Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities--

 

I recall in the aftermath of 9/11, one of my concerns was for the potential of people seeking vengeance for the tragedy and wreaking havoc on innocent people who had done nothing at all but were just nearby and brown.  Your basic American bigot just wants a reason to start the fuckery. Just like people had conspiracy theories, blamed Muslims, and fucked around post-OKC (even though that was a white supremacist, Christian ID-associated attack), after 9/11, innocent immigrant citizens got profiled, and sometimes experienced tragic racist violence. 

Laura Loomer is an Islamophobe and 9/11 truther and was a guest of Donald Trump at a 9/11 remembrance ceremony. She posted the above racist stupidity targeting VP Kamala Harris as a person of South Asian descent. That was three days ago. The Trump campaign was unaware of this? To her credit--a thing you won't hear me say often--she got called out for her racism by Marjorie Taylor Greene. 

And think what that says about the Trump campaign association with Loomer (IMHO, as dangerous for them as an association with Nicholas Fuentes). Did they not know she said this about people of South Asian descent? When the Trump campaign needs the support of people like Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, and Usha Vance?  Isn't attacking Harris on the basis of her heritage so obviously wrong the campaign should step back from her? 

I Would Not so Lightly What, Now?

 

Mast: I think when we look at this, as a whole, I would encourage the other side to not so lightly throw around the idea of innocent Palestinian civilians. I don't think we would so lightly throw around the term innocent Nazi civilians pic.twitter.com/OqDpJHZiHV

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 1, 2023

There weren't "Nazi civilians." There were German civilians. There were people whose government and everything else went violently wrong. The participants in the war crimes perpetrated by the Nazis had to pay, but the nation of Germany, the civilian population, were not assumed to be, every one of them, collectively responsible for the great evil that was done in the Holocaust. The movement tried to co-opt every aspect of German life, from hero mothers to Hitlerjugend. But there had to be a limit to the toll exacted on the people for the crimes of their leaders. 

I would not so lightly throw around the idea that every German was a war criminal because of what had taken place as a part of the demented "solutions" of a degenerate fascist movement. So can Rep. Mast tell me this:

What is the culpability of the Palestinian toddler at his sitte's knee or in the lap of his seedo? What is the fault of the baby at his mother's breast or the child in the womb? Is the infant Palestinian born to be a rocket--screaming and heated for an instant, explosive? A sandbag on a trench fortification? A strand of razor wire of separation? From the cradle to a crater? 

Is martyrdom a congenital condition? What does it mean when you have labeled someone a criminal, deserving of violence, from their ethnicity or religion, from their birth status--is that not what the Nazis did? 

Or is a child unto us given every day a blessing with agency to be something, anything at all? Where is the pro-life thinking here? 

Mast would not so lightly talk about human life if he ever thought deeply enough to understand that the lives of each generation of Palestinians can only be more immiserated unless we think of them as people, not treat them all as potential terrorists. This is how they need to see themselves--valued, a part of the process of their liberation and given choice over their future. This idea of evil as a demographic identity is the thinking that recruits and forms people into weapons. 

I know he's fronting for a specific audience. He probably knows he is too. But how cheap is human life that the option to perform such a language of violence is perceived as necessary or even worthwhile? 

PSA: You Are Not a Cat

 

There is a phenomenon that has been well-documented on the internet, the place where people document things happening to cats: when you place a cucumber behind an unsuspecting cat, it will lose its ever-loving little furry shit. Multiple gifs and YouTube videos of this phenomenon exist. Cat + cucumber= YIPES!

For most people (not Mike Johnson or Ken Hamm or assorted creationists) this can be explained by evolution. Cats only have so much bandwidth in their little brains and some snakes are DANGEROUS. They aren't hardwired to leisurely inspect long green things to figure out whether they are snakes or inoffensive vegetables. They are hardwired to get away from the weird thing sort of shaped like a snake that seems to have just slithered up to them. 

That's cats. They don't do a whole lot of thinking. If you've ever pulled one out of blinds, or a Christmas tree, or unhooked their claws from your pants leg, you are aware that despite their occasional grace and agility, they can be weird little clowny guys. They literally bite the hand that feeds them. They try to fit their whole behinds in a Kleenex box. They evolved to be a better mousetrap, not to build one. 

There is a phenomenon that has been documented on the internet, and all of recorded history, of human beings making a categorical error of confusing identities with morality. Individual humans make decisions and take actions that may be morally sound or not. Whole groups of people do not become suspect because of the individual behaviors of other people based on their identities: not their ethnicity, their nationality, their religion, their gender-identification, their sexuality, their political affiliation (for the most part) or what hand they use to eat with. (Is that last thing still a thing?) 

The Flog of War

 

Tom Cotton on Fox News Sunday: "As far as I'm concerned, Israel can bounce the rubble in Gaza. Anything that happens in Gaza is the responsibility of Hamas. Hamas killed women and children in Israel last weekend." pic.twitter.com/j1BiV7yjab

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 15, 2023

Sure. Make the rubble bounce.  As far as Tom Cotton is concerned. But I'm not Tom Cotton (thanks be) and I have a conscience and understand that just because Hamas sucks, doesn't mean responsible people get to be comfortable that innocent humans become collateral damage. This is why someone like Tom Cotton shouldn't really be a senator. One of my absolutes in a very small basket of them is sociopaths shouldn't be in office. If you have no empathy for other people, go be elsewhere. Sell patent drugs to gym rats. Produce reality television. Design hideous clothes for plus size people. You'd still be a horror-show, but you wouldn't this fucking dead-eyed horror-show, talking about how Palestinian kids are bearing responsibility for shit they never did to the extent that bricks should fall around their ears. 

He thinks he's talking about "rubble". He doesn't see that people, real humans, live in and around that. Kids are in, around, and under the rubble. They are starved and thirsty when supplies are denied them. He's a father. He isn't thinking about the rubble bouncing on his own kid. It never would. 

I'm a little sorry for my delinquent posting--but I took a couple days to think about why anyone needed to demand pictures of beheaded babies on Twitter to believe the Hamas massacre against Israelis existed, and why I saw so many pictures of Syrian dead babies I remembered from 10 years ago being called Palestinian dead babies. I'm having a hard, hard time understanding who is satisfied by pictures of dead babies at all. (This sort of thing isn't new at all and is for shock value.) 

The Example of Ilhan Omar

 

Swalwell: Finally. So I thought, we're going to hold someone accountable for anti-semitism. Surely it's the author of this tweet. Kanye, Elon. Trump… Don’t come here looking at us for anti-semitism. Look at your own damn mirror pic.twitter.com/dTYVinwsWZ

— Acyn (@Acyn) February 2, 2023

The one thing I loved about my Democratic party today was how they stood up for Ilhan Omar, who didn't do anything but be visibly a Black African Muslimah who said certain uncomfortable things out loud that a certain political party could with all the pettiness in the world deny access to the one committee where someone with her life experiences would be a complete benefit. These supportive people dropped so many receipts about the GOP it was like the trashcan next to an ATM. They cut up and brought up some real tea. They said who the extremists are. They called them out by name, and AOC brought her own persepective as a woman of color also derided and threatened at times by her "colleagues" across the aisle.

She still got bounced from that committee, but I think that the GOP made it clear it aways was about themselves, not her. They lockstep denied their colleague her place among them because it was politically expedient to be petty and bounce her. Not because of something she egregiously did a minute ago--but because of something she erroneously said years ago and had since atoned for. 

They made an example of her to prove their thin power-- that they could reject someone because of her identity. This tells me so much more about who they are than who she is. 

UPDATE: This is a day in her world. Because of her so-called colleagues,. Because the right is comprised of the religious wrong, who don't care if Ilhan Omar stays a living person or not.  That is what this pettiness leads to. No one deserves that. Ever. But this is the GOP in action. 

Loomer Apparently Lost to Webster--Didn't She? (Updated)

 

Apparently professional racists Peter Brimelow and Nick Fuentes were at the election night party with Laura Loomer in Florida. They were joined by an assortment of other racists and far-right figures. pic.twitter.com/QTbOT9T7b9

— Nick Martin (@nickmartin) August 24, 2022

Dan Webster feels like a Tea Party-era relic. He's a homeschooling guy who has feelings about covenant marriage and was pitched as a replacement for John Boehner as Speaker of the house circa 2015 a couple times, but it came to naught. Anyways, he is well to the right of lots of folks. He's very anti-abortion and pro-keeping brain dead people on feeding tubes. And yet, he's a lot less problematic than Laura Loomer, who once chained herself to the Twitter HQ and doesn't quite understand why being a Jewish white supremacist has to be so hard. 

I'm going to go as out of the way as I possibly can about this and desperately avow I do not understand this district, because these people are awful and either one of them would probably have been a cinch to win the seat. How are people in this district ok with these choices? 

Also, too, Loomer might not think the thing is over and yet she is totally swimming in the support of the kind of people no rational soul should think is normal or good. This makes her a viable candidate for the GOP in the future. 

This party needs to be totally fucked up, if this is what flies with them. This is a candidate steeped in conspiracy theory, attention whoring and racism. And yet she did pretty well, considering. 

UPDATE: Carl Paladino, the Elise-Stefanik-backed "Trump of Buffalo", lost his primary in the NY district 23 primary, and that was also closer than it should have been and Paladino could have won--even though he is basically a thoroughly revolting person based on the trash that falls from his face on a regular basis. And this is the Republican party. Even when the vicious, bigoted people lose, you can see they still had their wells of support, and were not rejected to the extent they would be abandoned had they won their primaries. Oh no.  They are taking what they can get. It's a bad thing. 

UPDATE: Wow, Loomer is having a normal one. Well, for her version of "normal":

Sorry, I Don't Pray That Way

President Biden urges Congress to come together at the annual National Prayer Breakfast: "How do we unite us again?" https://t.co/op1SRzM9L7

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) February 3, 2022

Maybe it's because I'm militantly agnostic, or maybe I'm just a firm believer in the separation of church and state, but the idea of the National Prayer Breakfast never has sat well with me. The idea that the nationa can unite in prayer doesn't seem as important to me as whether we are united in a sense of common citizenship apart from our religious inclinations, which are diverse.

It also strikes me as bizarre and hypocritical that one might want to unite with people who are part of openly anti-LGBT and Islamophobic hate groups. Even though Biden's message of unity is well-taken, I just don't know if there is value in it, and have a hard time seeing the value in saying nice things about Mitch McConnell that stretch the values of words like honesty and honor. I think it's a tradition that needs to go.

Not Shockingly, Trump is Still a Bigot

 

The news that Trump gave an interview where, in a very short space, he managed to cover several extraordinarily anti-Semitic stereotypes shouldn't be surprising. Trump's entire being is basically being the posterchild for cultural insensitivity. His attitude is of disdain is, in part, contempt that American Jews didn't appreciate what he did for Israel. How much more could he do for those people?

I mean, besides not sympathize with the people who chanted "Jews will not replace us" because they are his people. Besides not trying to ban people from entering this country because they are religious minorities here, or demonizing immigrants? Besides not behaving in ways and saying things that are too familiar to people with any memory of history? 

I'm not going to pretend this would negatively affect Trump fans at this point, because culturally, his fans seem to be of more or less the same mind. Like the Qanon-related folks who listened while Mike Flynn suggested that America should be one nation under one God. Or the folks at Prager U--who seem very fond of Nazi commentary.  Or Turning Point USA. 

Recently, America First Congressman Paul Gosar suggested the Al Aqsa Mosque (like, 1300 years old) is an affront to all religions. Which is weird, since Islam is a religion. And also, should I call the Hagia Sophia an affront to all religions for having been Christian and Muslim, but possibly built over a temple to Artemis? 

He might be saying this because he is just stupid beyond belief, but the idea that the Temple Mount is a part of End Times theology is not unimportant. Because the theocrats who would make the best culture war soldiers wouldn't care about the here and now, they would rather perform for the big finale. The final war, the last fandango, the immanentization of the eschaton, and whatnot. 

Look, I'm not trying to be glib; far from it. But there's a throughline from Trump's Archie Bunker kind of suburban prejudice, as Allen Ginsburg related Ezra Pound's antisemitic reverie, to the fascist would-be renaissance. It only requires a dressing-up of the naked truth about the origin and prevalence of the lies and conspiracy theories used so often--the blood libels and warnings about minorities with great supposed power to actual bloodshed, which we have already seen. 

This grubby game of stereotyping and blaming people for political reasons is a horror. This man must never creep near political relevance again. 

Budget Palin Wants To Be Part of the War on Christmas

 

One of the many ways to be a parent in politics is to not expose your children to the white hot spotlight of the gotdamb culture war, but this is apparently not the choice Lauren Boebert has made. She featured her kids in a gun-brandishing Christmas post in support of Thomas Massie, who was being a whole thing there on the internet for a minute. Yeah, very supportive of....displaying weapons of war to celebrate the Prince of Peace, dumbass. Nice job.

But as Dan Crenshaw (also a thirsty boy) has noted, there are definitely some famewhores in the GOP caucus right now. And Boebert was already being a center-stage clown regarding her jihad-squad nonsense regarding Rep. Ilhan Omar, which she has apparently been working out at the open mic nights that are GOP fundraisers for more than a minute. It's tacky, but it becomes her, like flypaper or a glue trap.

Now, far be it for me to say she's playing at using her own kids and the sacred holy day that is Christmas just to promote her branding, but I will note, that she did get a fundraiser in Las Vegas in support of her Islamophobia, so yeah, definitely.  It's exactly like she goes out of her way to to seek out attention, and is rewarded for it. And she will probably try to benefit herself from getting shut out of her committee assignments, too, because why wouldn't she try?

Because here she is responding to the backlash for her putting guns in the hands of her babies:

Oh noes! A Democrat is attacking her because of Christmas and children and somehow, not because she cynically used her kids to promote guns even while we are a country that has mass shootings, even at schools, even at schools with young kids. Even at schools with young kids really close to Christmas, like the babies of Sandy Hook. 

Ms. 1776 over here thinks her act is cute. But Iola Boylan's evil twin is not cute. It might be half-cute, but it's entirely not what anyone should want in a US Representative. 

9/11: Over the Horizon

 

The final act of the U.S. war in Afghanistan was a drone strike in Kabul that killed 10 people. Our latest investigation shows how a man the military saw as an "imminent threat" and "ISIS facilitator" was actually an aid worker returning to his family: https://t.co/eUX5WSImrD

— Evan Hill (@evanhill) September 10, 2021

There just isn't anything more apt to round out our 20 year misadventure in the War on Terror, than by this--a misguided drone strike that showed how far we had come, that we could be wrong from farther away instead of having to be wrong face to face and street by street. 

The memorial of 9/11 has been fraught for some time with me because of the cant and formulaic expressions of remembrance and the truisms that just strike me as false. "We came together that day." Tell it to visibly brown Muslim or Central Asian people who experienced discrimination, and find a kernel of what people came together to be. We needed to be unified to move forward, but we didn't need to do all we moved forward to do. 

The 9/11 fallen, those who died that day, and also their survivors, and the ones who have died of assorted toxins breathed in from working near or on the pile since and their survivors--they deserve every respect and support. But they were also used to sell an open-ended global war that was misguided in many ways. These ill-conceived decisions, occurring in part because short-sighted people didn't want to know any better and acted on what felt "right" politically, did more harm than good.  

Am I My Brother's Keeper?

 

Ingraham: Is it really our responsibility to welcome thousands of refugees from Afghanistan? pic.twitter.com/Sopvx4RJ0H

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 17, 2021

Well, Laura Ingraham's Fatherland figure, Donald Trump, certainly didn't think so, but there is a certain idea of reciprocity many civilized people would observe in regards to people who have risked their lives alongside of your people for a purpose--especially when the purpose (whatever kind of nation-building we were lying to ourselves and others about) never did come to fruition and these quite decent and extensively vetted people are in some deep shit.

I don't know what she thinks it would cost us. The dilution of our cultural purity, perhaps, for whatever value that's supposed to have. I have looked at the cultural value of Laura Ingraham, and found it disturbingly lacking. I would go so far as to say that Ingraham is lacking in the Judeo-Christian values she alleges to believe in, when the traditions that would have humanity's first murderer ask "Am I my brother's keeper?" are answered again and again with, "Love one another", "Treat the stranger among you like a citizen", "Love your enemies and bless them that curse you." 

All I know is, these people tangibly have done more to try and fix a deadly situation with their whole asses on the line, that Ingraham has done within her safe and well-paid sinecure--in fact, she's advocated for things that would worsen a slow-rolling pandemic negligent genocide. 

So what I'm saying is, for what it's worth, I would be less concerned about refugees from Afghanistan living in my neighborhood than a bigot who probably would consider my mixed urban neighborhood a slum in comparison to her experience. I know I place my faith in humankind as a humanist. I think her flavor of bigotry makes things worse, denies the common thread among people, hardens our hearts, makes it more difficult to connect and communicate. 

Of course you are your brother's keeper. And you are blessed to have him. Just as we're all cursed with one another on this heating rock, this triumph of the bacterial, this monument to entropy. You don't have to like doing someone else a fucking solid. But you'd want one yourself if things were on the other foot, right? So you do. You mask up, or greet a stranger with kindness, or just try for a whole minute not to be a hatemonger, which Ingraham has made her stock in trade. 

Is there a reason I should be this sister's keeper? All I have is my words, but she'd deny them. She could dine at my table, but never feel nourished. I could offer her water, but it would be salty to her. But it's only human to offer.  I can't be her keeper. I can only say she is wrong. And maybe some day she'd fix herself were she so inclined. 

But I doubt it. 

Tilting at Windmills all Day

It would strain the credulity of any person living a mere five or six years ago to imagine the kind of extraordinarily and bizarrely stupid day we have had the exceptional weird fortune to witness, and it would blast right past every firewall of the belief system of those people to imagine that, of all the unfathomable sheer stupidity witnessed today, so much of it would be just another fucking weekday under the ruling auspices of Mad King Donald that we'd just shrug it off.  It wouldn't be a DEFCON 1 emergency. Helicopters wouldn't be circling overhead at the White House. It's just....

Tuesday.

It's just a fucking Tuesday around here, anymore. Not even Thursday, people. Not even newsdump Friday.

It's just one of those days when the orange-tinted dingus is in rare form and accuses two congresswomen of being profoundly anti-Semitic, mocking one of them for tearing up because she will not be visiting with her grandmother due to a profound personal principle regarding the dignity of her kin. It's one of those days when he then turns around and accuses US Jews of being "disloyal" if they vote for Democrats.

But gosh, he sure said a lot of things today (recorded in this thread by Aaron Rupar, who at this stage, has seen an awful lot), such as reiterating that he really could have ten million Afghanis killed, if he so minded ( he still is not so minded) and offered a repeated belief he has that Afghanistan is why the Soviet Union is now Russia, and that Russia should be in the G-8, and it's only a G-7 and not a G-8 because Putin "outsmarted Obama" which I guess is a weird way to phrase "annexed Crimea" but fuck it, he was rollin'. He also offered an opinion about Kashmir (it's complicated).

Uh, and he's not going to do the background checks thing because the NRA owns his ass (still!) and also the economy is just fine, so people should stop saying it isn't, but in the meantime, yes he would very much like a payroll tax cut, maybe lowered interest rates, you know--a spiff. Which doesn't sound half nervous at all!

And any of those things would have been "Wow! He does not know what he's talking about and says things anyway--is he ok?" Except this is the new normal, right? And then he does this:

He cancels a meeting with the PM of Denmark because she is not going to let him buy Greenland. And if he's not going there to buy Greenland, what is he even going there for? To look at windmills? Because he's Donald Fucking Trump, and he hates windmills. Everyone knows that!

Andy Kaufman never had such dedication to a cringe bit. If this is a joke, damn. 

But if this is not a joke....

Also, damn. 

Malice Towards All?

Everybody, even Trump's biggest fans, knows he surely does have an enemies' list. It likely includes both Democrats and Republicans whose lack of faith he found disturbing.  I've noted that Sarah Huckabee Sanders Tweeted out a supposedly humorous media-based one. But then there's the thirteen, or was it seventeen, or maybe nineteen, Angry Democrats that worked with Robert Mueller--those people, right? But what about the Muslim people he said he would ban from the US, and then did? And the migrants from South and Central America? And his political opponents, whoever they happen to be, who are subject to bratty name-calling and venomous treatment? He fights with even the dead, like the late Senator John McCain and First Lady Barbara Bush. 

Trump is the president of malice towards all. If you can remember back to the 2016 campaign, Trump offered to pay the legal bill for anyone who popped a protester.  

He was proud of a congressional candidate who assaulted a reporter. He encouraged a little bit of police brutality. 

One of the astonishing things he said recently was that US troops at the border couldn't get rough, almost as if he very much would like "someone" to. Like the "Second Amendment people" he wished would do something about his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton?

At roundtable in Texas, President Trump laments that US troops at the border can't get "a little rough," because "everybody would go crazy ... can’t act like they would normally act -- or like, let’s say, another military from another country would act." pic.twitter.com/q1TPW24Csa

— NBC News (@NBCNews) April 10, 2019

Or consider another recent story, that Trump told CBP Commissioner McAleenen that he would pardon him for illegally shutting down the border to block even asylum seekers.

It's very much like Trump doesn't care to let a little thing like "the rule of law" to get in the way of people doing in his long list of opposition targets because...his sheer egotistic grandiosity, or something like that.

It seems, and has seemed, quite a lot like incitement to stochastic terrorism to me, and it also seems like such regarding Trump's wildly inappropriate Tweet mischaracterizing something Rep. Ilhan Omar said to equate her with terrorism, just because she is a Muslim WOC sticking up for Muslim people's rights.  She proposed the daring idea that not all Muslim people were to blame for the 9/11 attacks, and yet all felt their rights jeopardized. Which is actually true. Which is actually a shame, and something we should take seriously. And yet, she was characterized as not being patriotic enough because she was alleged not to have made the proper obsequies to the fallen?

Given Trump's beyond wretched and self-aggrandizing responses to the tragedy of that day, he's hardly one to address what an appropriate response even should be. He is only being malicious here,  towards a woman of color who as a Congresswoman, has some ability to hold his administration and it's racism and religious bigotry to account.

She is by no means the person in the wrong here. It is Trump, following his malicious and un-presidential course, who is in the wrong. He has operated always from malice.  He is very un-Lincoln-like in this regard.

Actually, I would say he is a racist douchenozzle. I stand with Ilhan Omar. She deserves none of this negative attention for sticking up for those who are denied rights, altogether wrongly. She is the one without malice, here.

Trump knows nothing but malice, and I could pity him for the narrowness and uncharitability  this has given to his worldview.

The Disconnect

I read my own blog and saw a disconnect--where I recognized that a foreign shooter (Australian) who was inspired by President Trump after a fashion might exist, but somehow didn't take seriously the idea that Trump was capable of utilizing his stochastic terrorism chops to foment a civil war right here in the off-chance he was thwarted in his political goals. This is my blind spot--the disconnect. 

If Trump does influence mosque shooters in New Zealand or Canada, how can I deny the idea that radicalized people could act as a kind of unit (sporadically, if not in any organized sense) here and wherever in this country given the right triggering historical event? I have to understand that these people aren't like me--but have somehow always incorporated some idea of violence into their lives, like some racist whites who think a race war is always nearly immanent, even though that is not realistically a thing. He has already inspired terrorism here (the mail bomber, the synagogue shooter).

This follows Trump's rhetorical flow--he downplays the NZ terrorist with one phrase, and then returns to the idea of nonwhite invasion that sparked the act of terror. I was half-assed in understanding the enormity of Trump's fascism,  which enabled me to ignore how it might not only spur violence elsewhere, but effectively maintain a heightened sense of radical need for an Iron-Fisted Daddy figure by stirring shit up here. 

Trump is not remorseful about his rhetoric, because it serves his policies. Fascism is built on lies, sometimes even ironic ones. This is also a fatal disconnect--we laugh ourselves to death and underestimate the intent. Of course it could happen here, wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross. 

We dispose of these things so preemptively that  we fail to watch the dynamics at play. Of course fascism is a thing. The disconnect, the valley of untruth, the gulf of pretending things are better than we know, needs to be cut off. 

My Heart is Breaking For Christchurch

JUST IN: New Zealand police say four people are in custody after shootings occurred at two mosques in the city of Christchurch, and there are a "significant" number of fatalities. Live updates: https://t.co/qfZjJQx3MN pic.twitter.com/NonLkwjf1x

— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) March 15, 2019

I do not know what to do other than stand with Muslims in NZ in your dignity, sit with you in your grief, hold you in my thoughts, and fight against bigotry against you, and hope that future bigotry against you can be averted. I have hardly the words nor the capacity for prayers, but I have all the sympathy for your losses and hopes for the healing of your community.

The criminals who wronged you are part of a philosophy that wrongs us all. I know we must stand together as siblings in this world to get by, and that to do harm to any of my siblings diminishes me by denying me seeing the fulfillment of their lives' promises, the knowledge of their joys and sorrows, the reality of their continued existence--because this world includes us all, and their promise could very well intersect with my own life. I know lights have gone out in your community, and offer what light I have--you are not alone, and the horror of the bigotry that damaged your world is a horror I share. The enormity of this act will remain in our memory along with the memories of these blameless victims. We are one in suffering.

And I mean to track with interest the persons involved, even though I will not pass on the reputed video or manifesto. The forensics of the pathologies that cause such suffering are suitable to be studied, but are recklessly shared. I think there is value in understanding how such monsters ae made, but I do not care to facilitate how they are reproduced.

I wish the victims peace and the survivors health and closure. I know this is inadequate, but you are not alone.

What The Hell are You Doing? 3: CoNsErvAtIsM Edition

Reporter: Has the President ever denounced Steve King?

Sanders: He denounced him to me privately. pic.twitter.com/B5gq1bmX2q

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) March 11, 2019

I know Sarah Huckabee Sanders hates her job the way I hate touching the little wet bits of plate scrapings that end up stuck in the sink strainer when I do dishes. She doesn't address the press very much, and when she does, it seems a little hostile and she's pretty quick to say a lie. The above exchange isn't exactly a lie, though--it's just a deflection. But whew! Denouncing someone privately to a person whose job is to relay your message (and maybe try and make you look not-terrible) is not actually a "denunciation". An actual denunciation would be saying Steve King is a racist and what he says is not acceptable, right out loud where the people can hear. What Trump would have done if he privately let on to his press secretary that he would just rather Steve King not be so icky and embarrassing and whatnot, is a complaint. It's a wholly different, and in this case, less honorable tactic called "having it both ways". Trump would like to keep his racist cake and eat it, too.

The dishonesty of this barely touches the "infanticide" claim, though--which was made by several Republicans at CPAC and has now been repeated more than once by Sanders. (She also played about with the idea that Democrats hate Jews, which is also inflammatory and astounding.)

I do not know if the lies are the part of the job she hates, or if facing the press is the part of the job she hates, but I genuinely believe she could, if she cared to tell the truth, just do so and be fired, or fucking quit and see if someone else will let her lie to people who might not ask her annoying questions, as actual journalists do. Maybe she could teach a course in doublespeak at Liberty University or something. She just seems so unhappy, and I'm close to thinking she really damn well ought to be.

Evangelist Billy Graham has Gone Home

HONORING ‘AMERICA’S PASTOR’: As tributes pour in for the Reverend Billy Graham, who died today at age 99, @SteveOsunsami looks back at his impact and influence in American culture and religion. https://t.co/t8A3yGIcDk pic.twitter.com/dC4zQTsCby

— World News Tonight (@ABCWorldNews) February 22, 2018

I lack the grace to stay quiet about the passing of this influential and devout man. A lot of people would take care to note that Billy Graham, despite filling stadiums with worshippers who thrilled on his preaching, and being called to counsel with presidents about spiritual things, was never really a part of the Moral Majority movement of Jerry Falwell that really seemed to concretize what we mean when we talk about the evangelical movement. But he did sit with bigots and the princes of prosperity and failed to chide them. He did not counsel his brethren to look to any future but the day the Lord would come, even if we have no promise about what that day would be. And his history regarding gay people was a disgrace.

I can't help but see him as an enabler of the unnatural and indecent bedfellows some care to make of religion and politics.

He is survived by his son, Franklin Graham, a virulent Islamophobe and Trump-supporter.  The success of an evangelist like Billy Graham surely is not going to come again.  If I have no hope of a broader heaven, at least I have one of a more diverse, broad-minded world in the here and now.

This TrumpWorld Grab-Bag Goes Boom! In the Night

I've been thinking of President Trump's occasional Twitter jeremiads as being examples of "Boom goes the dynamite"--after an internet meme that is full of the fail.  I have been preaching the gospel of "This is not the Tweet Strategy you are looking for" to point out that Trump's Twitter-feed has basically been as much a self-own as a source for catapulting his propaganda. The things he posts aren't smart--he reveals his love of cable news by Tweeting in response to tv. He can't pretend he isn't watching tv. His Twitter matches up to his cable news habits better than The Wizard of Oz and The Dark Side of the Moon.

But Trump's Tweets have been used even in court to diss his Muslim ban.  Back in June, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer announced that Trump's Tweets were official statements. It is a struggle to deal with a social media megamouth as a deliverer of facts--but if we take Trump's Twitter feed at face value, we have to buy in that whether Trump himself, or Hope Hicks, or Dan Scavino , is at the Twitter machine, the word from Trump is his word. Other posted, but Trump-approved. So who knows why he Retweeted anti-Islamic snuffporn? It's still his official look--even if professional State Department hands might feel alarmed at his rashness.

So why not take a long hard look at the post Trump made Saturday that discussed Trump firing General Flynn because he lied to the VP and the FBI. Hm. Flynn resigned--whether he was pushed out is questionable.  There's some evidence Trump still wanted to remain in contact with Flynn, even if, as Trump admits knowing, he lied to Pence and the FBI. This kind of seems to be suggesting that Trump knew Flynn was lying to the FBI and never sought to correct the record with them, but fired Flynn (or accepted his resignation) and left it at that. And then asked FBI Director Comey to go easy on the guy who totally was lying and pissing Trump off?  And fired Comey for, as he told the Russians, not dropping the Russia investigation? Sigh.

I wouldn't want to be Trump lawyer John Dowd, who the administration is saying Tweeted this disagreeably self-owning Trump stupidity. I guess Meredith MacIver or John Barron weren't available for blame duties? This Tweet seems very likely to come from Trump Himself, and really does seem like he's admitting to obstruction of justice.

And not for nothing, an email from KT McFarland sort of makes the Russian thing more interesting, again--

The transition official, KT McFarland, told the unnamed colleague in the email obtained by the New York Times that the sanctions were aimed at delegitimizing Trump's election victory.

“If there is a tit-for-tat escalation Trump will have difficulty improving relations with Russia, which has just thrown U.S.A. election to him,” she wrote.  

McFarland previously served as deputy national security adviser before she was asked to resign by H.R. McMaster, who became national security adviser after Flynn's abrupt departure. 

It is unclear whether McFarland actually believed that Russia had "thrown" the election to Trump, or whether she was being sarcastic. A White House lawyer told the Times that she was mocking Democrats' accusation — bolstered at that point by a CIA assessment — that Russia had interfered in the election to help Trump win. 

But as for the rest of what I screen-shotted?   Mere Clinton conspiracy whaargarble. His acid washed deleted emails stuff is getting old and played. It doesn't really save his fat from the fryer--it is only a distraction, and an inapt one.

This TrumpWorld Grab-Bag is In Like Flynn

I refrained from jumping the gun this week on doing a "maybe Mike Flynn is cooperating with Special Counsel Mueller" post because that kind of thing is starting to aggravate, you know? Maybe the moon is a heretofore unknown species of green cheese that calcifies into a rocklike mass, huh? Maybe you've never seen Mother Theresa, allegedly deceased, and Lady Gaga in the same place for a reason, people.  I don't want TrumpWorld Grab-bags to be about maybes, my babies. I want pleas, deals and indictments and promises of significant revelatory whatnot. 

This is also why I refrained a bit from posting "Trump so mental" stuff in the past 36 hours, when Trump was basically being kind of extra, enough so that "Is Trump losing control?" was a real concern. Trump, in a very short period of time, spread anti-Muslim propaganda from a small RW-UK party that basically amounted to a Fake News snuff film, propagated a somewhat defunct conspiracy theory that the host of an MSNBC morning show and former congressman, Joe Scarborough, was a potential murder suspect, and had leaks come out that he still believed in conspiracy bullshit--that he might have doubted that the Access Hollywood tape was really his voice, that he was still a Birther, etc. The idea of a "duty to warn" re: Trump isn't new, and I have tried to refrain from taking fully seriously the idea that Trump's present behavior solely stems from some organic mental breakdown--he never was stable or well-behaved. I had a series of posts in 2016 titled :"The Trump Problem" where I detailed his basic unfitness for the job against a backdrop where the GOP base did not even have a metric for unfitness. 

But it was not out of order to also suppose that the manic nature of Trump's behavior had to do with the knowledge that he had some bad news on his horizon. It is also the nature of a narcissist to deflect from bad news, but there are only so many ways to deflect from the news that the guy who Trump bruited as a VP choice at one time and seriously did have as a foreign policy and national security advisor during his campaign and NSA for, like, a month, admitted to contacts with the Russian Ambassador, with the approval of a senior Trump transition personage (believed to be Jared Kushner), to discuss something to do with Israeli settlements. And I don't know--on a different date? He was on the horn with them about sanctions and possibly "Merry Christmas". 

Flynn is maybe going to roll on all kinds of Trump transition folks. There is no reason to believe that Mike Pence (who, if he was not in the loop regarding Flynn's December phone calls in 2016 got told by Sally Yates that Flynn was a no-good) and Donald Trump had no idea that Flynn had foreign contacts with Russia and Turkey, and they probably knew he had lied about them,. And yet Pence publically said he knew of no one with Russian ties, and Trump called upon former FBI Director Comey to back off of Flynn. 

It's one small guilty plea for Flynn about making false statements, but it's one giant leap in context about how the Trump circle's relationship with Russia is not at all kosher. These people have consistently lied about their relationships to Russia. As if there was a there "there" they preferred no one notice. 

The Finsbury Park Mosque is A Great Example

First of all, my sincere sympathies to those affected by this heinous attack--the deed of Darren Osbourne was appalling and hateful, and a bad reflection on what we hope a well-blended diverse multicultural society should be. What stirs me, is that if there were no great-hearted people among the congregation into which Mr. Osbourne plowed his rental van, Mr. Osbourne himself might have been torn to pieces by an angry crowd. But he was not, because by and large, the mosque-goers were sensible and law-abiding folks.  They sought out the civil authorities to make sure he was remanded to the law--instead of taking the law into their own hands.

They did the right thing--but then again, this was the nature of this congregation.  These have been the "good guys". These have been the folks we're talking about as the moderate guys who speak out against extremism.

Which is not to say that this horrendous and unnerving act of bias and discrimination would be okay if it happened to anyone else. But it only goes to show that so-called "discrimination" is often blind and undiscriminating stupid violence, and we would all get along better if we...just did. Get along. Better.