hold other people in slavery, which is not freedom for the people held in slavery. The proponents of slavery certainly considered it an issue of economic interest, to their mind perhaps, "economic freedom". But enslaved individuals certainly had no right to "be anything they want to be."

Darling Nikki

 

.@BarackObama set minorities back by singling them out as victims instead of empowering them. In America, hard work & personal responsibility matter. My parents didn’t raise me to think that I would forever be a victim. They raised me to know that I was responsible for my…

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) June 16, 2023

Dearly Beloveds, are we here again? Yes, and while I will boost Michael Harriot for gathering this whole little fool's backstory for all and sundry to read, her scattershot missives against diversity and putting down people who haven't risen as yeastily as she has in her life have become something of a theme. She once very opportunistically delivered a scathingly dumb opinion on the Confederate flag.  She can say the US isn't racist when she faces incoming fire from her own side. 

She knows better, but she just can't do any better. She literally once said that GA Senator Raphael Warnock should be deported. To where? Did she mean "sent back to Africa?" I think she did. 

So let me ask you all very truly: what does Nikki Haley think is the bad thing when she tries to say that a vote for Joe Biden is a vote for his VP. Kamala Devi Harris?  Because in every presidential election, it's been understood that a running mate is someone who can take over the presidency in the event something happens to the president--it isn't new.  Dan Quayle, Joe Biden, Al Gore. People do get to be VP's.

Does she have a problem with Vice-President Harris' foreign policy chops? Her seriousness? Her commitment to public service?

Or is she just saying something about Harris that is ironic as fuck coming from her mouth? About the quality of her identity. And the weirdness of someone of her identity serving in this role. When--

Darling Nikki, Put down the magazine. 

 

I Never Will Forget.

 I see the folks who are having a little problem with seeing a Gay Pride flag at the White House, and I am so sorry, but--

Protesters have breached the Capitol. They’re outside the Senate chamber pic.twitter.com/I021tKliUD

— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) January 6, 2021

The Trump fans brought Confederate flags into the Capitol and tried to run up a Trump flag. The pride flag is about honoring the human rights of some of our citizens and the Trump fans were literally carrying flags of treason. Every Trump flag is about denying a legitimate election in favor of the seditious, lying punk who tried to hoard state secrets for reasons as yet unknown. I will never forget that desecration. The Pride flag is not that. 

Why don't they focus on stuff that's way more hurtful, like the Nazi flags outside of Disneyland? 

Or do we already have the answer to that? 

Bragging on Themselves

 

In NC tonight, Ron Desantis pledges to rename Ft. Liberty back to Ft. Bragg in honor of the incompetent, failed, fired Confederate General who rose up to help lead an insurrection and civil war against the United States. pic.twitter.com/62bVF0TZ8b

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) June 9, 2023

So, I really had to ask myself, "What in the world does the governor of the Free State of Florida have against the name 'Liberty'?" Because the name went from Ft. Bragg, named after a General whose one notable win was against this nation in a conflict best described as treason in defense of slavery, to "Liberty", a cause I think we all should admire.

Ron DeSantis doesn't hate liberty, does he?

(Well, he's questionable on the First Amendment and it just goes to show, you can lead a person to law school, but you can't make them think the law's a good idea. I mean, he tries. And he tries.)

Maybe he does have a problem with liberty, for some people. It really does feel like a certain kind of signifying for a Florida Governor to back naming a US military base for a Confederate general. The base itself, of course, stays the same, and only the name changes--so why does he care?

It's grievance. Pretending something is lost because it's been re-named is as silly as claiming one's nose has literally been got or that one's face has gone away in a game of Peek-a-Boo.  Trump did the same kind of grievance and still does. If we change anything, we won't even have a country. 

Mike Pence is doing it, too.  It feels like they are trying to support the Confederate cause of states defying federal law, or even seceding, a very strange position for presidential candidates to take. And I could be wrong--they might just be catering to the assumed historical imaginations of Confederate flag-carrying racist whites. For some reason. And it doesn't even really feel like a thing that should be an actual issue--it's a wedge issue.  It's actually kind of a push-poll-like wedge issue, where they are trying to capture and create that audience at the same time.

I don't know why they think they are going to be better at doing this than Trump ever was. He's the Mozart of Malice, the Beethoven of bigotry. And he's liable to actually start a second Civil War--and those posers just wish. 

Tennessee Republicans Practice Confederate Values: UPDATED

 

It's one thing for MS Gov. Tate Reeves to declare April Confederate Heritage Month, but it's a whole other thing for the majority Republican State House in Tennessee to expel two young Black lawmakers for, get this, siding with their constituents on a matter of vital local importance, namely, gun control in the wake of another national tragedy, gun violence at one of our schools. 

Whew--see, that's actually showing some Confederate values, right there.

The legislators who were expelled exercised their freedom of speech, and represented the people who brought them to office. Whether you agree with them or not, it's hard to say that what they had done was on the same plane as what some previous office-holders were distinctly not expelled for, such as pedophilia and corruption. A White legislator, Rep. Gloria Johnson, who had stood with them, was not expelled, and gave a transparent answer as to why: it's skin color. 

Above, I selected a picture of Rep. Justin Jones being arrested protesting the bust of KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest being on display in the State House. It looks to me like there are people who can not distinguish the difference between causing good and bad trouble on the moral plane, but this young man gets it. 

A lot of young people get it, which is probably why states like Florida don't want "getting it" being taught in the schools and deride "wokeness" and CRT. I think the Tennessee GOP's actions here were execrable, and they will be hearing from the vox populi on this next election time. 

UPDATE: The GOP-led leg promises to be economic terrorists if their bête noire is reinstated, which seems very fascist indeed.  Among other, obviously derogatory descriptors. Also, too, our VP Kamala Harris came in support of these Democratic heroes. 

The Confederate and the Commonwealth

 

This is gubernatorial hopeful Doug Mastriano, an actual insurrectionist, whose thesis was about a left-wing insurrection (that never happened) and who participated in an attempted right-wing coup. He's wearing a Confederate uniform. That's quite a choice for a person who is already understood to be an anti-Semite who wanted to throw out the votes of black voters in the Commonwealth. 

Sometimes people are exactly who they represent themselves to be. This is that guy. He isn't covering up one damn thing, but is reveling in his White Christian Nationalist identification. 

He really wore a Confederate uniform and wants to represent the Commonwealth where the Gettysburg dead lay hallowed?  Maybe this chuckleheaded culture war signifier needs to wake up and realize that if he wants to represent some "Florida of the North", he might get his wishes more immediately by just making like a New Jersey snowbird and winging his ass to Florida--for good and being a part of the South that he wanted to represent. 

Screw him and his rebel ass. 

Dolchstoß-Legende and Trump's Lost Cause

 

So, about 156 years after General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House, the statue of the general came down in Richmond because sometimes, you just have to take the "L". Even if over 150 years later. It's not that the statue didn't still have some current support, like the folks who supported Confederate monuments back in 2017. It's that the support they have doesn't recognize the reality that treason in support of chattel slavery is actually very bad. Dress it up however they want to--the Civil War was fought and the union won. We acknowledge the citizenship of those born here of whatever their origin. Our Constitution guarantees to all citizens their equal protection under the law. 

(With varying degrees of enforcement, but I am not addressing that today. Although I want the Supreme Court to consider this clause with all their attention regardless of their partisan affiliations and realize the trouble that this country went to to finally find the rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence--to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, a matter for government not to fail to interfere with, but to positively protect.)

This blog has been keeping track of The Former Guy's habit of myth-making, and his attention to the Civil War. He has shamelessly compared himself to Abraham Lincoln, never understanding just quite why The Railsplitter dwarfs him. 

But his recent missive into the world from his Mar-a-Lago exile (where he still declares he never lost the 2020 election--a lost cause if I ever heard one) is uniquely absurd:

The radical left is very responsible for ending the racism of the Confederacy--okay, I guess we can take the credit for trying although I don't think we're fully there, yet. And maybe Lee was great (or at least, competent) for all his wins if you don't count his losses. But saying Lee would've been great if we had him in Afghanistan seems like a bit much. 

So, Uh...(Running tabs)

 

Tucker Carlson says claiming white supremacy is a meaningful threat to the nation is a "racial attack" against republicans pic.twitter.com/bJNw75QnU7

— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) June 29, 2021

He's just basically admitting it (the GOP is for white people), is how I'm reading it. Fair. Something to do with hit dogs, I think.

UPDATE: I mean, like, obviously. Take a look at these guys.

UPDATE: What I'm hearing Kevin McCarthy say, here, is he's pretty mad about what Democrats did historically, but how dare folks bring up what's going on today.

UPDATE: Huh. For some reason, 120 Republicans but exactly zero Democrats voted to keep Confederate statues in the Capitol. 

UPDATE: Sometimes, you gotta wonder where some of these candidates come from. 

UPDATE: CoNsErVaTIvEs LoVE fReE speech, rIgHt? (And how does this nonsense end up in a budget bill?)

UPDATE: And they hate "cancel culture"--heh.

A Tough Day for the Arts

I don't know what is the best part of this Tweet: that Trump thinks that people making fun of him online is a National Security purpose worthy of vetoing a defense bill or the image of us reducing our "troupes" in foreign lands, because when we pull out our dancers and comedians, man....
 

The "National Monuments" he's concerned about are the Confederate ones. As always.  (I like monuments a little more accurate and timely, myself.) 

It's a highly idiosyncratic tantrum from the poor sport. Again.

Trump Works The Poll

Trump lives in a universe where he needs to look good and can't stand any criticism, where he needs to hear adulation and can't take any responsibility.  And it is driving him, allegedly, "malignantly crazy" that his poll numbers are dropping like a rock. Joe Biden's lead over Trump is more solid than Hillary Clinton's was, and this was precisely the scenario Trump feared.

(So much so, in fact, that last year he extorted the president of Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden's son, Hunter, by withholding aid, an act for which Trump was later impeached by the Democratic House of Representatives. Ukrainian prosecutors, in fact, haven't got anything on the former vice-president's son.)

So, it's certainly not out of form for Trump to retain the services of a friendly if possibly misguided polling firm to provide more pleasant-sounding numbers. (His former personal lawyer admitted to rigging polls for his boss so this has precedent.) The president has acquired the notion that polls exist, not to provide metrics for what a campaign needs to improve messaging for (because that would be work and might even require discipline, and yeah no, Trump isn't getting that shit together anytime soon) but to create impressions. So he has fallen under the belief that a bad CNN poll (that nemesis, CNN!) has been devised to suppress support for him. So much so that CNN has been sent a cease and desist letter to take down the offending poll.

CNN, naturally, has declined, with a letter that boils downs to "First Amendment, fuck you."  As they absolutely should.

It's sad that Trump can't think of anything better to do regarding his poll numbers than, well, this, even though, if his campaign staff has any competency whatsoever, they've certainly tried to get him to try and get a handle on his messaging--so he will be resuming his campaign rallies on Juneteenth in Tulsa  (planned stops in Texas, Arizona, and Florida after Oklahoma, so you can tell he's concentrating on those battlegrounds, there) and is also going to have a speech on race written by Stephen Miller.

So that's really...reading the room, I guess. Rather like his carefully-crafted statement just a bit ago about those military bases named for Confederate leaders. However, I don't think he's in the same room as the rest of America, and is all too happy with a polling sample of one--himself.

*I thought the better of the most amusing YouTube video I originally used for an accompanying visual but if you did see that, sorry, not sorry. I only thought it too graceful to really represent Trump's essence, so I went with this somewhat idealized portrait that I believe he purchased with charity money and used at one of his business locations, so, much more representative of his actual self.

Keeping the Confederate in Christmas

You know, I like to think of myself as a current events blogger, and so, I guess I'll start with what brought me to this really weird place, which is that Wake Forest cancelled their Christmas parade because people were going to protest the Confederacy floats. 

You can't have Christmas without those Confederacy floats, you know. If Antifa, Yankees in general,  or the revenuers show up, there goes Christmas. You take out the Daughters of the Confederacy and their world-famous pecan pies and Santa Claus and the Baby Jesus will boycott, and you can't have that. You are basically the Grinch that stole Dixie Christmas. (No shade to Christmas in Dixie, which gives shout outs to Chicago and California, and Motown and is basically blameless here. As far as I know.)

I did not know, because I am Northeast Philadelphia born and bred, that Confederate Christmas was a thing. I had no idea that a rich Christmas lost and found cause thing was going on.  This eerily intrigues me.  A revanchist memory capped with holly and ivy and associated with family and religion and good works might blot out the dark truth at the core of that society--if no one ever pointed out that it came to no good and the fight wasn't noble at all. It was beastly. As a nation, we should be looking back in horror, not with mistletoe and eggnog. What the entire fuck?

Anyway, we are still living with inequality born out of the enshrinement of racism that is still respected by jusqu'au bouters who believe that toppling bronze monuments raised in the 1950s and 1960s that celebrate a war of treason in defense of slavery over 150 years since Appomattox is somehow too soon.  

I have never felt like I had a war against Christmas (this is not a real thing, but people may have been conditioned to believe by umpty-gazillion movies or tv shows where Christmas had to be "saved" for some reason followed by Fox News conditioning) even if I have a war against Bad Christmas Muzak (which IMHO amounts to psyops against retail workers, thanks!) But making Christmas a signifying thing about a bloody Civil War?

I just don't know you guys. That's kind of weird. Maybe more "Peace on earth goodwill to men" and less "brother against brother" is how I think of Christmas? But I guess happy holidays anyway. 

Nikki Haley Would Like to Be Recognized By Her Party

Nikki Haley says the Confederate flag was about "service, and sacrifice, and heritage" until Dylan Roof "hijacked" it pic.twitter.com/pqdhKIezRl

— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) December 6, 2019

Ok. So, the flag represented service and sacrifice for treason in defense of chattel slavery and then it represented a heritage of white supremacy, and thhheeeennn along came Dylann Roof and made it weird? (She did not always think that.) And it wouldn't even be this whole racial thing if the media hadn't reported it like that (all manifestoes aside....)

Gotcha. The funny thing with using signifying language in this way is that other people can recognize you, too. It's the most pandering thing we've heard from her since she claimed Trump was always truthful.

But while pondering whatever it is that Nikki Haley is all about, a moment to just ponder the results of the passage of the House bill to restore and expand the Voting Rights act of 1965. Just to note the vote totals: how the Democrats and Republicans voted.

BREAKING: The U.S. House of Representatives just passed #HR4 to restore the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and end voter suppression. This is a monumental moment. pic.twitter.com/JcRJmySrrH

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) December 6, 2019

I'm just saying.

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.

Cindy Hyde-Smith is Unreconstructed

There is a part of me that wants to understand the politics of the Deep South and how it would create a Confederate-signifying politician along the lines of Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith--why it might not occur to her that strongly advocating, for example, on behalf of Confederate vets and monuments there-of, wasn't necessarily a great look.

There is another part of me that entirely gets it, having lived the last forty-six years. I am not too young to know Reagan launched his candidacy for president against a gentle evangelist of the New South in Neshoba County just this close to Philadephia, Mississippi. And he extolled "state's rights"--which I guess and assume to this day means the rights of Brian Kemp to disenfranchise tens of thousands of Georgians and invalidate some number of votes and turn people aside from easily voting because of voting machines that were not available for a value of available that means installed in an accessible voting location.

If someone was looking to capture the South on behalf of the one-time party of Lincoln, Reagan sorted out the means so to do. And Cindy Hyde-Smith, having come up in a segregated private high school (and sent her kid to one), knew exactly the footsteps to follow in: if Reagan was once a Democrat whose party had left him, she, a former Democrat, understood that the Democratic Party had also left her (as in, we would not still have an unreconstructed Confederate, I guess).

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi goddam

Can't you see it
Can't you feel it
It's all in the air
I can't stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi goddam

This is a show tune
But the show hasn't been written for it, yet

Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day's gonna be my last

Well, Georgia still has me upset, and Florida could make anyone lose their rest, and as for Mississippi?

Goddamn! There are lines for absentee ballots, for a runoff, which is amazing to see.

"Mississippi Voters Wait in Line to Vote Absentee for Senate" by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS via NYT https://t.co/JRH9sSwfn6

— Hellen Gehris (@hellengehr) November 24, 2018

Mississippi, look forward, not back.

Peggy Noonan: "Shonda"

It's a shame, Peggy Noonan asserts, that the National Cathedral doesn't choose to continue celebrating the people who rebelled against the US government in favor of slavery because they were pretty great...gentiles or something. Because when the Civil War was finished, we supposedly fixed racism.

I think she might be missing a few chapters here. Like Jim Crow and segregation and stuff. But I really feel uncomfortable about her slipping "shande" in here. (It just doesn't feel like her word to use--it's a shame people held slaves and were ready to tear a country apart over it. It's a shame--but the way Yiddish uses "shande" is different.)

White Supremacist apologia is just weird. But she just made it weirder. Confederates being killed or willing to be killed didn't make them right. It made them just as wrong, but traitors. We need to abandon the hagiography of the lost cause. They were wrong. They stay wrong. Their privations on the way to being defeated did not sanctify their cause, because the cause of enslavement is always wrong. We can do away with the monuments to their wrongness, and just read in history books that they lost and were wrong.

It would more than suffice.

Which Side are You on? (Trump?)

I could spend time breaking down President Trump's bizarre press nightmare, but I don't really fucking care what he said today. He was saying it all along, but some people just weren't paying attention. Hillary Clinton gave an entire speech about Trump and the so-called "alt-right" almost a year ago, and I thought the case she made was solid and apparent--my bad. It turns out, someone like Donald Trump can be a lifelong racist surrounding himself with other racists, and people will actually pretend they don't notice. That shocked me more than it should have, I will admit.

But then again, I am a funny old thing--I believe Americans should kill fascists. 

Look at the header of my blog--"This blog kills fascists. Eventually. It's a process I'm working on. Be patient with me." That header is a call-back to Woody Guthrie, who just forthrightly put "This machine kills fascists" on his guitar. My blogging isn't up to Woody Guthrie's songwriting, but I aspirationally hope I'm doing my bit. I'm not going to kick fascist ass all at once, but I will attempt it. Like I thought it was my job. 

And what do you know--Guthrie had his dealings and complaints about Old Man Trump (Donald's daddy).  Donald Trump started the hell off in this life Team Racist and fascist-associated. (No really, I'm not linking The Nation and I don't want to say Roy Cohn was such a fascist, but am I pretending Roy Cohn was not a fascist? Go--read Politico. McCarthyism is fascism. It doesn't matter that Cohn was a gay Jew. Demonizing and destroying and doubling-down and publically lying about everything? Shit's fascist. )

This blog is rooted in the mid-20th century ideas that Keynes rocked, that civil rights for all were a positive good, and that we all are supposed to stand against fascists. It's what the good people do. It's what Churchill and FDR did. (Stalin--I don't know him.)

It's what heroes are supposed to do. 

In the United States of America, where I thought I was living, Nazis are stupid and bad at best and are history's worst monsters because of course they are.  I mean, who demonizes and singles out ethnic minorities and gay and trans people and religious minorities  and disabled people and tries to codify into law ways to make the oppression of these people permanent? 

Oh, right. Trump. Because he is what he is. (And let's not actually "go there" and pretend his honesty is refreshing-it's shit. I don't expect people to eat shit and smile. You like this? You like eating shit, and there's something fundamentally wrong with you.) 

We are supposed to see Dictators as bad and even clowns in this society.

Hitler and those who are Hitler-adjacent are supposed to be targets of our scorn, not our admiration. People waving Swastika flags are not okay--ever.  You should expect better. The people who would easily accept standing right by them--are not okay either. And this Confederate thing--kind of fascist, also too, with the added problem of being treason against the US in the defense of bondage-slavery, because read the actual articles of secession of the states in question. Yes, it was always about slavery, not states' rights. Because it was about states' having the right to endorse slavery. Because the South was like, "Screw it" with respects to Northern States' feels about the Fugitive Slave Acts, which made catching free human (black) bodies and delivering them back into a pernicious bondage incumbent upon people who didn't want any part of it. Which was obviously fuckery. Northern states had to comply with making black people slaves, and the South at first simply didn't give a shit if the Federal law was about determining what states were free--but then when GOP President Lincoln happened, they had a total freak-out and got scared he'd take away their bondage humans. 

Wow. Fucking snowflakes. Makes you wonder why the Party of Lincoln is being all about Confederate statues now, doesn't it?