TWGB: Putting us on the Map

 

You know, maybe Trump can't end Russia's war in Ukraine with a phone call, or bring the hostages home from Gaza, or really do anything at all in the Middle East except make things worse, and maybe he won't bring down grocery prices and it's a whole lot to think he'll do much about fuel prices, but maybe he and his magic Sharpie can change the map! 

The Gulf of Mexico was the Gulf of Mexico, before there was a USA. If we have a national security issue regarding Greenland, well, we have had an air base there since 1943--Pituffik, formerly known as Thule. (Does he think it went away because the name changed? He seems to have a problem with accepting that military bases can change their name but still exist. His sense of object permanence is fleeting.) 

TWGB: He Would Like to Not Have Rules, Thanks.

 

So, like, Trump's lawyers really said: pic.twitter.com/qWiQxWxMpN

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) January 9, 2024

 As any thinking person may have predicted, Trump's extreme view of presidential immunity absolutely sanctions death squads, thank you very much. His lawyers just "what if'd" themselves into supporting a sitting president offing a rival, only to be chastised if the Congress can't get with it. But you would be amazed what some people can "get with" once the assassinations start rolling. 

It's a real good thing you did, Mr. Trump, wishing those people into the cornfield, Trump lawyers might add, as Rod Serling showed in his most harsh indictment of totalitarianism. What if a child-brain had absolute power to coerce others with violence? What if every competent person was labeled "the Deep State"? What if every competent journalist was declared an enemy? The "lying press"? 

This is what our Bill of Rights in the Constitution was about--not giving the state absolute power or resting absolute power in the guy who was made executive of the state. We protect the press and witnesses of crimes. We're supposed to have due process for individuals accused of a crime. Even if Trump's investigation (s) were "supposed" to be political at their source, the purpose of our legal system is that the political fuckery is minimized by design. People can hear out the facts, and then be the judge of them.

You wouldn't even need to tamper with witnesses or the jury if you were innocent. If a fair hearing of facts benefitted you, why would you even tamper with witnesses or a jury or the judges or the prosecutors, or want violence for any of them? You wouldn't need your little fan club to swat judges and prosecutors. You wouldn't even have their names in your mouth, because you could be assured the facts set you and them straight. 

One People and One True Church?

 

So, bear with me, because Mike Flynn has spared you from my explaining why Mark Thiessen,* who employs Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason to mean something along the lines of "music critics hate music" and fumbles around his actual Golden Rule refinements to create a general code of ethics (a categorical imperative) to imply that one of the most influential philosophers of the 18th century actually meant objective reality is bullshit so just make shit up as you go along to satisfy your needs--which might describe how Thiessen became a torture apologist, but doesn't really sort out how people experiencing actual privations came to identify the source of their privations and, by means of historical review, call them out. 

But I can switch off from the obvious bad faith train of somehow MSM-published and wildly intellectually bankrupt Thiessen, the Ed Gein of anti-intellectual elites: he dresses up in the skin of intellectualism to mock it. After all, we have people willing to actually burn heresies in the form of books--a bonfire of the vanities, if you will. Why use words at all, if fire will do? Look at the willingness of so-called conservatives to burn books. This is not just because of the backlash at education because of anti-CRT astroturfing, but also because they are concerned with children being exposed to LGBT characters and history. But it has been said that where people would burn books, they would burn people. 

So what does this have to do with Mike Flynn? Mike Flynn, recently suggested that the US should exist under one God. Presumably the Christian God. What does that even mean for non-Christians in MAGAland? Mike Flynn wants Christian soldiers for his version of the future of America. Which is an America in which the 1stAmendment means nothing and military law is always around the corner. 

Matt Schlapp Misses the Point

I'm screen-capping the Twitter post for this one on the off-chance that Schlapp will understand where he went wrong here, but the picture of his post above reads: "Statues of Jesus are next. It won't end. Pray for the USA." This is apparently in response to the recent protests having resulted in the toppling and removal of statues honoring Confederate figures, slaveowners, and other figures that honor persons or events representing racism and colonialism.  It's three short sentences, but it packs in a lot of how conservatives can get the thrust of what's happening quite wrong.

The roots of abolition, both of slavery and of the injustice system, are long, and intricately tied with religion, with people who passionately believed that "whatever you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me." I don't know if Schlapp's education somehow missed that the Great Awakening in the US encouraged abolitionism, and that evangelicals, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Catholics and Quakers were moved to speak against slavery, just as many of their descendants today speak out about social justice.  After all:

a man who preached about loving one's neighbor as oneself, was apprehended for his activism, scourged, and then hung from a wooden beam by the state authorities, is not the image of the transgressor. Jesus of Nazareth was railroaded. Jesus of Nazareth was abused by Rome's cops. Jesus died because Pilate washed his hands of the whole thing when, maybe, he could have stood up to a multitude wanting to do evil. 

But the point is, the mob Schlapp is concerned about isn't the "godless (probably Commies)" he seems to think they are. Sure, there's a weird current of thought amongst the far right, your Birchers and them, that the civil rights movement is dictated from the Kremlin and that Black people don't have the agency to be quite deservedly pissed at the treatment they have experienced. The civil rights movement of the 20th century was anything but godless. But the idea that there's a slippery slope from "Fuck General Lee" to "Fuck Jesus Christ and the ass and her foal he rode in on" is without any reason. For what it's worth, if you think an actual feeling human being needs, for example, to be paid by Soros or whoever, to be stricken with horror at the idea of a human being, lying on the ground and without defense, with the very breath he needs to live denied him by a knee--a knee! of a person wearing the uniform of a civil servant for nine damn minutes, then fuck you and your civilly anesthetized ass. 

But for another thing, if I had it in my heart to pray, and held the philosopher from Galilee in my mind, I'd pray we answer the fucking question: are all men and women created equal here, or what? Wasn't that what our US of A Founding Fathers were trying to say, even if they weren't about to really put their slave-holding money where their mouths were when they wrote the Declaration of Independence?  Do we value the life of a Breonna Taylor, of George Floyd, of Tamir Rice, of Walter Scott, of Sean Bell, of Sandra Bland, of Tony McDade, of Ahmaud Arbery, and so on, more than we do the fictions that let us keep thinking this country was built with clean hands?  And doesn't letting it go on leave us all in the position of Pilate--washing our hands of what we could have done, but had not the will to do? 

I'm not a Christian, but if Schlapp believes that statues of Jesus would topple, who does he think that image is for? Because I know very well who the statues of Confederate generals are for, and I don't care if they fall one little bit. 

Jesus should be safe in this movement. Schlapp's preconceptions are not. And is that not a reason to pray and tremble? (Nah, I think he'll stick with his mouthful of pitch that defiles. He is accustomed to the taste.)

John Cleese Discusses Christianity. An interesting Interview

I enjoyed this conversation, having come across it on YouTube. The idea that humor should approach religious and philosophical figures alike, and that religion and race alike shouldn't be a bar to conversation, are fascinatingly explored. It's an engaging topic, engagingly engaged in.

(Note--I know this is old, I just enjoyed it.)

The Ethics of Being First Among Animals

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
                                       ~George Orwell,  Animal Farm

“I never yet heard of a useless thing that was not ground out of
existence by evolution sooner or later. Did you? And pain gets needless.”
― H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau      

The slaying of the 13 year old lion, Cecil, by a Midwestern American dentist who paid $54K for the privilege of being able to say he killed a lion, and to parade its head and pelt around, has generated a certain amount of outrage. I can't say I'm not appalled by it, also. But the reasons are complicated.

I'm not a vegetarian, although I tried it for a few years because of my belief that most animal husbandry is ecologically unstable, wasteful and cruel. Here's what I realized by this experiment--humans are culturally omnivores for a reason. I came to the conclusion that while some people may do well on a vegetable-based diet, some of us are better-served with animal proteins, and Lord, I know, I'm one. I've since done what I can to be sure that the meat, dairy, and eggs I eat are sustainably sourced to the best of my ability. But I believe that, especially city-raised people like myself, need to get a grip on the idea that the deaths of animals is the price paid for keeping your ass alive. (Lierre Keith's The Vegetarian Myth is a great meditation on this conundrum about being a meat-eater, and concerned about the act of killing and being ecological.)

What Walter Palmer did in taking his fancy trip to Africa to kill a lion just because he could pay enough for the privilege of doing so, turns a lot of the idea of responsible hunting on its head. It wasn't for food--the corpse of Cecil lay rotting. It wasn't for self-defense as can occur with bear and other predator animals. It was for solely privilege. To be able to say he was one of the guys who did kill a lion. It's probably no surprise that more liberal-leaning people are appalled by this, because that is naked conspicuous consumption, right there. But more than that, there is a spiritual notion behind it, beyond economics: this creature's life was given up for a sick trophy that had nothing to do with cunning or skill, but an asshole's desire to say he dominated this half-tame, lured, majestic beast. The life of the pride that Cecil lead itself is jeopardized because of this ignorant and unbalanced move. This "mighty hunter" wouldn't have disgusted me if he shot deer, rabbits, moose--that's meat. But he did this for balls and because he liked the killing bits. (This "skillful" and "responsible" guy wounded the lion and took 40 hours to track and finish him--so that's certainly not an ideal way to earn a trophy is it?)

Bangladesh Must do More to Prevent the Murder of Writers

This interview with Rafida Ahmed, the widow of slain Bangladeshi freethought blogger Avijit Roy, who also suffered injuries in that attack, must be read. Her husband's murder, and the physical assault that cost her a thumb and left several scars, is just a part of a greater pattern of oppression and death because of religious and politically-based ideas. Although Bangladesh was founded with secular ideals, religious extremism has had a free hand in that religious extremist and terrorist influence have grown.

People may be punished for actions, but I am appalled by the idea of people persecuted for their opinions, however outspoken. I feel sorrow for the life cut too short of Avijit Roy, and I wish Rafida Ahmed resolution and peace. What befell her husband and herself was an affront to all thinking, writing, socially concerned people who believe in reason and peace. More should be done to prevent, and persecute, such tragedies.

Update:  via Friendly Atheist,  another murder has taken place. Taslima Nasreen has a more personal reflection of the slain blogger, Ananta Bijoy Das.

Review of Eltahawy's "Headscarves and Hymens"

One of the tropes, I think, that ought to be played-out by now, is the idea that the Islamic world needs a "Reformation".  The paradigm of Islam post al-Wahhab and Qutb is the Reformation. This was the pull toward traditionalism and a new reverence for The Book. Mona Eltahawy's book, Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution points to a kind of Enlightenment--maybe the more apt and realist take on Islam. (I would compare her to Wollstonecraft.)  She discusses the need for a sexual revolution. I think her feminist take on the culture is necessary and timely. Her thesis is direct and her examples are not "exceptional" but only too familiar when looking at the depredation of women in various cultures.

In her book, Eltahawy takes on "purity culture" and the myth of the importance or value of virginity, as well as the cultural forgiveness for crimes against women's autonomy as seen in clemency for rapists who consent to marry the "damaged goods" of their victims (regardless of the ability or willingness of the victims to consent to the same). She discusses the pedophilia implicit in child marriage. She highlights the absurdity of a culture like that of Saudi Arabia, that forbids women the right to drive or go anywhere without a male chaperone, and how this strands women into regular choices between greater and lesser apostatic ways of simply existing.

Taking a Ribbing with "Manly Firmness"

I have a bone to pick SC State Senator Tom Corbin, who got more than a little sexist in his recent engagement with colleague, State Senator Katrina Shealy, a fellow Republican, who he suggested was just years away from barefoot, and whose umbrage was deflected by pointing out that Eve was taken out of the rib of Adam--and was thus a lesser cut of meat.

I'm going to allow that he thought this would be taken with a grain of humor. But a lot of women can't take that humorously because the implication is that women shouldn't be heard because we are somehow not as good and that men are only suffering us to appear wherever we happen to be visible. What we say can be safely ignored, because who are we to insist on any authority? And if men are good enough to let us sometimes vote or hold property or offices, should we not return the favor by listening to them and letting them have their way because of their beneficence?

Tu Quoque, My Ass.

King Abdullah of Jordan responded swiftly and forcefully to the actions of ISIL against one of his subjects and airmen, the hostage Moaz Al-Kasasbeh. He authorized an airstrike against ISIL. (No, FOX News and FOX News fans, he did not participate in the sortie himself, nor was he an actual crewman of the Federation ship Voyager.) It was one of many air missions flown against ISIL--in addition to a US-led coalition.

The US is actually doing something against ISIL. Has been. Like, it's been a problem we are dealing with--although even I use the shorthand of "getting into it" to mean "ground troops" when shooting up folks from air certainly counts for something (Kosovo, for example, was an air war). King Abdullah is our ally. And this is obviously just background for the point I want to get into--so why don't I just?

When I wrote about the offense taken by certain parties about the historical reality of President Obama's comments at the National Prayer Breakfast, I was largely addressing what I perceived as a deficit in understanding that ISIL was not some unique threat doing things we'd never seen before historically, and that it was absurd to think that the religion of Islam was the sole reason for their emergence. And yet, I have read instances online and even from liberals indicating their belief that this constitutes a tu quoque argument against doing anything against ISIL because westerners, Americans, or Christians are "just as bad."

Political Correctness and its Discontents



 

Today, Jonathan Chait was in the tumbrils for a bit over a column critical of the apparent resurgence of "political correctness", which could loosely be defined as dissent against certain speech deemed to be derogatory towards protected classes, generally of gender, gender ID, sexual orientation or affection, race, ethnicity, nationality or religion, or lack thereof.

 

I won't lie. There are times when I do suspect that there is an "itchy trigger finger", if you will, behind certain storms of internet-based outrage. Sometimes I really feel like there is a need for a "Devil's Advocate" on behalf of some otherwise well-intentioned ally who has bumbled over this or that rail and is getting raked over. And yeah, I have certain people whose writing or work I follow and find or have found serious disagreements with, whom I nonetheless wouldn't write off because of those disagreements. I make no secret of my issues with Bill Maher, Naomi Wolf, Andrew Sullivan, or the late Christopher Hitchens, but I still keep up with the former and retain a kind of admiration for the latter on the basis of not only the bits I agree with, but the way I am challenged to reform, restate, or review my understanding of my own position when I do disagree. To me, the arena of ideas is where our shit gets thrashed out, and some ideas get discredited, and for me--it's not really any skin off my nose when I don't see eye-to-eye with someone.

 

But then again, I have a lot of white, cis, straight (appearing), middle-class, able-bodied privilege. This is why I recognize that while I can take a lot of things impersonally--this isn't really the option for everyone. It's one thing to scoff at the concept of "microaggressions". It's another to really grasp that those microaggressions take place on top of or alongside the actual systemized macroaggressions of racism, homophobia, sexism, transphobia, disablism, or some intersection of the same. The sentiments, and the life experiences that they arise from, are real. They shouldn't be dismissed.

 

Now, I think some things aren't at least, for me, practical or practicable. At one stage in my blogging, around 2010, I tried trigger warnings and the application of more gender-inclusive language to "break out of the binary". It felt forced.  The former I found to be condescending, because I credit people interested in my content with being able realize within a paragraph or two whether that content is something they prefer to engage with, and the latter simply felt awkward and distracting. But the overall goal of not being rude and not stereotyping whole groups of people because of my learned cultural biases is necessary and actually liberating and honest. People are just people. Shedding assumptions and trying to speak from a place of authentic observation and genuine criticism of lazy "proofs" that some marginalized group "really is" lesser than is not "political correctness" so much as being on the right side of a battle against bullshit.