#and they act like it's an immigration problem or a white christian male problem

[mizandria]

if you genuinely believe that you are a radical feminist while you STILL think that misogyny & male violence is a black male problem / white male problem / christian male problem / muslim male problem / any male problem that isn't just a male problem i do have news for you

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Christian Pax at Vox:

Is Donald Trump on track to win a historic share of voters of color in November’s presidential election? On the surface, it’s one of the most confounding questions of the Trump years in American politics. Trump — and the Republican Party in his thrall — has embraced anti-immigrant policies and proposals, peddled racist stereotypes, and demonized immigrants. So why does it look like he might win over and hold the support of greater numbers of nonwhite voters than the Republican Party of years past? In poll after poll, he’s hitting or exceeding the levels of support he received in 2020 from Latino and Hispanic voters. He’s primed to make inroads among Asian American voters, whose Democratic loyalty has gradually been declining over the last few election cycles. And the numbers he’s posting with Black voters suggest the largest racial realignment in an election since the signing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

There are a plethora of explanations for this shift, but first, some points of clarification. The pro-Trump shift is concentrated among Hispanic and Latino voters, though it has appeared to be spreading to parts of the Black and Asian American electorate. Second, things have changed since Vice President Kamala Harris took over the Democratic ticket in late July. Polling confirms that Harris has posted significant improvements among nonwhite voters, young voters, Democrats, and suburban voters. In other words, Harris has managed to revive the party’s standing with its base, suggesting that a part of Trump’s gains were due to unique problems that Biden had with these groups of voters. Thus, it’s not entirely clear to what extent this great racial realignment, as some have described the Trump-era phenomenon, will manifest itself in November.

[...]

Why? Putting aside environmental factors and shifts in the American electorate that are happening independent of the candidates, there are a few theories to explain how Trump has uniquely weakened political polarization along the lines of race and ethnicity. 1) Trump has successfully associated himself with a message of economic nostalgia, heightening nonwhite Americans’ memories of the pre-Covid economy in contrast to the period of inflation we’re now exiting. 2) Trump and his campaign have also zeroed in specifically on outreach and messaging to nonwhite men as part of their larger focus on appealing to male voters. 3) Trump and his party have taken advantage of a confluence of social factors, including messaging on immigration and cultural issues, to shore up support from conservative voters of color who have traditionally voted for Democrats or not voted at all.

[...]

Theory 1: Effective campaigning on the economy

Trump’s loudest message — the one that gets the most headlines — is his bombastic attacks on immigrants and his pledge to conduct mass deportations. His most successful appeal to voters, though, which he has held on to despite an improving economy under Biden, is economic. Trump claims to have presided over a time of broad and magnificent prosperity, arguing that there was a Trump economic renaissance before Biden bungled it. That pitch doesn’t comport with reality, but it may be resonating with voters who disproportionately prioritize economic concerns in casting their votes, particularly Latino and Asian American voters. Polling suggests that voters at large remember the Trump-era economy fondly and view Trump’s policies more favorably than Biden’s. Black and Latino voters in particular may have more negative memories about Biden and Democrats’ economic stewardship because they experienced worse rates of inflation than white Americans and Asian Americans did during 2021 and 2022.

[...]

Theory 2: Direct appeals to nonwhite men

The political realignment of women voters has been one of the major stories of 2024; the gender gap in American politics exploded in 2016, took a break in 2020, and seems like it’s about to be historic in 2024, with a huge pro-Democrat shift among women. At the same time, though, the rightward drift of men, including men of color, is a quiet undercurrent that may end up explaining what happened if Trump wins in November. Plenty of theories have been raised in the past about what kind of appeal Trump might have specifically to men and to men of color: Does his businessman persona resonate with upwardly mobile, financially aspirational men? Is there a “macho” appeal there for Hispanic men? Could his gritty, outsider, everyman posturing and brash rhetoric resonate with Black and Latino men, particularly those living in traditionally Democratic cities?

[...]

Theory 3: Championing conservative social issues

Trump and the GOP may also have found the right social issues to emphasize and campaign on in order to exploit some of the cultural divides between conservative and moderate nonwhite voters, and liberal white voters who also make up part of the Democratic base (in addition to liberal nonwhite voters). In 2021 and 2022, that looked like fearmongering on gender identity and crime, playing up concerns over affirmative action, and campaigning on the overturning of Roe v Wade. In 2023 and 2024, the Trump focus has shifted strongly toward immigration, an issue that has divided the Democratic coalition as hostility toward immigration has grown. That’s true even for Latino and Hispanic voters — long seen as being the voting group most amenable to a pro-immigrant, Democratic message — and it’s being used as a wedge issue by Republicans among Black voters as well.

Though it was seen as a gaffe, Trump’s “black jobs” comment during the first presidential debate got to this tension — the idea of migrants taking jobs, resources, and opportunities from non-white citizens. Florida Republican Rep. Byron Donalds, one of Trump’s go-to Black surrogates, explained the argument to me like this: “If you’re a Black man, Hispanic man, white man, you’re working hard every day, and the money you earn doesn’t go as far. That hurts your family, that hurts your kids. So they look at this situation, this immigration problem. People are saying, ‘Wait a minute. Why are illegal aliens getting food, getting shelter, getting an education, while my family and my child is struggling. It’s not right, and it’s not fair.’” And for Asian American voters, now the fastest growing ethnic segment of the electorate, immigration is also becoming a wedge issue, Zarsadiaz told me. “This feeling, ‘I’ve waited my turn, I waited my time’ — there’s long been Latino and Asian American immigrants who have felt this way. The assumption has long been that if you’re an immigrant, you must be very liberal on immigration, and that’s definitely not the case,” Zarsadiaz said. “Some of the staunchest critics of immigration, especially on amnesty or Dreamers, are immigrants themselves, and with Asian Americans that’s an issue that has been drawing more voters to Trump and Trumpism — those immigrant voters who feel like they’re being wronged.” Democrats are now moderating on immigration, but only after years of moving left. And that shift left has been true on a range of issues, contributing to another part of this theory of Trump’s gains: that Democrats have pushed conservative or moderate nonwhite Americans away as they embraced beliefs more popular with white, college-educated, and suburban voters. The political scientist Ruy Teixeira and Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini have been theorizing for a while now that a disjuncture over social issues in general — and Trump’s seizure of these issues — has complicated the idea that Democrats would benefit from greater numbers and rates of participation from nonwhite America. It may explain why conservative and moderate voters of color, who may have voted for Democrats in the past, are now realigning with the Republican Party.

[...]

There are signs that some of this shift may be happening independently of Trump. It could be a product of the growing diversification of America, upward mobility and changing understandings of class, and growing educational divides. For example, as rates of immigration change and the share of US-born Latino and Asian Americans grows, their partisan loyalties may continue to change. Those born closer to the immigrant experience may have had more of a willingness to back the party seen as more welcoming of immigrants, but as generations get further away from that experience, racial and ethnic identity may become less of a factor in the development of political thinking.

Concepts of racial identity and memory are also changing — younger Black Americans, for example, have less of a tie to the Civil Rights era — potentially contributing to less strong political polarization among Black and Latino people in the US independently of any given candidate — and creating more persuadable voters in future elections. At the same time, younger generations are increasingly identifying as independents or outside of the two-party paradigm — a change in loyalty that stands to hurt Democrats first, since Democrats tend to do better with younger voters.

Vox explores how Donald Trump made inroads with a portion of the POC vote this election: young men of color.

[lesbianfeminists]

There’s More Than One Way to ‘Erase’ Women

On 28th May Hungary’s Parliament signed a bill into law which ends legal recognition for transgender people. The votes of rightwing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party pushed the legislation through by a majority in the context of a pandemic in which he is ruling by decree indefinitely. The changes to Hungary’s Registry Act will restrict gender to biological sex at birth, a status determined by primary sex characteristics and chromosomes. All other forms of identification are tied to birth certificates in Hungary so these too will reflect birth sex.

Trans advocacy and human rights groups argue that it will lead to more discrimination because Hungarians are required to produce identity cards on a frequent basis. This means that they will, in effect, be ‘outing’ themselves in everyday situations which may be humiliating, at best, and dangerous at worst. The government say they are merely clarifying sex within the law; a disingenuous claim in a political context in which the traditional family is increasingly being placed at the heart of a ‘white’, Christian nation.

Julie Bindel recently argued that it was unwise of Pink News to look at Orban’s policies in relation to transgender people in isolation. They should instead be conceived of as part of a broader attack on women’s rights and the rights of minority groups.

But Bindel’s advice applies equally to those gender critical feminists, albeit small in number, who are responding positively to the news from Hungary, on the basis that Orban recognises the immutability of sex. Whilst Baroness Nicholson might see no problem in adding Hungary to her list of causes for celebration, feminists shouldn’t lose sight of a much bigger picture.

In 2013, Orban introduced a constitutional reform which enshrined the idea of ​​the family as the foundation of the nation in the Basic Law. Although abortion was legalised after the Second World War, since 2013 the Constitution has stated that “the life of the fetus must be protected from the moment of conception”. Orban has yet to move on abortion but he publically supports anti-abortion organisations and in 2017 he opened The World Congress of Families conference in Budapest. The WCF is a United States coalition is a virulently anti-abortion organisation which promotes Christian right values globally.

By 2018, he was setting out his plan for a new “cultural era” which included amending the kindergarten curriculum so that it would promote a “national identity, Christian cultural values, patriotism, attachment to homeland and family”. (5) In 2019, the government announced a series of pro-natalist measures which included a lifetime income tax exemption for mothers of four children and free IVF treatment for married heterosexual couples. These policies aim to reverse demographic decline and curb immigration, at one and the same time. Orban argues that “it’s a national interest to restore natural reproduction. Not one interest among others – but the only one. It’s a European interest too. It is the European interest”.

In essence, he subscribes to the white nationalist “demographic winter” theory, which claims that the “purity” of European civilisation is in peril due to the increasing numbers of non-white races, in general, and Muslim people, in particular. Orban’s draconian measures against migrants and refugees dovetail with this belief system.

Such policies also cast women in the role of wombs of the nation, echoing the eugenicist policies of Hitler, who also provided financial inducements to bribe Aryan women into motherhood. As Anita Komuves, a Hungarian journalist, tweeted, “Can we just simply declare that Hungary is Gilead from now on?”

Homosexuality is legal in Hungary, but same sex couples are unable to marry and registered partnerships don’t offer equivalent legal rights. Orban’s government has made the promotion of patriarchal family values so central to its cultural mission and policies that anti gay rhetoric amongst politicians has become commonplace. Last year, László Kövér, the speaker of the Hungarian parliament, compared supporters of lesbian and gay marriage and adoption to paedophiles. “Morally, there is no difference between the behaviour of a paedophile and the behaviour of someone who demands such things,” he said. (9) In 2017 the annual Pride event was attacked by violent right-wing extremists hurling faeces, acid and Molotov cocktails at the marchers and police.

Just as Orban has sought to eliminate the notion of gender identity within the law, so too has he gone to war against what he describes as “gender ideology”. In 2018 he issued a decree revoking funding for gender studies programmes in October that year. (10) At the time, this move was welcomed by some gender critical and radical feminists on the basis that postmodern feminism in the academy has contributed to a dogmatic sex denialism which is unable to analyse the basis of female oppression. (11) But, as with the changes in relation to the legal recognition of transgender people, Orban’s reasons were anything but feminist. As one government spokesman explained: “The government’s standpoint is that people are born either male or female, and we do not consider it acceptable for us to talk about socially constructed genders rather than biological sexes.” (12) Gender studies is seen as promoting too fluid an understanding of male and female roles in the place of a fixed social order in which women’s biological destiny is to be married mothers. The decision to withdraw funding from gender studies didn’t come out of nowhere. At a party congress in December 2015, László Kövér, one of the founders of the Fidesz party, stated:

“We don’t want the gender craziness. We don’t want to make Hungary a futureless society of man-hating women, and feminine men living in dread of women, and considering families and children only as barriers to self-fulfilment… And we would like if our daughters would consider, as the highest quality of self-fulfilment, the possibility of giving birth to our grandchildren.”

Orban’s war against “gender” also led to Hungary’s National Assembly recently passing a declaration which refused to ratify the Istanbul Convention, the Council of Europe’s Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.It was claimed that the convention promoted “gender ideology” and particular issue was taken with the section that defined gender as “socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for women and men.” Hungarian politicians object to an understanding of gender which recognises that women’s ‘role’ can change, even improve (!), as societies change, an unwelcome thought to those wishing to uphold men’s power in the family and discourage homosexuality. As with a number of Orban’s other policy decisions, there was also a racist element to the refusal to ratify the convention. The fact that it would have afforded protections for migrant and refugee women was in direct contradiction to Hungary’s anti-immigration policies. As one far right, Hungarian blog put it:

“By refusing the ratification of the Istanbul Convention, Hungary, says ‘Yes!’ to the protection of women but ‘No!’ to gender ideology and illegal migration.”

(Women’s groups in the UK have long suspected that our government refuses to ratify the Convention as it would bind them to properly funding the VAWG sector.)

Orban’s concern about “gender” and “gender ideology” is shared by other states with a socially conservative programme for women. Some gender critical and radical feminists use this term, as well, which can be confusing when our respective analyses have so little in common. Here, it refers to a set of beliefs that conflate sex with gender and deny the material reality of sex-based oppression. This is a far cry from the definitions shared by the growing “anti gender” movements in Central and Eastern Europe.

These movements privilege biological understandings of what it means to be a man or a woman but only do so in order to insist that our biology should determine (and restrict) our lives.They want to hang on the man/woman binary because they believe that gendered roles and expectations, ones which place women below men, are determined by sex. In short, they deny that gender is a social construct. “Gender ideology”, as a term, has become something of a dustbin category, deployed variously to attack feminism, same sex marriage, reproductive rights and sex education in schools. Trump’s administration is engaged in an ongoing fight to remove the word “gender” from United Nations documents.

In this context, we need to remember that “gender” is still most frequently used as a proxy for women/sex in UN Conventions like CEDAW (The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women). The term is also increasingly – to our concern – conflated with gender identity with all the risks that this entails.

But that fact shouldn’t blind us to the main motivations of those who oppose the use of the word gender at UN level. When conservatives say they want to replace the term “gender” with “sex”, it’s invariably to oppose women’s equality with men and to enshrine patriarchal understandings of women’s place in society. Replacing the language of gender with the language of sex is, in their terms, a route to a biologically driven and restricted notion of reproduction as women’s only fate. Replacing the language of gender with the language of sex is not necessarily a feminist enterprise.

Unless we establish very clear lines between ourselves and rightwing, religious fundamentalists, we are in danger of being swallowed up and used by the most anti-women, global forces, the canniest of which offer themselves as ‘partners’ in the fight against gender ideology: witness several events hosted by the Heritage Foundation, a hugely powerful Christian Right think tank which has platformed radical feminists.

The Heritage Foundation has particular chutzpah. Whilst claiming to be an ally in the feminist fight to preserve female only spaces and sex-based rights, it opposes reproductive rights, lesbian and gay rights and any measures to counter discrimination against women, notably the Equal Rights Amendment. In fact, it blames feminists for the current state of affairs – though Ryan Anderson would never be rude enough to say so at their shared events. “Transgender theories are part of the feminist goal of a sexual revolution that eliminates the proprietary family and celebrates non-monogamous sexual experiences.”

When it’s not cynically partnering with (a small number) of radical feminists as ‘cover’, the Heritage Foundation enjoys the company of the Holy See, the universal government of the Catholic Church which operates from Vatican City State. (20) The Vatican has opposed the notion of gender since the early-2000s, arguing that males and females have intrinsic attributes which aren’t shaped by social forces. Recently, they published an educational document called “Male and female he created them”.

Woman’s Place UK has consistently stated an opposition to working with, or supporting the work of the religious right (and their female representatives). Not simply because it is strategically disastrous but because it is wrong in principle. (22) When we look at what is happening in Hungary it is well to remember that there is more than one way to ‘erase’ women. Andrea Pető, a professor at the Central European University of Budapest, commenting on the official reports that Hungary (and Poland) send to the UN CEDAW Committee, noted, “we see that they replace the concept of women with that of family, women as independent agents are slowly disappearing from public policy documents, behind the single word family.”

https://womansplaceuk.org/2020/06/18/womens-rights-under-attack-hungary/

[thepropertylovers]

What Foreigners Really Think of The U.S. Right Now

The other night, after the kiddos went to bed, we decided to watch the second Borat movie that just came out (have you seen it?). It was insane and hilarious all at the same time, but it got me wondering: what do folks who don’t live in the U.S. think of The United States of America right now? What is their perception of us?

So I decided to pose this question on Instagram and wow. Y’all did not hold back. I want to thank everyone who submitted for your candidness and honesty, even if some of these were hard to swallow. It’s important to note that just because these are their opinions of America, it doesn’t mean it is all necessarily true. Regardless, it was interesting to read everyone’s thoughts and get an outsider’s perspective.

We received hundreds of submissions and couldn’t post them all, but below, people from all over the world share what they really think of the United States at the moment.

Leadership is out of touch with reality and messing things up real bad, not just for the U.S. but also for the world. What’s worse is that half the country is being misled successfully. It just shows poorly on the country all over. -Annonymous

Your president is a disaster when it comes to foreign politics and corona. No class, no knowledge. A joke. Very scary to watch. But half of the voters are happy with it. And that is even more scary. Very difficult to understand the hate and ignorance in your society right now. -Mikkel

It’s just weird. Everything basically. I totally understand now why the U.S. is described as '“flawed democracy” in the democracy index. It’s just a crazy system which is not providing equality among people- regarding the vote especially. This system leads to the fact of the two big parties (similar in the UK basically). But democracy is about diversity in opinions and options. Not just two. -Max

The US is more divided than ever. The two parties cannot work together nor do they appear to want to. The government is no longer run by reason, facts, and policy aiming for the betterment of the entire country and or world in the long or medium run; rather it’s instant gratification for the few who benefit from nepotism. Lies and misinformation are used to build a dictatorship hiding in the form of “patriotism”. And those who could act as a check or balance focus on their own personal gain, putting their needs above those of the persons they should be representing. -Joel

I personally don’t think there is a very good atmosphere in the USA, especially right now, Trump’s administration does not protect the American people or the economy. He only cares about himself and his male-white supremacy. The worst of all is that lots of Americans think Trump is actually a good leader (idk why, honestly). But thank God that people are starting to wake up and fight about what they believe. We can see it through BLM protests, feminist movements, and so on, and the whole world is proud about those people fighting for their rights. America was once the land of dreams, but nowadays (with all that is happening) it is even scary to go there. Lots of things have to change and those changes have to start, voting and defending your rights and your beliefs are the first step. Greetings from Spain. -Antonio

The main reasons I can think of are vote suppression/gerrymandering, expensive health care wealth inequality, racism, lack of fun control… -Brian

Definitely find the hypocrisy of the Republicans so annoying, Trump still being in office, the fact that there has been no police reform or justice for Breonna Taylor, the gun laws, and the COVID numbers just to name a few. -Brian

Here in the UK it seems like CARNAGE over there..don’t get me wrong, it’s wild here too but Trump is insane and it’s really odd seeing so many Americans supporting him. -Dan

Really worried about the fact that you might go for 4 more years with Trump and the fact that he’ll for sure contest the results if he loses. Add to this, all the racial violence and in particular the way some policemen act without being condemned by any judge. And finally the pandemic which seems to be even more out of control than in other countries. This is coming from someone who lives in France where we’re going to be under lockdown for the second time since the beginning of the pandemic (2nd lockdown starting tomorrow evening and will last at least until December 1st 😢). -Estelle

To put a long story short, let’s just hope Cheeto doesn’t get reelected otherwise our UK trade deal will be a disaster and we don’t need any more negative influences in the UK around gender and sexual equality.-Christian

I think with this administration, the US has demonstrated how to shipwreck a whole nation economically, ideologically, socially, and politically within a really short period of time. After just 4 years, we’ve come to associate the US with widespread narrow-mindedness, a lack of respect and courtesy to other nations (and minorities in its own country for that matter), short sightedness when it comes to global phenomena like environmentalism or migration patterns, and a celebration (by some at least) of almost barbaric notions of violence, oppression, and backward thinking, all under the camouflage of its constitution and socio-historic heritage. We’ve really admired the Obama administration over here in Europe, which-despite its flaws and shortcomings- has opened up the US to international partnerships and has established an ongoing discourse shaped by mutual respect and politeness…the contrast couldn’t be more pronounced these day…-Sebastian

I look at our Prime Minister and government and then see Trump and think we really could have it so much worse! Vote!! -Ant

As an American living in London, I can tell you that the news coverage here makes the US look like an absolute joke. Mainly due to 45, his lies, his bigotry, and his insane desire to make covid seem as though it’s a falsehood “created by the left” while hundreds of thousands of Americans have ben victimized by this pandemic. What was once seen as a country of opportunity and freedom, is sadly no longer held to that level of greatness in comparison to its neighboring countries. It saddens me because I had plans to move back home within the next year or so, but if the US continues on its path, I can see myself in London for the unforeseeable future. I can’t live in a country where I am seen or believed to be lesser than another because of my sexual preference. I can only hope and pray that this election brings the change we need to be that country of greatness once again. -Rob

Very poor to be honest. And I’m not necessarily [talking about Trump]- I think the immediate reaction is to blame him. Though, he is pretty awful. There was obviously a huge level of social and other problems in the US, and the current administration has exploited them to the breaking point. Whereas more “skilled” past administrations had the ability to leverage those issues for their benefit, but not let it boil over. I actually thought Trump would be a positive for the US and world- in that his incompetence would force other world leaders to step up. Meaning more equity in how disputes etc. are assessed and the US wouldn’t bully smaller nations. I think the US has hit the point in its journey with capitalism that the USSR hit with socialism in the late 80’s that led to its collapse. Does that mean collapse for the US, I don’t know but the system isn’t providing equity and equality for all as it stands. -Paul

Worried but also hopeful for you guys because I don’t think all citizens in America reflect the current administration. It’s been really great to see people voting early and making their voice heard. No matter what happens just know you did what you could in this moment in time. Even though the current administration provides a scary outlook for the future. As long as the current and future generations lead with love, there will hopefully be a brighter future. Love from Canada. -Ajetha

I've been subscribing to all of the US News since the Black Lives Matter Movement commenced and honestly, it made me scared as a Filipino Asian to step foot in the States ever since. I have big dreams of flying over there and probably working there as an immigrant after I finished college. However, when I found out about the racial injustice that is currently ongoing in the country, I became hesistant of still wanting to live there. Although, I'm positive that there are still people like you two that will be open about working immigrants, I really hope that racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia will end for good among every human beings in the US and also around the world. I do wish and pray that the 2020 US election will make certain amends to the current situation y'all are experiencing because it's getting pretty scary out there. -Harvey I’m an American living overseas working for the US government. I’m trying my hardest to stay overseas so my family and I don’t have to come back to the mess that is the US right now. From politics to COVID, it’s not a good time. While the virus may be surging again in Europe, at least the people comply with the government rules. Sometimes I believe Americans take freedom and liberty a bit too far, especially when it comes to the greater good. -Anonymous

Allthough on social policy the US is no real example for us (I think there is more social ‘security’, more justice, high standards in education for all in most of the EU countries), they always have been a ‘safe haven’ in big international politics. It now feels like ‘they have our back’ doesn’t imply anymore. -Jasper

Well personally I think the country seems in total disarray, instead of focusing on the real issues in the streets both house of the capitol are focused on bashing each other during the election campaign which is a circus due to the sitting POTUS. The obsession with the right to bare arms and the gun culture bewilders most other countries, you have teenagers walking into schools with Assault weapons and yet people still want guns to be available, worst still you ban one type of assault rifle but another just as powerful is kept on sale, it’s plain weird. -Philip

Neither candidate represents their party well. As an outsider looking in, it just baffles me that either of these men could potentially be the leader of the free world...It genuinely feels like worrying times are ahead for the US. -Marc I'm from India and living in Germany at the moment. The race problem in the US is as bad as the class/caste problem in India. Even if I don't have money I can go to a government health center in India. I just had an operation and stayed at the hospital for 18 days here in Germany, I had to pay only 180 Euros, everything else ( the operation and the many tests and scans that followed) was covered by the insurance. When my friends at the US heard about it they were shocked about low the hospital bill. There are really great labs (I'm a researcher) that I would like to work but I have no intentions of working/living in the US for a longer period of time. -Maithy

I think the US has become a joke to the rest of the developed world. Neither candidates running for president are fit to run such a powerful country. I can't help but feel after the election if Trump wins the left will riot and if Biden wins the right will riot. The country might just rip itself apart. American politics has zero empathy and zero morals. Honestly its terrifying. -Andrew

The US has always been a bit confusing to me - the two party system, the focus on religion, the divide in income and possibilities- as well as being the beacon of light in the fight for human rights, the strong personal pride in creating caring societets, the blending of and openeses for ethnicities and cultures... But for a while politics have become not at all about politics, religious beliefs are taking charge in policy work, the wealthier part shows little companion towards the less wealthy, the public spending is way above budget year after year while health care seems to be crazy expensive and not for all. The intrusion of US interest in politics in other countries are blunt to say the least, creating conflict where human lives have no value if they’re not US lives... School shootings that seems to be acted upon as that is part of normal lives, and schools to expensive for even middle class kids to study at... This is a shift in trust and soft power that affects all of us. -Olof

To be honest, I couldn’t come to the US right now, it scares me. The leadership, the gun laws, the violence and the divide of the nation. It sucks, because I love America and have been there 7 times in the last two years from Australia for work... but not anymore. I’m not coming back now until peace wins. -Anonymous

The fact that such a hate filled government is presiding over what is one the greatest countries in the world is scary. And it is seriously mind blowing that out of such a powerful country filled with some of the greatest minds in the world it’s these two men are the best you can do to be your next president. Unbelievable. Seriously unbelievable. -Rachel

I think the orange dude in office is making you guys look bad. But also, good (?). Seeing the black lives matter movement and so many of you stand up to the problems your country faces has been inspiring. One thing our countries have in common is how we are divided into very distinctive opposites sides. I mean, where do all these racists, bigots, utterly, madly conservites people came from? I few like a few years ago things did not seem so much as a boiling pan about to explode. Or maybe they were all hiding and when a lunatic like them rose to power (how that happened still boggles my mind) they all showed their true colors. It’s scary. I hope Trump doesn’t get reelected. Brazilians loooove to imitate americans🙄, so if he gets reelected it makes that much probable that our lunatic will also be in office for four more years. P.S. have you guys watched the show Years and Years from HBO? A really good watch is this election times! ☺️ -Taty

Re. The US atm. Unfortunately your president has made your country a laughing stock around the world and he's destroyed relationships with allies. It's gonna take time to rebuild all of that. He's also moved an entire branch of your government to the far right, even though the majority of the country if left/centr of left. So you've a supreme court that doesn't represent you and it's looking like they're going to try and take away rights from people. You have a healthcare system that doesn't look out for its people and there's this bizarre fear of universal healthcare that seems insane to every other 1st world country. If if Biden wins (and I really hope he does for everyone's sake), there's going to be a lot of work in undoing the damage Trump has done before he can even get into what he wants to do. All the while you've an ultra conservative highest court. There's also the massive political division and the systemic racism. It's a lot. It's not impossible, but it's going to take so much time and people who want it to change. -Ciara

I’ve been sitting here for an hour thinking about your question and there are many different outlooks I could raise so I’ll keep it generic. I’ll start with the elephant in the room known as Covid. Each day, our morning news informs us of what your leaders are doing and daily case numbers in the US. We sit here completely shocked at how your government has let it reach this point. You may have heard that Melbourne has just come out of one of the strictest and longest lock downs in the world. I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone to have to do, but I will say, I feel much more comfortable to be able to go to the shops knowing the numbers are at about 2-3 a day instead of in the thousands. I do think that your government does need to address this now, could even be making it compulsory mask wearing. It’s hard for me to comment about your economy as we don’t here much about it, but I will say Trump ‘says’ make America great again, let’s get more jobs, they are pro life, yet how is someone who is prolife not doing anything to stop a virus that is killing people? Isn’t your unemployment rate worse (pre-covid) than what it was when Obama was president? I think as a generic outlook, if change isn’t made in the election, the outlook from a Australian does not look like it would be something you’d want to be apart of. I love America. Have visited a couple of times, even thought about moving there, but at the moment, I’ve never been more thankful to not be there. -Ben

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Why Is It So Hard for Democrats to Act Like They Actually Won?

By

Rebecca Solnit

November 19, 2020

When Trump won the 2016 election—while losing the popular vote—the New York Times seemed obsessed with running features about what Trump voters were feeling and thinking. These pieces treated them as both an exotic species and people it was our job to understand, understand being that word that means both to comprehend and to grant some sort of indulgence to. Now that Trump has lost the 2020 election, the Los Angeles Times has given their editorial page over to letters from Trump voters, who had exactly the sort of predictable things to say we have been hearing for far more than four years, thanks to the New York Times and what came to seem like about 11,000 other news outlets hanging on the every word of every white supremacist they could convince to go on the record.

The letters editor headed this section with, “In my decade editing this page, there has never been a period when quarreling readers have seemed so implacably at odds with each other, as if they get their facts and values from different universes. As one small attempt to bridge the divide, we are providing today a page full of letters from Trump supporters.” The implication is the usual one: we—urban multiethnic liberal-to-radical only-partly-Christian America—need to spend more time understanding MAGA America. The demands do not go the other way. Fox and Ted Cruz and the Federalist have not chastised their audiences, I feel pretty confident, with urgings to enter into discourse with, say, Black Lives Matter activists, rabbis, imams, abortion providers, undocumented valedictorians, or tenured lesbians. When only half the divide is being tasked with making the peace, there is no peace to be made, but there is a unilateral surrender on offer. We are told to consider this bipartisanship, but the very word means both sides abandon their partisanship, and Mitch McConnell and company have absolutely no interest in doing that.

Paul Waldman wrote a valuable column in the Washington Post a few years ago, in which he pointed out that this discord is valuable fuel to right-wing operatives: “The assumption is that if Democrats simply choose to deploy this powerful tool of respect, then minds will be changed and votes will follow. This belief, widespread though it may be, is stunningly naive.” He notes that the sense of being disrespected “doesn’t come from the policies advocated by the Democratic Party, and it doesn’t come from the things Democratic politicians say. Where does it come from? An entire industry that’s devoted to convincing white people that liberal elitists look down on them. The right has a gigantic media apparatus that is devoted to convincing people that liberals disrespect them, plus a political party whose leaders all understand that that idea is key to their political project and so join in the chorus at every opportunity.”

There’s also often a devil’s bargain buried in all this, that you flatter and, yeah, respect these white people who think this country is theirs by throwing other people under the bus—by disrespecting immigrants and queer people and feminists and their rights and views. And you reinforce that constituency’s sense that they matter more than other people when you pander like this, and pretty much all the problems we’ve faced over the past four years, to say nothing of the last five hundred, come from this sense of white people being more important than nonwhites, Christians than non-Christians, native-born than immigrant, male than female, straight than queer, cis-gender than trans.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito just complained that “you can’t say that marriage is a union between one man and one woman. Now it’s considered bigotry.” This is a standard complaint of the right: the real victim is the racist who has been called a racist, not the victim of his racism, the real oppression is to be impeded in your freedom to oppress. And of course Alito is disingenuous; you can say that stuff against marriage equality (and he did). Then other people can call you a bigot, because they get to have opinions too, but in his scheme such dissent is intolerable, which is fun coming from a member of the party whose devotees wore “fuck your feelings” shirts at its rallies and popularized the term “snowflake.”

Nevertheless, we get this hopelessly naïve version of centrism, of the idea that if we’re nicer to the other side there will be no other side, just one big happy family. This inanity is also applied to the questions of belief and fact and principle, with some muddled cocktail of moral relativism and therapists’ “everyone’s feelings are valid” applied to everything. But the truth is not some compromise halfway between the truth and the lie, the fact and the delusion, the scientists and the propagandists. And the ethical is not halfway between white supremacists and human rights activists, rapists and feminists, synagogue massacrists and Jews, xenophobes and immigrants, delusional transphobes and trans people. Who the hell wants unity with Nazis until and unless they stop being Nazis?

I think our side, if you’ll forgive my ongoing shorthand and binary logic, has something to offer everyone and we can and must win in the long run by offering it, and offering it via better stories and better means to make those stories reach everyone. We actually want to see everyone have a living wage, access to healthcare, and lives unburdened by medical, student, and housing debt. We want this to be a thriving planet when the babies born this year turn 80 in 2100. But the recommended compromise means abandoning and diluting our stories, not fortifying and improving them (and finding ways for them to actually reach the rest of America, rather than having them warped or shut out altogether). I’ve spent much of my adult life watching politicians like Bill Clinton and, at times, Barack Obama sell out their own side to placate the other, with dismal results, and I pray that times have changed enough that Joe Biden will not do it all over again.

Among the other problems with the LA Times’s editor’s statement is that one side has a lot of things that do not deserve to be called facts, and their values are too often advocacy for harming many of us on the other side. Not to pick on one news outlet: Sunday, the Washington Post ran a front-page sub-head about the #millionMAGAmarch that read “On stark display in the nation’s capital were two irreconcilable versions of America, each refusing to accept what the other considered to be undeniable fact.” Except that one side did have actual facts, notably that Donald J. Trump lost the election, and the other had hot and steamy delusions.

I can comprehend, and do, that lots of people don’t believe climate change is real, but is there some great benefit in me listening, again, to those who refuse to listen to the global community of scientists and see the evidence before our eyes? A lot of why the right doesn’t “understand” climate change is that climate change tells us everything is connected, everything we do has far-reaching repercussions, and we’re responsible for the whole, a message at odds with their idealization of a version of freedom that smells a lot like disconnection and irresponsibility. But also climate denial is the result of fossil fuel companies and the politicians they bought spreading propaganda and lies for profit, and I understand that better than the people who believe it. If half of us believe the earth is flat, we do not make peace by settling on it being halfway between round and flat. Those of us who know it’s round will not recruit them through compromise. We all know that you do better bringing people out of delusion by being kind and inviting than by mocking them, but that’s inviting them to come over, which is not the same thing as heading in their direction.

The editor spoke of facts, and he spoke of values. In the past four years too many members of the right have been emboldened to carry out those values as violence. One of the t-shirts at the #millionMAGAmarch this weekend: “Pinochet did nothing wrong.” Except stage a coup, torture and disappear tens of thousands of Chileans, and violate laws and rights. A right-wing conspiracy to overthrow the Michigan government and kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer was recently uncovered, racists shot some Black Lives Matter protestors and plowed their cars into a lot of protests this summer. The El Paso anti-immigrant massacre was only a year ago; the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre two years ago, the Charlottesville white-supremacist rally in which Heather Heyer was killed three years ago (and of course there have been innumerable smaller incidents all along). Do we need to bridge the divide between Nazis and non-Nazis? Because part of the problem is that we have an appeasement economy, a system that is supposed to be greased by being nice to the other side.

Appeasement didn’t work in the 1930s and it won’t work now. That doesn’t mean that people have to be angry or hate back or hostile, but it does mean they have to stand on principle and defend what’s under attack. There are situations in which there is no common ground worth standing on, let alone hiking over to. If Nazis wanted to reach out and find common ground and understand us, they probably would not have had that tiki-torch parade full of white men bellowing “Jews will not replace us” and, also, they would not be Nazis. Being Nazis, white supremacists, misogynists, transphobes is all part of a project of refusing to understand as part of refusing to respect. It is a minority position but by granting it deference we give it, over and over, the power of a majority position.

In fact the whole Republican Party, since long before Trump, has committed itself to the antidemocratic project of trying to create a narrower electorate rather than win a wider vote. They have invested in voter suppression as a key tactic to win, and the votes they try to suppress are those of Black voters and other voters of color. That is a brutally corrupt refusal to allow those citizens the rights guaranteed to them by law. Having failed to prevent enough Black people from voting in the recent election, they are striving mightily to discard their votes after the fact. What do you do with people who think they matter more than other people? Catering to them reinforces that belief, that they are central to the nation’s life, they are more important, and their views must prevail. Deference to intolerance feeds intolerance.

Years ago the linguist George Lakoff wrote that Democrats operate as kindly nurturance-oriented mothers to the citizenry, Republicans as stern discipline-oriented fathers. But the relationship between the two parties is a marriage, between an overly deferential wife and an overbearing and often abusive husband (think of how we got our last two Supreme Court justices and failed to get Merrick Garland). The Hill just ran a headline that declared “GOP Senators say that a Warren nomination would divide Republicans.” I am pretty sure they didn’t run headlines that said, “Democratic Senators say a Pompeo (or Bolton or Perdue or Sessions) nomination would divide Democrats.” I grew up in an era where wives who were beaten were expected to do more to soothe their husbands and not challenge them, and this carries on as the degrading politics of our abusive national marriage.

Some of us don’t know how to win. Others can’t believe they ever lost or will lose or should, and their intransigence constitutes a kind of threat. That’s why the victors of the recent election are being told in countless ways to go grovel before the losers. This unilateral surrender is how misogyny and racism are baked into a lot of liberal and centrist as well as right-wing positions, this idea that some people need to be flattered and buffered even when they are harming the people who are supposed to do the flattering and buffering, even when they are the minority, even when they’re breaking the law or lost the election. Lakoff didn’t quite get to the point of saying that this nation lives in a household full of what domestic abuse advocates call coercive control, in which one partner’s threats, intimidations, devaluations, and general shouting down control the other.

This is what marriages were before feminism, with the abused wife urged to placate and soothe the furious husband. Feminism is good for everything, and it’s a good model for seeing that this is both outrageous and a recipe for failure. It didn’t work in marriages, and it never was the abused partner’s job to prevent the abuse by surrendering ground and rights and voice. It is not working as national policy either. Now is an excellent time to stand on principle and defend what we value, and I believe it’s a winning strategy too, or at least brings us closer to winning than surrender does. Also, it’s worth repeating, we won, and being gracious in victory is still being victorious.

[Rebecca Solnit’s first media job was in fact-checking and her last book is the memoir Recollections of My Nonexistence. She’s sent a lot of mail to her nieces and nephews during the pandemic.]

[parabelled]

Recommendations for Social Sciences Literature:

So as a recently graduated law student and lawyer (as well as being affected by many areas of intersectionality related below), I’ve been really into studying the social sciences and how society reflects how it treats the least of its citizens. My friend suggested that I draw up a list of recommendations for her, and share it with others as well. 

While my interest in these books might begin in how to consider the perspectives of others and consolidate my own point of view when representing a client, I can safely reassure you all that these are (for the most part) layperson books that I read in my spare time; not ridiculous legal dirges that will put you to sleep. All these books were spectacularly engaging for me, and I’d recommend them highly.

I’d also  like to preface this list with the fact that I educate myself on books that consider intersectionality and how the experiences of individual subsections of society affect society as a whole and an individual’s position in them. While as a result of the topics themselves these books often consider bigotry and sensitive issues/topics, they are academic considerations of societal constructs and demographics (as well as the history that grows from oppression of certain subsections of society), and attempt to be balanced academic/philosophical narratives. Therefore, while difficult topics might be broached (such as, for example, the discrimination transexual women face in being considered ‘women’), none that I have read would ever be intentionally insulting/ extremist in their views, and many are written by scholars and academics directly affected by these issues. Just research these books before purchasing them, is all I ask; for your own self-care. ♥

That being said, I have divided these recommendations into several areas of study. I will also mark when there is a decided crossover of intersectionality, for your benefit:

Feminist Theory: Mostly concerned with the limitation of womens emotions, the experience of women within Trump’s America, and the idealised liberation of women in 1960s, with a particular focus on the UK and ‘swinging’ London.

Disability Theory: Academic Ableism in post-educational facilities and within the immigration process.

Black Theory: This includes the relations between colonialism and the oppressed individual’s underneath its weight, the struggle through American’s history through ‘white rage’ towards the success of African-American success, and a sad history of racial ‘passing’ in America.

Immigration Theory: This mostly focuses on the experience of the disabled and Southern/Eastern Europeans/ Jewish people entering both Canada and the United States. It also provides this background to the immigration policies against a backdrop of social eugenics. I also included a book on the UK history of the workhouse in this category, as immigrants were often disproportionately affected by poverty once arriving in the UK/England, and often had to seek shelter in such ‘establishments.’

LGBT+ Social Theory/History: The history of transsexualism and the development of transexual rights throughout history.

Canadian Indigenous Theory/History: A history of the movements between the Indigenous peoples of North America and colonialists, as well as a two-part series on Canada’s Indian Act and Reconciliation (’Legalise’ aside in its consideration of the Indian Act, these are fantastic for the layperson to understand the effect such a document has had on the modern day issues and abuse of Indigenous people in Canada in particular, as well as how non-Indigenous people may work actively towards reconciliation in the future).

Toxic Masculinity: Angry White Men essentially tries to explain the unexplainable; namely, why there has been such a rise of the racist and sexist white American male, that eventually culminated in the election of Donald Trump (However, this really rings true for any ‘angry white men’ resulting from the rise of the far right across Europe and beyond). It is based on the idea of "aggrieved entitlement": a sense that those benefits that white men believed were their due have been snatched away from them by THE REST OF US~~~. While good, also just really expect to be mad (not in particular at the poor sociologist studying this and analysing this phenomenon, as he tries to be even-handed, but that such a thing exists at all).

1. Feminist Theory:

Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger: 

As women, we’ve been urged for so long to bottle up our anger, letting it corrode our bodies and minds in ways we don’t even realize. Yet there are so, so many legitimate reasons for us to feel angry, ranging from blatant, horrifying acts of misogyny to the subtle drip, drip drip of daily sexism that reinforces the absurdly damaging gender norms of our society. In Rage Becomes Her, Soraya Chemaly argues that our anger is not only justified, it is also an active part of the solution. We are so often encouraged to resist our rage or punished for justifiably expressing it, yet how many remarkable achievements would never have gotten off the ground without the kernel of anger that fueled them? Approached with conscious intention, anger is a vital instrument, a radar for injustice and a catalyst for change. On the flip side, the societal and cultural belittlement of our anger is a cunning way of limiting and controlling our power—one we can no longer abide.

Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America: 

Nasty Women includes inspiring essays from a diverse group of talented women writers who seek to provide a broad look at how we got here and what we need to do to move forward.Featuring essays by REBECCA SOLNIT on Trump and his “misogyny army,” CHERYL STRAYED on grappling with the aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s loss, SARAH HEPOLA on resisting the urge to drink after the election, NICOLE CHUNG on family and friends who support Trump, KATHA POLLITT on the state of reproductive rights and what we do next, JILL FILIPOVIC on Trump’s policies and the life of a young woman in West Africa, SAMANTHA IRBY on racism and living as a queer black woman in rural America, RANDA JARRAR on traveling across the country as a queer Muslim American, SARAH HOLLENBECK on Trump’s cruelty toward the disabled, MEREDITH TALUSAN on feminism and the transgender community, and SARAH JAFFE on the labor movement and active and effective resistance, among others.

(A heavy focus on intersectionality ♥)

The Feminine Revolution: 21 Ways to Ignite the Power of Your Femininity for a Brighter Life and a Better World: 

Challenging old and outdated perceptions that feminine traits are weaknesses, The Feminine Revolution revisits those characteristics to show how they are powerful assets that should be embraced rather than maligned. It argues that feminine traits have been mischaracterized as weak, fragile, diminutive, and embittered for too long, and offers a call to arms to redeem them as the superpowers and gifts that they are.The authors, Amy Stanton and Catherine Connors, begin with a brief history of when-and-why these traits were defined as weaknesses, sharing opinions from iconic females including Marianne Williamson and Cindy Crawford. Then they offer a set of feminine principles that challenge current perceptions of feminine traits, while providing women new mindsets to reclaim those traits with confidence. 

How Was It For You?: Women, Sex, Love and Power in the 1960s:

The sexual revolution liberated a generation. But men most of all.

We tend to think of the 60s as a decade sprinkled with stardust: a time of space travel and utopian dreams, but above all of sexual abandonment. When the pill was introduced on the NHS in 1961 it seemed, for the first time, that women - like men - could try without buying.

But this book - by 'one of the great social historians of our time' - describes a turbulent power struggle.

Here are the voices from the battleground. Meet dollybird Mavis, debutante Kristina, Beryl who sang with the Beatles, bunny girl Patsy, Christian student Anthea, industrial campaigner Mary and countercultural Caroline. From Carnaby Street to Merseyside, from mods to rockers, from white gloves to Black is Beautiful, their stories throw an unsparing spotlight on morals, four-letter words, faith, drugs, race, bomb culture and sex.

This is a moving, shocking book about tearing up the world and starting again. It's about peace, love, psychedelia and strange pleasures, but it is also about misogyny, violation and discrimination - half a century before feminism rebranded. For out of the swamp of gropers and groupies, a movement was emerging, and discovering a new cause: equality.

The 1960s: this was where it all began. Women would never be the same again.

2. Disability Theory:

Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education: 

Academic Ableism brings together disability studies and institutional critique to recognize the ways that disability is composed in and by higher education, and rewrites the spaces, times, and economies of disability in higher education to place disability front and center. For too long, argues Jay Timothy Dolmage, disability has been constructed as the antithesis of higher education, often positioned as a distraction, a drain, a problem to be solved. The ethic of higher education encourages students and teachers alike to accentuate ability, valorize perfection, and stigmatize anything that hints at intellectual, mental, or physical weakness, even as we gesture toward the value of diversity and innovation. Examining everything from campus accommodation processes, to architecture, to popular films about college life, Dolmage argues that disability is central to higher education, and that building more inclusive schools allows better education for all.

(See immigration below for another book by this author on the intersection between immigration policy and disability).

3. Black Theory:

Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon: 

A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, the book remains a vital force today from one of the most important theorists of revolutionary struggle, colonialism, and racial difference in history.

White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism: 

Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, the author examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.

White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide: 

From the Civil War to our combustible present, and now with a new epilogue about the 2016 presidential election, acclaimed historian Carol Anderson reframes our continuing conversation about race. White Rage chronicles the powerful forces opposed to black progress in America. As Ferguson, Missouri, erupted in August 2014, and media commentators across the ideological spectrum referred to the angry response of African Americans as “black rage,” historian Carol Anderson wrote a remarkable op-ed in the Washington Post showing that this was, instead, “white rage at work. With so much attention on the flames,” she writes, “everyone had ignored the kindling.”Since 1865 and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, every time African Americans have made advances towards full participation in our democracy, white reaction has fueled a deliberate and relentless rollback of their gains. The end of the Civil War and Reconstruction was greeted with the Black Codes and Jim Crow; the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was met with the shutting down of public schools throughout the South while taxpayer dollars financed segregated white private schools; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 triggered a coded but powerful response, the so-called Southern Strategy and the War on Drugs that disenfranchised millions of African Americans while propelling presidents Nixon and Reagan into the White House.Carefully linking these and other historical flashpoints when social progress for African Americans was countered by deliberate and cleverly crafted opposition, Anderson pulls back the veil that has long covered actions made in the name of protecting democracy, fiscal responsibility, or protection against fraud, rendering visible the long lineage of white rage. Compelling and dramatic in the unimpeachable history it relates, White Rage will add an important new dimension to the national conversation about race in America.

A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life:

 Between the eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, countless African Americans passed as white, leaving behind families and friends, roots and community. It was, as Allyson Hobbs writes, a chosen exile, a separation from one racial identity and the leap into another. This revelatory history of passing explores the possibilities and challenges that racial indeterminacy presented to men and women living in a country obsessed with racial distinctions. It also tells a tale of loss.As racial relations in America have evolved so has the significance of passing. To pass as white in the antebellum South was to escape the shackles of slavery. After emancipation, many African Americans came to regard passing as a form of betrayal, a selling of one’s birthright. When the initially hopeful period of Reconstruction proved short-lived, passing became an opportunity to defy Jim Crow and strike out on one’s own.Although black Americans who adopted white identities reaped benefits of expanded opportunity and mobility, Hobbs helps us to recognize and understand the grief, loneliness, and isolation that accompanied―and often outweighed―these rewards. By the dawning of the civil rights era, more and more racially mixed Americans felt the loss of kin and community was too much to bear, that it was time to “pass out” and embrace a black identity. Although recent decades have witnessed an increasingly multiracial society and a growing acceptance of hybridity, the problem of race and identity remains at the center of public debate and emotionally fraught personal decisions.

4. Immigration Theory:

The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America:  

A forgotten, dark chapter of American history with implications for the current day, The Guarded Gate tells the story of the scientists who argued that certain nationalities were inherently inferior, providing the intellectual justification for the harshest immigration law in American history. Brandished by the upper class Bostonians and New Yorkers—many of them progressives—who led the anti-immigration movement, the eugenic arguments helped keep hundreds of thousands of Jews, Italians, and other unwanted groups out of the US for more than 40 years.Over five years in the writing, The Guarded Gate tells the complete story from its beginning in 1895, when Henry Cabot Lodge and other Boston Brahmins launched their anti-immigrant campaign. In 1921, Vice President Calvin Coolidge declared that “biological laws” had proven the inferiority of southern and eastern Europeans; the restrictive law was enacted three years later.

Disabled Upon Arrival: Eugenics, Immigration, and the Construction of Race and Disability: 

In North America, immigration has never been about immigration. That was true in the early twentieth century when anti-immigrant rhetoric led to draconian crackdowns on the movement of bodies, and it is true today as new measures seek to construct migrants as dangerous and undesirable. This premise forms the crux of Jay Timothy Dolmage’s new book Disabled Upon Arrival: Eugenics, Immigration, and the Construction of Race and Disability, a compelling examination of the spaces, technologies, and discourses of immigration restriction during the peak period of North American immigration in the early twentieth century.Through careful archival research and consideration of the larger ideologies of racialization and xenophobia, Disabled Upon Arrival links anti-immigration rhetoric to eugenics—the flawed “science” of controlling human population based on racist and ableist ideas about bodily values. Dolmage casts an enlightening perspective on immigration restriction, showing how eugenic ideas about the value of bodies have never really gone away and revealing how such ideas and attitudes continue to cast groups and individuals as disabled upon arrival. 

The Workhouse: The People, The Places, The Life Behind Doors:

In this fully updated and revised edition of his best-selling book, Simon Fowler takes a fresh look at the workhouse and the people who sought help from it. He looks at how the system of the Poor Law - of which the workhouse was a key part - was organized and the men and women who ran the workhouses or were employed to care for the inmates. But above all this is the moving story of the tens of thousands of children, men, women and the elderly who were forced to endure grim conditions to survive in an unfeeling world. 

5. LGBT+ Social Theory/History:

Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution:

Covering American transgender history from the mid-twentieth century to today, Transgender History takes a chronological approach to the subject of transgender history, with each chapter covering major movements, writings, and events. Chapters cover the transsexual and transvestite communities in the years following World War II; trans radicalism and social change, which spanned from 1966 with the publication of The Transsexual Phenomenon, and lasted through the early 1970s; the mid-'70s to 1990-the era of identity politics and the changes witnessed in trans circles through these years; and the gender issues witnessed through the '90s and '00s.

Transgender History includes informative sidebars highlighting quotes from major texts and speeches in transgender history and brief biographies of key players, plus excerpts from transgender memoirs and discussion of treatments of transgenderism in popular culture.

6. Canadian Indigenous Theory/History:

The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America: 

Rich with dark and light, pain and magic, The Inconvenient Indian distills the insights gleaned from Thomas King's critical and personal meditation on what it means to be "Indian" in North America, weaving the curiously circular tale of the relationship between non-Natives and Natives in the centuries since the two first encountered each other. In the process, King refashions old stories about historical events and figures, takes a sideways look at film and pop culture, relates his own complex experiences with activism, and articulates a deep and revolutionary understanding of the cumulative effects of ever-shifting laws and treaties on Native peoples and lands. 

21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality:

Since its creation in 1876, the Indian Act has shaped, controlled, and constrained the lives and opportunities of Indigenous Peoples, and is at the root of many enduring stereotypes. Bob Joseph's book comes at a key time in the reconciliation process, when awareness from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities is at a crescendo. Joseph explains how Indigenous Peoples can step out from under the Indian Act and return to self-government, self-determination, and self-reliance - and why doing so would result in a better country for every Canadian. He dissects the complex issues around truth and reconciliation, and clearly demonstrates why learning about the Indian Act's cruel, enduring legacy is essential for the country to move toward true reconciliation.

Indigenous Relations: Insights, Tips & Suggestions to Make Reconciliation a Reality:

A timely sequel to the bestselling 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act - and an invaluable guide for anyone seeking to work more effectively with Indigenous Peoples.

We are all treaty people. But what are the everyday impacts of treaties, and how can we effectively work toward reconciliation if we're worried our words and actions will unintentionally cause harm?

Practical and inclusive, Indigenous Relations interprets the difference between hereditary and elected leadership, and why it matters; explains the intricacies of Aboriginal Rights and Title, and the treaty process; and demonstrates the lasting impact of the Indian Act, including the barriers that Indigenous communities face and the truth behind common myths and stereotypes perpetuated since Confederation.

Indigenous Relations equips you with the necessary knowledge to respectfully avoid missteps in your work and daily life, and offers an eight-part process to help business and government work more effectively with Indigenous Peoples - benefitting workplace culture as well as the bottom line. Indigenous Relations is an invaluable tool for anyone who wants to improve their cultural competency and undo the legacy of the Indian Act.

7. Toxic Masculinity:

Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era: 

One of the headlines of the 2012 Presidential campaign was the demise of the white American male voter as a dominant force in the political landscape. On election night four years later, when Donald Trump was announced the winner, it became clear that the white American male voter is alive and well and angry as hell. Sociologist Michael Kimmel, one of the leading writers on men and masculinity in the world today, has spent hundreds of hours in the company of America's angry white men – from white supremacists to men's rights activists to young students. In Angry White Men, he presents a comprehensive diagnosis of their fears, anxieties, and rage.Kimmel locates this increase in anger in the seismic economic, social and political shifts that have so transformed the American landscape. Downward mobility, increased racial and gender equality, and a tenacious clinging to an anachronistic ideology of masculinity has left many men feeling betrayed and bewildered. Raised to expect unparalleled social and economic privilege, white men are suffering today from what Kimmel calls "aggrieved entitlement": a sense that those benefits that white men believed were their due have been snatched away from them.

Happy reading, everyone. ♥

[veryfantasticstudent]

What happens after Evangelion? Posthumanity in 新世紀エヴァンゲリオン (Neon Genesis Evangelion)

I finally watched (and subsequently re-watched) the classic (and highly controversial anime) Neon Genesis Evangelion, thanks to Netflix’s partial acquisition of the rights to the show—they somehow forgot “Fly Me to the Moon”[1]. Evangelion is an anime about a lot of themes—too many, thanks to Hideaki Anno’s dodgy responses regarding its interpretations. Alienation and depression are at the center of it all. Countless articles will tell you that Anno was suffering from depression while working on Evangelion. Further, Japan had recently faced terrorist attacks in Tokyo, as well as a series of devastating earthquakes. In the face of such tragedies, Evangelion asks, what will become of us in the future? In a world where lives are arbitrarily lost, where we have no direction to go towards, how can humanity itself continue?

These are some of the bigger questions that Evangelion asks, and they connect to the more intimate, the more human questions it poses as well. How can two human beings form any connection when disasters like the Second Impact occur? The English title of the fourth episode of the series is “Hedgehog’s Dilemma”. Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer coined this term to express the complexity of human relationships; moving closer together—physically or mentally—means that we will hurt each other. And yet, this proximity is what we humans crave the most. How do we reconcile these conflicting desires and keep moving on in the face of tragedy? For many of us, these thoughts may not result from Second-Impact-scale disasters, but personal tragedies—the death of loved ones, or even the break-up of friendships or relationships. These feelings seem unconnected to the future of humanity, but as the series repeatedly emphasizes, the two are linked. Evangelion asks: how do we face tomorrow. In my essay, I propose that there multiple ways that Evangelion answers these questions, and all of them are linked to the notion of posthumanity.

Before I get into Evangelion we must clarify what I mean by “posthuman”. An umbrella-term, “posthuman” is literally what comes after humanity. It is the posthuman who must adapt to the new world that is altered by climate change, nuclear wars, alien life contact, and endless numbers of (not entirely) science-fictional scenarios. Bio-technological invasion of the human body alters the limits of a human being, extending us into our electronic environments, interfacing us with machines and artificial intelligence. This is a kind of posthumanity, often leaning towards calling the current human being a “cyborg” (in Donna Haraway’s term). A central aspect of posthumanity tends to be the displacement of the “rational thinking machine” of the Renaissance humanist. “Man” is no longer the measure of all things. The posthuman is as much an animal as any, and no longer claims a moral stature higher than its fellow earth inhabitants. It suggests an equality with everything, especially if we look at vitalist materialist Rose Braidotti’s stance in her book The Posthuman. These are the broad notions of the posthuman that I will work with for this essay.

The people in Evangelion are, in at least the bio-technological sense, posthuman. This is especially true for the three EVA pilots, who meld with their EVA Units. However, that is not enough to survive in this world. Humans are no longer allowed their aspirations, displaced as they are by repeated Angel attacks. They still do not connect with their environments—the futuristic landscapes of Tokyo-3 little more than blast shelters. Animals do not even survive in this world. There is something missing in even the humanity of the Evangelion human beings, and all characters can feel that. That is why there is a thrust to the posthuman in the show with the 人類補完成計画, translated as the Human Instrumentality Project, comes into play. 「人類方完成計画」means different things to different people and organizations—is not surprising, considering this is Evangelion. I see three major interpretations of this phrase, and these are the posthumanities of Evangelion, the humanities after the Evangelion series. These are the posthumanities of Seele, Ikari Gendō, and Ikari Shinji.

Let us start with Seele. “To return humanity to its original form”—this is the posthumanity of Seele. All individuality must be extinguished, and we must return to the primal forms of Lilith and Adam. Why Lilith? This is where my knowledge of the Christian tradition fails. As far as I know, Lilith was Adam’s first “companion”, but she never lay with him. Instead, she gave birth to all the monsters of the world. Often, she has been thought of as a witch. If you want an instance of Lilith close to the world, Jean E. Graham’s paper “Women, Sex, and Power: Circe and Lilith in Narnia” compares the White Witch of Narnia to Lilith. In fact, she is explicitly noted to be a descendant of Lilith. This is speculation, but it seems that we are all, then, descendants of Lilith. Not even those of Adam and Eve, we are irredeemable monsters, unless we go back to the form that bore us, and resume the innocence of the formless. This needs the destruction of the human, and in some ways, this is the end that Ayanami Rei almost leads us to.

Ikari Gendō’s posthumanity is a rogue form of Seele’s plan, insofar as is it wishes to bring together all the living and the dead. The show repeatedly tells us that Ayanami Rei is somehow connected to Ikari Yui, Ikari Gendō’s deceased wife. Most people seem to find this form of posthumanism twisted and somehow fundamentally wrong. Akagi Naoko found it disturbing enough to find Yui still shadowing her that she committed suicide.

Finally, we have the posthumanism of Ikari Shinji. This is how I read the last two episodes of Evangelion, the two episodes that make the least sense in an anime where few things make sense. Over the two episodes, the EVA pilots and other NERV personnel face the monsters that have haunted them throughout their lives and try to overcome them. Shinji’s fear is the fear of intimacy, of becoming close to people. He does not know how to open himself up without getting hurt, primarily because his father never showed him any warmth even after his mother gave herself up to EVA – 01. It is the Hedgehog’s Dilemma all over again. The primarily-teenage audience of Evangelion possibly relates the difficulties that Shinji faces, the inability to somehow “let loose” and connect with people freely. How can one do that when it is so easy to not only hurt others but also hurt oneself? This is what stops Shinji often taking decisive action and stops him from fully realizing himself.

The purpose of the last two Evangelion episodes is to show us how Shinji admits that he has been drawing walls in the way he imagines the world to be. In the alternative world that he dreams of, he acts the same way as his classmates—a carefree, horny, uninhibited, Japanese teenage male. It is just an altered version of a scene we have already witnessed before. It is important that this world is not radically different from his own world. The people are the same—his classmates and Misato still make the experiences of this world. If it can be done in that imaginary world, why not in this world? Shinji realizes that the world he has been looking for does not need to be an LCL-fuelled dream, but a world that he can inhabit. When Shinji rejects the dream world that Lilith-Rei gives him, Shinji accepts the difficulty of human existence. He accepts the borders that characterize the individual human and yet also looks to the possibility of moving beyond our borders and bonding with other people. The “congratulations” sequence in the original ending and the final scene of the 1997 movie (where he almost strangles Asuka), both accept the fact that people are always distinct, but there is no reason why we cannot connect with each other.

The show then inevitably puts its weight behind the last form of “perfection” or 「完成」(Kansei). This is how human realization should function. The show not only addresses teenage anxieties through this, but its rejection of other forms of perfection is important too. It rejects forms of human perfection that try to take us into some primordial past or try to erase all our distinctions. The erosion of borders, the assertion that we are all the same is, is as threatening as the assertion that some shadowy organization that does not even live among us can decide who is or is not a part of a community. Evangelion is prescient in the fact that not only does it see the creation of rigid borders as a problem, but it also sees that the complete dismissal of borders is not a solution either. I would like to think that it gives us tools to think about the problems of borders that we face in many regions of the world—whether it is the wars in the Middle East, the anti-immigrant agendas of Trump’s America and Modi’s India, the slowly digesting monster that is the PRC in Hong Kong, or even the xenophobia that countries like Korea and Japan still struggle with. Every individual must revaluate themselves before we blindly forge on this path that we call “humanity”. Maybe we all need to pause for a few days and watch Neon Genesis Evangelion before we create the cataclysm of the Second Impact.

[1] Before pointing out that Netflix’s dubbing and subbing has horribly altered the anime and therefore Evangelion has lost its essence, please note that I know Japanese. You can find that on my LinkedIn Page. Of course, I haven’t linked that anywhere on Tumblr, so don’t look for it.

[arcticdementor]

Well before Sigmund Freud formalized the idea of “projectionism”—the defense of one’s own shortcomings and sins by attributing them to others—it was a common theme in classical literature and the New Testament: the ridiculing of the mole on someone else’s nose to hide one’s own boil.

The term projection more or less sums up much of the woke identity politics movement, in which obsessions with racial privilege and tribal exceptionalism are justified by accusing others of just such bias.

…

In some sense, today’s hip new racists have adopted the ideology of Lester Maddox and not Martin Luther King, Jr. Segregation, not integration, is the new racist mantra—by dorm, by theme house, by caucus, by safe space, by graduation ceremony.

…

The logic of the tribe leads to sectarian warfare, not harmony. We see just that when Asians revolt against black and Latino preferences in college admissions. Feminists push back against the endemic misogyny of rap music that is given an intersectional pass to demean women and freely employ the n-word. There is sometimes less, not greater, tolerance for unapologetic homosexuality in supposedly hyper-macho Latino culture. Doctrinaire Islam makes few concessions for the Muslim convert to Christianity; he is still an infidel to be shunned, even killed.

…

Smollett, himself half-white, accused an innocent large segment of the U.S. population as racist without any worry of the consequences from such false charges. And rightly so: Smollett has faced little pushback, remains in the news, and believes that no one ultimately will dare to charge him as a racist who committed a hate-crime.

The Covington Catholic fiasco illustrated the same modus operandi. Native American activist Nathan Phillips sought media exposure and careerist advantage by deliberately confronting a group of young Catholic students on the National Mall. Phillips hoped the resulting staged optics would show privileged, male, young, white Christians with red MAGA hats haranguing a wizened Native American elder and Vietnam veteran.

…

Most of the media bought his ruse and have retreated to the usual fallback defense for faked racist accusations: in a racist America, the charges could in theory have been true, and therefore that they were demonstrably not true this time means little.

…

The new racism is epidemic among those in the so-called squad, the self-referenced nickname for four media-obsessed, first-term congressional representatives, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who without their daily charges of bias largely would be unknown back-benchers laboring away in obscurity.

Take Pressley’s recent formulation of the new racism at a recent Netroots Nation conference:

If you’re not prepared to come to that table and represent that voice, don’t come, because we don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice. We don’t need black faces that don’t want to be a black voice. We don’t need Muslims that don’t want to be a Muslim voice. We don’t need queers that don’t want to be a queer voice. If you’re worried about being marginalized and stereotyped, please don’t even show up because we need you to represent that voice.

In sum, Pressley just outlined the classic anti-Enlightenment mindset: we are all permanent captives of our superficial race, religion, and sexual orientation. We must at all times think, act, and speak in such tribal fashion—and do so monolithically and collectively, in adopting the party line as set down by such elites as those like Pressley herself.

Blacks who oppose affirmative action, or Muslims who recognize Israel, or “queers” whose sexual preferences are incidental, not essential to their personas are thus declared not authentic and thus not to be welcomed by Pressley into the new racialist Democratic Party.

In practical terms, Pressley assumes that whites, reportedly about 70 percent of the population, tune her logic out. That is, they should never take her own racist advice and vote en masse according to their superficial shared skin color. If they did, the 55 percent of actual voters who are white in her otherwise minority-majority congressional district might never have elected someone who, according to her own rationale, is not part of their own tribe.

…

No matter. There is no exemption from being charged with racism for old, rich, white, and liberal females like Pelosi. In the new racist cosmology, the multimillionaire Pelosi can never escape her white privilege. One element of the new racism is thus Jacobinism—the idea that the circle of racists always widens until the racists devour one another with charges that everyone but themselves is insufficiently racially woke.

Smollett taught us that is was not enough for a gay man to be attacked by homophobes, or a liberal crusader to be attacked by right-wing Trumpers, or a black man to be attacked by white racists. In the ever-spiraling rules of woke racism, only a gay, left-wing, and black victim can win singular revolutionary authority—and only when invented Trump fanatics scream racial taunts and routinely patrol the liberal neighborhoods of Chicago nightly armed with bleach and nooses.

On matters of immigration, it is no longer enough to endorse the old bipartisan compromises on border security and amnesties or to see the problem as one of illegality. No longer is it sufficient to advocate making DACA the law of the land and extending amnesty to the “dreamers.” Now instead the border has become for some presidential candidates an existential racial question of bringing in millions of supposedly “nonwhite” rather than just illegal immigrants—and in public photo ops escorting them as they illegally cross the border—providing them with amnesty, legal residency, sanctuary from immigration enforcement, and free health care, while calling anyone a “racist” who complains that such caravan immigration is not diverse, legal, measured or meritocratic.

[bountyofbeads]

8chan, Trump, voter suppression: how white supremacy went mainstream in the US

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/11/el-paso-shooting-white-supremacy-8chan-voter-suppression?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Post_to_Tumblr

"In many ways, the Republican party has been preparing for minority rule for years now. The anxiety that drove the shooter in El Paso, as well as every other white supremacist mass shooter in recent years, has motivated Republican politicians to steadily demonize and disenfranchise populations that don’t vote for them. The problem long predates Donald Trump, but he’s given taken both the mask and the leash off of it."

8chan, Trump, Voter Suppression: How White Supremacy Went Mainstream In The US

The same anxiety that drives white supremacists has motivated Republicans to disenfranchise populations that don’t vote for them

By Luke Darby | Published:02:00 Sun August 11, 2019 | The Guardian | Posted August 11, 2019 7:54 PM ET |

Before he opened fire on an El Paso, Texas shopping center, killing 22 people and injuring dozens more, the accused gunman, Patrick Crusius, allegedly posted a manifesto online explicitly stating his motivation: he was trying to stop a “Hispanic invasion of Texas”. In April, another shooter attacked a synagogue in Poway, California, killing one woman and wounding three other people. In his a “manifesto” attributed to him, he claimed he was responding to the “meticulously planned genocide of the European race”.

In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in October 2018, still another shooter attacked a synagogue that he chose deliberately because the congregation helped with refugee relocation. He wrote online that they were trying to “bring invaders in that kill our people”. The man who murdered 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, earlier this year, called immigration an “assault on the European people”..

All of these shooters were obsessed with the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, sometimes referred to as “white genocide”. It’s the idea that shadowy elites – usually Jewish, almost always liberal – are orchestrating the destruction of white culture through demographic change. The theory goes that white culture will be eroded mainly through migration and birthrates: more people of color are arriving in majority white counties, the ones already there are having more and more babies, and birthrates are declining for the soon-to-be-oppressed white people.

But the fans of this theory, and the idea of a demographic threat to a white (male) hierarchical structure, are no longer the preserve of extremists that lurk in the netherworlds of the internet. White supremacy, and the ideas and motivations that drive it, are flourishing in plain sight in the US.

Most notoriously, Donald Trump has become a fan of “great replacement” talking points. In the last week many of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates have called the president a white supremacist. But Trump is far from being alone, and in recent years the idea has caught fire among more and more mainstream Republicans. The looming threat of their losing political influence permeates every move the party has made for decades.

Anxiety about racial decline has a long past, but this specific modern version of it comes from the French writer Renaud Camus, who was known in the 80s as a pioneering gay novelist. He coined the phrase “great replacement” in a 2011 book of the same name, articulating the conspiratorial idea that black and brown migrants are invading Europe to destroy white culture.

It’s a weird path that takes the ideas of a race-obsessed French novelist into the Trump White House, but it has been helped along by Rupert Murdoch’s pugilistic network, Fox News. One of the network’s standout hosts, Tucker Carlson, is probably the most clear-cut example: in August 2018, he dedicated a segment of his show to a story about black gangs killing white farmers in South Africa and the government then seizing their land. It’s a widely shared rumor online, popular with white nationalists because it seemed like an example of a government literally committing white genocide, but there’s no evidence that it is true. Carlson ultimately retracted the story, but not before Trump tweeted that he was directing the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to investigate.

Even when Carlson’s show isn’t clearly cribbing notes from white nationalist forums, he’s promoting their ideas in slightly more coded ways. He has railed against diversity, asking rhetorically: “How exactly is diversity our strength?” In 2018 he complained about  demographic change in the US, saying: “This is more change than human beings are designed to digest,” and adding: “Our leaders are for diversity, just not where they live.” Andrew Anglin, who founded the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer, has called Carlson “literally our greatest ally”. After Carlson’s South Africa segment, Anglin said Tucker Carlson Tonight is “basically Daily Stormer: The Show.”

Experts in white supremacist thought largely agree that Trump is actively spreading the ideas that underpin this ideology. Christian Picciolini, US author of Memoirs of a Skinhead and former neo-Nazi who set up Life After Hate, a not-for-profit that aims to deradicalize extremists, said: “Donald Trump is using nearly identical language to what white supremacist movement language is, language that I used 30 years ago in lyrics and in promoting white supremacist ideology.”

Alexandra Minna Stern, professor on the history of eugenics and author of Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination, said: “The way I describe it is that President Trump has really set up a baseline for bigotry in political discourse in the United States that has helped create the terrain where this is more possible.”

And other frontline Republicans are following Trump’s lead. In 2017, the Iowa congressman and standard-bearer of the far right Steve King tweeted: “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” In a 2018 interview with an extreme rightwing propaganda site in Austria, King proved he was fluent in white nationalist tropes, saying: “If we don’t defend western civilization, then we will become subjugated by the people who are the enemies of faith, the enemies of justice.”

The rise of white supremacy is being driven in part by demographic change – although racism has flourished in the US long before whites were in sight of losing their position as the majority. The US census predicts that by 2050 white people will no longer be the majority in the country. A Census Bureau report from 2015 predicted that by the time the 2020 census is conducted, more than half of American school children will be non-white, meaning that “majority minority” future will be baked in unless something drastic changes it.

White people will still be the the largest demographic, they will no longer be in a majority. According to a study by the Pew Research Center, the number of white adults who believe “a majority non-white population will weaken American culture” is 46%.

Things look even worse if you are a Republican politician. Decades of playing to white grievances plus years of relentlessly maligning the first black president have stymied their ability to win support from non-white voters. After 2012, when Mitt Romney failed to even come close to unseating then president Barack Obama, the Republican National Committee commissioned a so-called “autopsy report” that predicted doom if the party couldn’t right itself: “America is changing demographically, and unless Republicans are able to grow our appeal the way GOP governors have done, the changes tilt the playing field even more in the Democratic direction. If we want ethnic minority voters to support Republicans, we have to engage them and show our sincerity.”

That hasn’t happened. Instead of trying to peel off voters who typical side with Democrats – women, minorities, moderates – Republicans have aggressively focused on making sure people who aren’t likely to vote for them don’t vote at all. In the US voter suppression – the act of denying the vote to minority and poor communities who are likely to be Democratic supporters – is thriving. In the last decade, 33 million people have been purged from voter rolls across the country – predominantly in districts with large percentages of non-white voters. In 2013, the supreme court gutted the Voting Rights Act. The state of North Carolina passed voter suppression laws so flagrant that the federal court said they targeted black voters with “almost surgical precision”.

Last year voters in Florida overwhelmingly chose to re-enfranchise 1.5 million people with felony convictions; after the vote the state legislature chose to add a requirement that none of those ex-felons can vote until they repay all court fees, effectively bringing back the poll tax which restricted voting among minority groups for decades.

Carole Anderson, academic and author of last year’s One Person, No Vote and a leading figure in the fight against voter suppression, wrote in the Guardian last week about the 33 million Americans purged from the voting rolls. “To put this in perspective, that is the equivalent of the combined  populations of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego, Phoenix and Dallas, as well as the states of Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa and Idaho. Not surprisingly, these massive removals are concentrated in precincts that tend to have higher minority populations and vote Democratic. Similarly, other voter suppression techniques, such as poll closures, deliberate long lines on election day, voter ID laws and extreme partisan gerrymandering all weigh disproportionately on minorities and urban areas.”

Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now

Paul Weyrich

Voter suppression isn’t necessarily a new tactic. In a 1980 speech to fellow conservatives, Paul Weyrich, one of the men who helped found arch-conservative institutions such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), the Moral Majority and the Heritage Foundation, said: “I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

What has changed is the demographic projections. And if Republicans can’t compete in the new electoral landscape, then it is in their best interest to freeze the official electorate in place. One way to achieve this is partisan gerrymandering, redrawing voting districts so that they’re easier for Republicans to win. Incredibly, the supreme court in June ruled that federal courts were powerless to hear challenges to partisan gerrymandering – even in a case in which the party that controls the state legislature draws voting maps to explicitly elect its candidates.

In an excoriating dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan and the supreme court’s liberal justices accused the court’s majority of shirking its constitutional duty. “The partisan gerrymanders in these cases deprived citizens of the most fundamental of their constitutional rights: the rights to participate equally in the political process, to join with others to advance political beliefs and to choose their political representatives.

“The partisan gerrymanders here debased and dishonored our democracy, turning upside-down the core American idea that all governmental power derives from the people. If left unchecked, gerrymanders like the ones here may irreparably damage our system of government.

Of all times to abandon the court’s duty to declare the law, this was not the one.”

Even in terms of raw numbers, the Republicans are at a disadvantage. There are 12 million more registered Democrats than Republicans in the US, but Republican control of the federal government is almost absolute. In part, that’s because institutions such as the electoral college and the Senate itself are wildly undemocratic, in the sense that both are structured so that one party can claim victory without actually receiving the most votes. In 2016, Democratic senators won 6m more votes than Republican ones, yet Republicans firmly held their majority.

The Senate distributes two seats a state, meaning that states with large multiracial populations and more Democratic voters (California, Texas, New York) get exactly the same representation as those populated by older – and often Republican – white people. As Jamelle Bouie noted in the New York Times: “Today, the largest state is California, with nearly 40 million residents, and the smallest is Wyoming, with just under 600,000 people, a disparity that gives a person in Wyoming 67 times the voting power of one in California.

“As it stands now, the Senate is highly undemocratic and strikingly unrepresentative, with an affluent membership composed mostly of white men, who are about 30% of the population but hold 71 of the seats. Under current demographic trends this will get worse, as whites become a plurality of all Americans but remain a majority in most states.”

And while elected officials can at least – in theory, and with ever-greater difficulty – be voted out of office, that is not the case for the justices on the supreme court who wield extraordinary power, as the recent partisan gerrymandering case reveals. Trump has so far appointed two supreme court justices.

Law professor Ian Samuel explained, in relation to Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation – Trump’s first appointment – that it was the first time “a president who lost the popular vote had a supreme court nominee confirmed by senators who received fewer votes – nearly 22m fewer – than the senators that voted against him”.

For his second pick, Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s choice to replace the moderate Anthony Kennedy, the senators who voted against him represented 38 million more people than the ones who voted to confirm.

In many ways, the Republican party has been preparing for minority rule for years now. The anxiety that drove the shooter in El Paso, as well as every other white supremacist mass shooter in recent years, has motivated Republican politicians to steadily demonize and disenfranchise populations that don’t vote for them. The problem long predates Donald Trump, but he’s given taken both the mask and the leash off of it.

[nicholsonespersen22-blog]

Sex Workers To Get HIV Treatment, ARVs

Sex Workers To Get HIV Treatment, ARVs

South Africa has embarked on Africa’s first strategy to treat and prevent HIV among sex workers. South Africa will soon begin providing HIV treatment to HIV-positive sex workers upon diagnosis as part of its new announced national plan. Currently, most people living with HIV must wait until their CD4 counts - a measure of the immune system’s strength - fall to 500 before they can start treatment. At least 3 000 HIV-negative sex workers will also receive the combination ARV Truvada to prevent contracting HIV. When taken daily as https://www.2nd-circle.com/escorts-madrid/ -exposure prophylaxis, Truvada can reduce a person’s risk of contracting HIV by about 90 percent. In December, South Africa became the first country in southern Africa to register Truvada, which combines the ARVs emtricitabine and tenofovir, for use as prevention in December.

South Africa National AIDS Council (SANAC) CEO Dr Fareed Abdullah credited Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi for driving the plan’s creation. The plan comes on the heels of research released that found about 72 percent of Johannesburg sex workers surveyed were living with HIV. “The good news is that sex workers are showing a lot of responsibility and about three-fourths of sex workers are using condoms with their clients,” said South Africa National AIDS Council (SANAC) CEO Dr Fareed Abdullah. The bad news is although more than 90 percent of sex workers surveyed had tested for HIV, less than a third of those who were living with HIV had received treatment - far less than the national average, Abdullah added. Sex work is estimated to account for as much as 20 percent of new HIV infections in South Africa, according to Deputy Health Minister Joe Phaahla.

The three-year national plan also aims to reach 70 000 sex workers with a standardised package of services, including PrEP adherence support, delivered in part via a network of 1 000 of their peers. Deputy President and SANAC Chair Cyril Ramaphosa called the plan a chance for South Africans to affirm their rights. “This plan is about the human rights, about the rights of ordinary people,” he said. “Sex work is essentially work,” said Ramaphosa, who ended his address by embracing national leader of the Sisonke sex worker movement Kholi Buthelezi. Buthelezi joined other sex workers in calling for decriminalisation of sex workers to remain on the national agenda. “We are the vanguards of pleasure,” said Mpumalanga sex worker Lesly Mntambo. “Stop criminalising my adult body and what it is capable of doing.

In order to set them apart from "decent" women and avoid confusion, the church required that prostitutes adopt some type of distinctive clothing, which each particular city government was allowed to select. Those who argued against prostitution suggested all sorts of reasons for its existence. Andreuccio in II.5. This young woman is presented as extremely clever and exceedingly cruel. Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Decameron. Trans. G. H. McWilliam. Brundage, James A. Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. Bullough, Vern L. "Prostitution in the Later Middle Ages." Sexual Practices and the Medieval Church. Ed. Vern L. Bullough and James Brundage. Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1982, pp.176-86. Karras, Ruth Mazo. "Prostitution in Medieval Europe." Handbook of Medieval Sexuality. Ed. Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1996, pp. Richards, Jeffrey. Sex, Dissidence and Damnation: Minority Groups in the Middle Ages.

Getting a gang tattoo is about as smart as getting your girlfriend's name tattooed on your arm. Like you're never going to break up. Another thing to consider is what you want to take pride in representing. Is selling crack or date rape drug really something to brag about? What about Otis Garret and Dave Picton? The Hells Angels deny everything and keep secrets from their own members. They only reveal things on a need to know basis. Otis Garret was incarcerated for running a Hells Angels prostitution ring in San Fransisco. The woman who testified against him was murdered along with her twin seven year old daughters. There is nothing there to be proud of. I know a guy who wears Big Red Machine support gear. I asked about them selling crack and he just said he didn't ask about that part of the business. To me wearing support gear is like wearing a T-shirt that says I support Clifford Olsen and getting a Hells Angels tattoo is like saying I support Dave Picton. Something they did but deny.

When researchers taught capuchin monkeys how to use money, it didn’t take long for one of the male monkeys to offer a female one of the coins in exchange for sex. Prostitution is often called “the world’s oldest profession” with good reason; it is a form of exchange that predates the human species, and has even been observed among chimpanzees. Males tend to want sex much more frequently than most females are willing to accommodate, and where a demand exists it is inevitable that some individuals will choose to meet it for a price. The terminology used to discuss this subject is probably unfamiliar to some readers, so a short summary may be in order.

First and foremost is “sex work,” an umbrella term for all forms of labor in which the sexual gratification of the customer is the primary focus. Prostitution, stripping, acting in adult movies, providing phone sex, and the like are included. As you can probably guess, the boundaries are somewhat fuzzy; some dominatrices and burlesque dancers consider themselves sex workers, while others vociferously insist they aren’t. But in general, a “sex worker” is one whose job is specifically focused on the customer’s gratification, not merely tangential to it. As with the term “sex work” itself, there is some controversy regarding the exact meanings and extent of the terms for the various models of legislation.

I find that the simplest and most useful categorization divides all of the individual legal schemes into three broad categories. In the first, criminalization, the act of selling sex itself is illegal; despite the common American perception that this model is nigh-universal, it is actually the least common in the developed world. The United States and several communist and recently-communist countries are the only large nations which have full criminalization, but in the Swedish model (also called the Nordic model), only the act of paying for sex is de jure prohibited. The most common system, found in the majority of European, Commonwealth, and Latin American countries, is legalization. The act of taking money for sex is not illegal in and of itself; rather, certain activities associated with it are.

The specific activities prohibited under legalization schemes vary widely and arbitrarily; for example, while brothels are illegal in Canada, in Nevada they are the only legal venue for selling sex. Specific regimes also vary widely in extent: while in some there are so many prohibitions the act itself becomes de facto illegal, others differ from decriminalization by only the narrowest of margins. The third model, decriminalization, is at present found only in New Zealand and the Australian state of New South Wales. Under this system, sex work is recognized as a form of work like any other, and therefore not subject to any laws that do not bind other businesses. For example, brothels are regulated by zoning laws and the like rather than subjected to special criminal laws; sex workers are responsible for taxes and covered by workers’ compensation programs, and so forth.

For most of history, sex work was generally unregulated; exceptions to that rule were frequent, but nearly always local and temporary. ” And in the Far East, most of the laws were designed to maintain the rigid social order and class structure of those societies, rather than to police the private sexual arrangements of individuals. Indeed, up until the nineteenth century almost nobody imagined that prohibition could be done, let alone that it should. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the “white slavery” hysteria was in full swing. Yet despite this complete failure, Swedish-style rhetoric has been heavily marketed to other countries. …International authorities regard the NSW regulatory framework as best practice. Contrary to early concerns the NSW sex industry has not increased in size or visibility…Licensing of sex work…should not be regarded as a viable legislative response.

New Zealand decriminalized in 2003, with similar results; neither jurisdiction has had a credible report of “sex trafficking” in years. The reason for this should be obvious: despite the claims of prohibitionists to the contrary, the strongest hold any exploitative employer has over coerced workers is the threat of legal consequences such as arrest or deportation. Remove those consequences by easing immigration controls and decriminalizing the work, and both the motive and means for “trafficking” vanish. There is a popular belief, vigorously promulgated by anti-sex feminists and conservative Christians, that sex work is intrinsically harmful, and therefore should be banned to “protect” adult women from our own choices. But as the Norwegian bioethicist Dr. Ole Moen pointed out in his 2012 paper “Is Prostitution Harmful? ”, the same thing was once believed about homosexuality; it was said to lead to violence, drug use, disease, and mental illness.

These problems were not caused by homosexuality itself; they were the result of legal oppression and social stigma, and once those harmful factors were removed the “associated problems” vanished as well. Dr. Moen suggests that the same thing will happen with sex work, and evidence from New South Wales strongly indicates that he is correct. Sex worker rights activists have a slogan: “Sex work is work.” It is not a crime, nor a scam, nor a “lazy” way to get by, nor a form of oppression. It is a personal service, akin to massage, or nursing, or counseling, and should be treated as such.

The sex industries around the world are associated with serious forms of marginalisation, violence, exploitation, and even forced labour. Media, research, and fiction tell stories of sex workers being abused, exploited, and trafficked. They do it so often that we become almost indifferent to it, as almost always happens in front of horror. A sex worker killed in the Italian countryside, a sex worker robbed in Rio de Janeiro during a transaction, a sex worker leaping to her death from a brothel in Seoul. Poor people, what a life. Gendered, racist, classist, homophobic, and transphobic violence haunts the world of sex work, and many of us believe that states, intergovernmental organisations, and NGOs should do more to help.

Yet a lot is being done. Indeed, one finds that, especially following the 2000 UN Palermo Protocol, the last decade has seen a multiplication of interventions ‘against sex trafficking and exploitation in prostitution’ (see for instance UNODC). The problem is the efficacy of these interventions, as it is abundantly clear that the situation has not demonstrably improved in the intervening time. Poor people, what a world. But is there something more to know? We believe there is. This series addresses the violence, exploitation, abuse, and trafficking present in the sex industries, but it does so from the perspective of sex workers themselves. These are the women, men, and transgender people who are directly touched by the abuse, exploitation, and trafficking under discussion, and they are the people who actively and collectively resist all forms of violence against them.

By publishing their voices directly we hope to help readers resist indifference, on the one hand, and to become more critical of states’ interventions, which are widely regarded and legitimated as necessary to combat ‘trafficking’, on the other. All the authors of this series are involved in sex workers’ organising or have been in the past. This means that they are or have been part of organisations composed of, or at least led by, people who have direct experience selling sex. It is our hope that their contributions over the next two weeks will convey some of the radical richness and diversity of knowledge produced within the contemporary sex workers movement.

This movement is fragmented, stigmatised, and under-funded, yet it has continued to expand since its birth in the mid 1970s in Europe, the US, and Latin America. It now involves at least 273 groups that are part of the Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP), and many more individuals all over the continents. They have organised despite the fact that speaking out as a sex worker puts your relationships and families at risk. It exposes you to threats from your ‘employers' and may lead to harassment or arrest by the police, especially if you are an undocumented migrant. You may lose your political credibility, and even be accused of representing the interests of ‘pimps’ and taking money from them.

[sirfrogsworth]

Another sterling example of The_Donald subreddit. A forum that reddit admins refuse to shut down.

Part of the typical "American Dream" many conservatives cling to is the classic nuclear family. A mom and a dad. A couple of kids. Maybe even a white picket fence. It's the way things used to be in the "good ol' days." Looking backwards is part of the obsession Trump supporters have and why they are so attracted to the "Again" part of "Make American Great Again."

The classic nuclear family was not always as idyllic as Leave it to Beaver. In the past, many people trapped themselves within these families with no escape. Dad would go to work. Mom would stay home with the kids. But if mom ever needed to get out of an abusive or troubled marriage, it was not always feasible. Some see the high divorce rates as a troubling statistic. But in many cases it is a sign of progress. It is a sign that people are no longer content with lives lacking love.

In the good ol' days many women didn't have great options for supporting themselves, much less their children. Church and society would put pressure on everyone to "work it out." Appearances were more important than happiness. And divorce was an insult to God. “Your husband works so hard, how could one be so ungrateful for the good life he is providing you? Right?”

Trump supporters have this blind nostalgia for simpler times when women had fewer choices. They want to go back to a time where once men put on that ring, they no longer had to try. Just make the money and let the missus do the rest. They are convinced those were happier times. Chances are that many of their parents just put on happy facades and never revealed just how miserable the good ol’ days actually were. 

There are two small problems challenging these Trump acolytes' ideal family worldview. The Trumps and the Obamas. 

First, they must convince themselves their glorious leader is a traditional Christian family man. Which is quite the mental magic trick. Personally, his family is not a big concern of mine. I worry more about his crazed ambitions as president. But conservatives often claim Christian family values are the key to a better America. Which makes Trump a confusing choice in the eyes of most liberals. 

When I look at the photo above I can’t help thinking about how fake this “real family” seems to be.

Trump has three wives. He would have an affair, divorce one wife, and then marry his partner in infidelity. (As long as she was worthy and not a porn star.) Cheat, rinse, repeat. He also has five children spread out between those three wives. If Trump was a liberal person of color, I can't even imagine the depth of the racist comments he would endure. His wealth and white privilege have created this epic shield from conservative criticism. If Obama had this same family dynamic we would not hear the end of it. Especially if his wives were immigrants. 

I do think Trump’s male supporters genuinely admire his parenting style though. Trump readily admits that all of the child rearing is the woman's work. He would brag about never changing a diaper. And he gets praise for being a horrible, absentee father. Thanks to his epic fathering skills I believe his children have grown up to be... interesting individuals. His grown sons both look and act like 80s villains in a movie about shady business dealings. Ivanka has this perfect exterior, both aesthetically and behaviorally. Her words are so carefully chosen and empty that it is nearly impossible to discern who she really is. Poor Tiffany must constantly remind her father that she exists. Barron is a wild card. I really hope he has a chance at some kind of normalcy. Which is a very telling statement. I’ve heard many people express concern for Barron’s future well being. I’ve never heard anyone concerned about Sasha and Malia. And I’m pretty sure that is because everyone knows they’ll probably turn out great. 

And that is why the biggest issue when trying to prop up the Trump family is actually the Obama family. Apparently this is a very important comparison to both Trump and his followers. Instead of being the giant clusterheck that the Trumps are, the Obamas actually fit the ideal nuclear family to a tee. They are a Norman Rockwell painting come to life. What must be even more frustrating is that they don't just appear to be idyllic... in reality they are actually a successful, happy family. They love and support each other. No mistresses or porn stars. No divorce. No scandals. They challenge common stereotypes Trump supporters have about black families. Heck, they're even good Christian folk who actually go to church from time to time.

This must really make these alt-right Trumpnuggets insane. This black fella they hate is a much better family man than their Great Orange Hope. The Obamas are Making America Great and they didn’t even need the “Again.”

Progressives are less concerned with folks fitting into stereotypical nuclear families. We generally prioritize the safety and happiness of everyone involved. If there is an abusive spouse... divorce them. Get away. If the woman is in a better position to bring home the bacon... go get it, girl. If two men or two women can support and love a child that needs a home... well... love is all you need. Adopt that cutie patootie! But we love families like the Obamas too. It wasn't a huge priority when we were choosing a president, but I will say there is some satisfaction knowing how much that stable family dynamic annoys the opposition. And it can be humorous to see them turn their hypocrisy up to 11 when speaking of the beautiful, totally normal Trump clan. 

Soooo... when it came time to compare the Obamas to the Trumps, their only choice was to create a fiction. It would destroy their worldview and probably melt their brains if Obama did something way better than Trump. Clearly, creating a nonsensical conspiracy was the best way to go.

There is a clip of Michelle Obama on The Ellen Show in which her pants fold in such a way that it bares a slight resemblance to a penis. Some claim to even see testicles as well. It’s the Trump supporter version of seeing the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich. 

To see this mythical penis you have to freeze frame, squint your eyes, turn your head to the left, run video enhancing algorithms, boost the contrast, sharpen the pixels, wave fairy dust... but once you do all that... it's totally proof positive of a big swingin' dick. It’s so apparent that they need to put bright yellow circles around it.

Welp... I’m convinced. 

Though, perhaps another angle with red arrows would make this damning evidence more substantial. 

I have seen quite a few penises in my day and I can say without a doubt this is the most penisy image I have encountered. It’s almost too clear. I think it would be better if it had more grain and more pixelation. There is no other explanation. I’ve never had the fabric in my crotch area bunch up. It’s just not a thing that happens. 

This was their light bulb moment. The perfect way to destroy the image of this perfect Obama family. Just connect all of the imaginary dots and it is clear what is going on.

First, the forensic video evidence of a penis. Then there are the toned, muscular arms. I mean, women don't do push ups. That's madness! Clearly the only explanation is elevated testosterone. Next, if you look closely, you can almost see an Adam's apple. It's very subtle. As if it isn't really there. But with a little photoshop copy/paste magic, you can totally see it. And the last groundbreaking clue... the name Michelle looks and sounds similar to Michael. 

*GASP* 

Those names have some of the very same letters you guys! This can mean only one thing!

Michelle Michael Obama... is a man, man!

Which means Barack Hussein Obama is actually... gay!

And since a man and a man can't have children... Sasha and Malia were adopted!

Or. OR! ORRR!!! They were kidnapped! (An actual thing some of them believe.)

So... yeah. This was their solution. This was how they made the Obamas the dysfunctional liberal family nightmare and the Trumps the real American Dream. Another mass delusion to secure a shaky worldview. Only a conspiracy of this magnitude could shore up their fragile house of cards.

Some of you might think, "They can't possibly believe that, right?" 

Do not underestimate these MAGA morons. I'm sure there are those that are aware this is a farce. But they are like the Delusion Keepers. A secret society that helps protect the bullshit bubble. That justifies all the hypocrisy. It is their job to disseminate the information and make it believable enough for the average Trump follower. (Which isn't hard.) All they need is to convince enough people of the lie and maintain peak loyalty within the ranks. 

As suggested in The Art of War, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” Which means I probably spend way too much time in Trump forums getting to know the enemy. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen this “Michelle is a man” thing thrown around as a casual fact. Never challenged. Never disputed. They all call her Michael without hesitation. 

The saddest part is they believe being transgender is this great insult. They think transgender women are all men in disguise. In actuality, it's an insult to call someone something they are not. It's an insult to say that having a transgender First Lady is some horrible thing. It's an insult to anyone who loves a transgender person and raises a family with them. They can be every bit the American Dream as anyone else. Because in the end...

Love is all you need.

Check out these Real Americans. 

[canaryrecords]

An unfinished obit for Leo Sarkisian (January 4, 1921 – June 8, 2018): Leo Sarkisian arrived home from World War II as a man in his mid-20s with nine battle stars including a bronze star “for meritorious service” and initiative, energy, and perseverance. He had volunteered straight out of art school in September, 1942 and for a year a half had been a topographical cartographer for the U.S., stationed in Algeria as part of Engineer Intelligence Services. Because he had been tasked with studying overhead photographs of German bases in Salerno, he was sent in with the Commandos in Italy because he knew the lay of the land. He walked in with the assault. A third of the U.S. force died. He had seen that – friends his age. The war over, Sarkisian lived first with his uncle, a dry cleaner, in New York City on 8th Avenue near 24th Street. His uncle got him a job as an illustrator – magazines and books – during the day. Lots of Armenians were engravers and illustrators. At night, he went out and listened to music and drank and blew his wages in jazz clubs in the Village listening to Artie Shaw, Lionel Hampton, and Vido Musso, Benny Goodman’s Italian tenor saxophonist. Leo had always been a clarinetist himself and played jazz. Then there were the “oriental” clubs up and down 8th Ave, where music in Turkish, Greek, and Armenian thrived among the immigrants - The Egyptian Gardens, The Brittania. The music there was close to the music from childhood in Lawrence, Massachusetts, where the older Armenian men played oud, violin, zurna, and dumbek and sang Ottoman folk songs in Turkish, listening to Marko Melkon and “Sugar Mary” Vartanian, and Louis Matalon, Sephardic Jew at whose side Leo often sat, watching him play the 72-string dulcimer, the kanun. That was when Leo wasn’t throwing money at the dancers or ordering another drink. And it was like the fleeting, fun nights in Rabat and Casablanca when Leo had heard Arabs playing the same instruments with bellydancers. There was one night when he had been chased off by the French police because the music “stirred up the locals.” There was another when he had a moment of stardom because he, an American G.I., had gotten up and played oud and rocked the house. A bellydancer had wrapped her arms around him because played a song he knew from back in Lawrence. The nightclubs in New York were for the weekends. Weeknights were all in the New York Public Library. Four nights a week, Leo read anything about music from Asia and Africa. There he saw patterns of expansion of instruments and ideas. The kanun and its scales travel from here to there. One instrument travels to another place. A local instrument replaces it, but the idea of how it’s played remains. There is a connection from the Ottoman Empire to the Arab world. Then, Africa to India and China… There is a deep musical connection among all of these people, including a boy from Lawrence, Massachusetts who feel compelled under the city’s lights to understand how his own feeling of music connects so many other people. “I don’t know why,” he told me in 2014, when he was 94 years old. “I’m reading, reading all this stuff. There was something in me that I had that feeling that whoever wrote those books didn’t really have that feeling… Even if someone does get a degree in music and stuff like that, there’s something between – under – inside of you. They can’t get that.” Leo’s father arrived through the port of Boston from Diyarbekir in present-day Turkey in 1901 with the great wave of Armenian immigration following the Hammidean massacres of 1891-96. A quarter of a million Armenians died in that wave of killings, twenty years before more than a million more Armenians were killed by Ottoman forces. That moment coincided with one of the largest waves of emigration to the United States that the country ever saw with Christians and Jews from Eastern and Southern Europe flowing in to just the port of New York, never mind Boston, San Francisco, or anywhere else, at a rate of 1,000 souls a day, week after week, year after year, decade after decade. Most of them came from Eastern and Southern Europe, meaning that most of them were not from the Northern European counties who were the culturally dominant ethnic stock of the U.S. That wave came only about forty years after the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the U.S. gave equal protection to all naturalized (male) citizens to the U.S., including the right to vote. The existing Protestant majority of the U.S. took such a dim view of idea that the Catholic and Jewish immigrants might vote that Congress had hearings in which mid-Western eugenicist authorities argued effectively that the breeding stock of the U.S. would be diluted if a serious change in immigration policy were not implemented. With the 1896 Chinese Exclusion Act as precedent, in 1924, three years after Leo Sarkisian was born and nine years after the genocide in the Ottoman Empire, the Reed-Johnson act set quotas for immigrants by country of origin, based on a complicated set of mathematics aimed at keeping the U.S. ethnically stable and exactly as White as it ever was. 51,227 Germans were allowed to emigrate each year. 54,009 from Great Britain and Northern Ireland. 5,982 from Poland. Only 120 Armenians a year were allowed. Zero from Africa or Asia. Living in a room over beer joint in the Village in 1952, Leo showed a friend of his some notes he’d made on Central Asian music at the library. He’d made some smart connections between the descriptions of one imperialist traveler and other, and when Leo’s friend showed them to Irving B. Fogel of Tempo Records, a friend of Walt Disney’s whom everyone called “Colonel,” Fogel knocked on Leo’s door and asked him to move to Hollywood to work for Tempo. “You’re who I’ve been looking for,” Fogel said. Leo said OK and took with him an Armenian girl who had gone to his same high school in Lawrence but whom he’d met when they were both in the military. Tempo was largely a specialty label offering among the first muzak-type sound programs. After a year of luxury in Hollywood and working with great sound engineers, he worked on the hit record “Sweet Georgia Brown” by Brother Bones and the soundtracks of African Queen, and six Tarzan movies. Fogel decided to send Leo and Mary to record music in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Burma for the label. So, in 1950, still in their late 20s, Leo and Mary went first to Karachi then in Lahore before pushing through the Khyber Pass in a jeep loaded with recording equipment, Budwiser and vodka to Kabul. They were treated as dignitaries, and Tempo released the 10” LP Drums Over Afghanistan from their efforts. That trip was Leo’s phD in listening to people – dignitaries and folks alike – hanging out with them, drinking, talking, digging music, and making friends. There were diplomatic problems with Russians, but nothing he couldn’t handle. On the way back across the subcontinent, he met and recorded Alludin Khan, Ali Akbar Khan, Bismillah Khan. There was a world of master musicians he had access to now for only the reason that he was American and had learned how to travel and to be good guest and cared deeply about music. Leo was learning to be a great ambassador for the U.S. At the same time, he was learning that wherever you go, you meet Armenians. Leo and Mary were greeted on New Year’s Day 1955 at the airport at Dacca, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) by a delegation of Armenians who took him to the Armenian church and the cemetery, where they saw graves of Armenians dating to the 15th century. “The big guy looks out for me,” he told laughingly. “Because God is Armenian!” In 1959, Tempo relocated Leo and Mary, then in their late 30s to Ghana and then, about a year later to Guinea with an eye to creating African recordings for the American market. A knock came at their door in 1963 in their home in Conakry, Guinea. Incredibly it was Edward R. Murrow, who had been appointed head of the United States Information Agency by President John F. Kennedy. Leo and Mary invited Murrow in to listen to some of Leo’s recordings, and Murrow offered Leo a job as the Voice of America’s broadcaster for Africa. They were allowed two years to travel the continent to learn before Leo first broadcast Music Time in Africa in 1965 from Liberia where they lived until 1969, when they moved close to Washington D.C. For more than forty years, Leo broadcast African music to Africa and made many trips. He claimed to have visited every country on the continent, and he drew hundreds of faces. The Leo Sarkisian Library at the Voice of America now houses not only his LPs and CDs but also 10,000 reel-to-reel tapes that he made on his travels, including early performances by musicians who later gained recognition, Fela Kuti among them. It is for Music Time in Africa that he will always be remembered, among the pioneers of Western recordists of African music including the Opika brothers, Hugh Tracey, and Willard Rhodes. There were fan clubs through the continent in the 70s and 80s. Bags of letters came thanking him for celebrating what was good about being African. His enthusiasm for the music was obvious. He never referred to anyone’s “band,” always an “orchestra.” In D.C., he continued to play kanun with Armenian bands, playing on a couple of LPs as a talented sideman. His Silver Spring, Maryland home was covered in his paintings of the faces of African women. When Mary’s vision failed, he said, “she took care of me for fifty years. Now, I have to take care of her for fifty years.” He donated his personal collection of instruments to the University of Michigan. The defunding of the VOA under the Obama administration such that he could not travel there as he liked troubled him deeply. He had served the United States under thirteen presidents, every one since Truman, and it pained him when at the age of 91, the oldest federal employee, he stepped down from Music Time in Africa, handing the reins to Heather Maxwell.

[rotationalsymmetry]

Oh, that’s what the dress thing is about.

You know, I think it’s really fucking annoying when Democrats don’t stand by their alleged convictions. When they refuse to stand by “defund the police” and instead use “tough on crime” language. When they refuse to stand by the vision of a less militaristic America and talk about wanting America to be “strong”. I think it’s annoying when they refuse to challenge the idea that the stock market doing well is the same as average people having secure, well-paying jobs, and I think it’s annoying when they buy into the idea that people should have to earn necessities through working for them, rather than things like food and shelter and health care and education being inherent rights. I think it’s annoying when they play up their Christianity to avoid offending religious conservatives, when they talk about how abortion should be “rare” to avoid offending conservatives, when they engage in the pretense that racism is primarily a result of poor rural whites getting left behind (granted, poor rural people getting left behind is a very real problem, it’s just… not why Trump got the election in 2016. Nor is that problem fixable by backing off on things like queer rights and immigrant rights. Anyways.)

So when a Democrat does the opposite of that and makes a clear, unambiguous, and indeed controversial statement about what they’re for? That’s a good thing.

AOC can’t win for losing. She’s simultaneously dismissed for being from a working class background (“go back to being a bartender”) and also demonized whenever she wears clothes that are typical of and appropriate for someone in her position. It’s bullshit and regressive, and it’s hard to imagine it’s not connected to her being a woman of color.

AOC isn’t some profound traitor to the cause or whatever. She’s not a demon. She’s not our savior either. She’s a human being like the rest of us with strengths and weaknesses who is attempting to make a certain type of change through the political process. People who are in favor of making that sort of change through those sorts of methods tend to like her and talk her up and that’s good and appropriate and consistent with their worldview. (And…while there are limits to the political process, there are also matters of life and death significance that happen though it whether you are engaging with it or not. There is a difference between someone like AOC being in the House and someone like, idk, whatever conservative is trying to pass the worst fucking laws right now.) People who are cynical about the method do best to give her as little attention as possible and focus on other things — union organizing, protesting, mutual aid, guerilla gardening, sharing info about where to get textbooks for free, figuring out how to show Bezos’ debit card number in Times Square, whatever.

(Obviously I am not advocating doing anything illegal because that would be breaking the law, and breaking the law would be breaking the law. Ahem.)

Realistically most people aren’t radical, and it is as irrational to expect progressives to be radicals as it is for progressives to expect radicals to have the same politics as them.

If you’re following a lot of people who aren’t personal friends and also don’t share your worldview, you’ve got a call to make over whether it’s worth putting up with them expressing opinions based on a different worldview. If there’s someone you have a good relationship with that has a different opinion on the effectiveness of the political process than you, or who thinks it’s ineffective but is stanning AOC anyways because sometimes people are inconsistent, maybe have a direct one on one conversation about that. But there’s really no reason for people on the left to get mad that AOC is making a political statement that at least approximately corresponds to our priorities.

(And there is no way to criticize someone who is making a political statement while doing a normal politician thing that she was going to do in any case, for, you know, wearing an expensive dress or whatever, without it coming across as you’re actually criticizing the statement.)

Sometimes people come to radical politics by a slide from liberal to progressive to radical. (I would have thought that was the only way, but from what some people say on tumblr I guess some people go straight from being raised conservative to radical with no in between? And some people do get raised radical. Anyways.) I think when people slide in the other direction, which can happen, it’s because of things like lack of community support and perceived ineffectiveness. Yelling at progressives isn’t really going to change those issues. Focusing on making the left strong and interconnected and effective is.

“Strong,” just shoot me now. Sigh.

There are some big differences between liberals/progressives and radicals/leftists. I think the core one is liberals/progressives tend to basically trust the system. I think it is actually really important for people with radical politics who were raised trusting the system, myself included, to intentionally unlearn that trust. Maybe for some people that involves a period of demonizing politicians to overwrite a basic tendency to trust the politicians that are on “your side”, idk, maybe this is somehow helpful for someone. For me I think it’s more effective though to take a mellower approach, and go back to core values. AOC is advocating wealth redistribution, and that is a value I share. I also have values that are not anywhere near the Overton window: open borders, land back, police and prison abolition, abolishment of corporations and nation states and capitalism and very specifically the United States as an imperial power, and I’m not sure how many of those AOC is in favor of on a personal level (I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s for open borders anyways), but definitely there is only so far the political process is going to be able to go in moving towards those goals. So regardless of what I think of her as a person or politician, there are some things that she’s not going to be with me on, and that’s ok. Most people aren’t. I can focus on the ones that are, and with the rest I can either focus on other values that we share or I can let them go their own way when they’re not actively standing in opposition to what I’m for. It’s ok.

It’s important to not swing back and forth between “this politician is amazing and the best and is going to change everything for the better” and “this politician is the literal worst” (when they’re actually better/less bad than most.) It’s important to see differences. There is a narrow range of what a given politician is likely to be able to do, and they act within those ranges and can only be sensibly evaluated within those ranges. If you want to go “but fuck all politicians though” that’s fine, there’s something to be said for seeing politicians as a class whose interests don’t align with the interests of people with less power — like landlords, like cops, like bosses. But if that’s your take there’s still no real reason to single out one specific politician who happens to be 1. a woman of color and 2. for that class, about as non-shitty as they come.

I mean, you can fundamentally not like bosses and still notice when a boss who’s a woman of color gets a lot more hate directed at her than the white male bosses, and find that kinda weird and concerning and probably reflective of how people saying those things treat women of color who aren’t in positions of relative power. Same for politicians.

Like yeah “we’re not going to girlboss our way out of this one” sure, but also…how relatively powerful women get treated and how powerless women get treated is not entirely unrelated. And if I can’t dance I don’t want to be a part of your revolution. (=misogyny (and racism and the intersection thereof) within leftism is still a problem actually.)

Anyways: you’ll notice I almost never post about politicians including AOC on here. I’m certainly not going to start stanning her. I don’t think that’s constructive. Democracy, to the extent that it’s a useful concept, isn’t about which horse you back. It’s about organizing and coming together and coalition building and taking to the streets and an awful lot of phone calls and mailing parties and meetings and talking and listening and research and attempting to translate legal text into something that makes sense and figuring out how to phrase things persuasively and supportive infrastructure like local newspapers and hashtags and days of action and petitions and saving your elected officials’ phone numbers in your contacts and showing up. (And so much fucking fundraising, endless fucking fundraising.) It’s often more about stanning laws and policy concepts (“green new deal”, “Medicare for all” etc) than stanning politicians. People who focus on politicians do not know how to do democracy IMO.

[veectah]

some Asian American history

Prior to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the US passed the 1875 Page Act, which barred Chinese women, perceived as prostitutes, from coming to the US. So the first exclusionary US immigration act was passed to attack the specific intersection of ethnicity and gender. The very specific positioning of Asian women, as hypersexualized, as submissive, as exotic, has shown up over and over again in American movies, American TV, and American literature. Pair media representation with the history of brutal US imperialist violence across Asia, and particularly Southeast Asia, and you have a specific and toxic brew. The emerging police and media analysis of this White male murderer as kid who had a bad day, has a mental health problem, and is a Christian, already saying that this wasn’t a hate crime, is horrifying and enraging. Pundits trying to decouple the specificity of the violence targeted toward Asian women by telling us this isn’t racially motivated are carrying water for White supremacy. The rush to focus on “massage parlors” as a way to code (possible) sex workers as less deserving of human rights and safety? Sickening. Please check in on your Asian and Asian American friends. If there are any solidarity protests happening where you are, go to them. Contribute to good organizations like NAPAWF. Don’t demonize and criminalize sex workers. And don’t let anyone off the hook if they try to tell you that this is not a hate crime based on the intersection of race and gender.

[lawyerladyakw80]

We Need to Talk About Gun Violence

Let’s have a frank discussion about guns or, more accurately, let’s have a frank discussion about gun violence.  At the outset, I’d like to disclose my biases.  I don’t like guns.  I’m inherently risk-adverse when it comes to personal safety.  I’m a person who goes out of her way to avoid people who act strange, people who are overly emotional, people who believe in conspiracies, people who look for conflict where conflict doesn’t exist, people who refuse to believe in the better parts of humanity, and people who inherently believe that everything in life is somehow about them.  

But I’m also a practicing attorney and, unfortunately, I’m confronted by many of those exact personalities on a daily basis.  I’ve done a lot of reading and a lot of thinking over the past 19 years since Columbine about guns and gun violence.  I saw “Bowling for Columbine” in the theater when I was in college and I shared Michael Moore’s confusion about what makes America so exceptional when it comes to guns and gun violence.  My confusion has only grown as the carnage as increased and mass shootings have become a regular occurrence.

Now, I am also a mother and watching scenes from Newtown and Parkland are terrifying reminders that we can’t control for all risk in our children’s lives. But school shootings and other public mass shootings (like Aurora) make me ask why.  Why do we have this problem in the United States?  A country that prides itself on American Exceptionalism. And they make me ask how.  How do we change it?  How do we reverse course?  How do we come together and affect change?

My readings have informed me of some basic truths about American culture:

1.   The Myth of American Exceptionalism

First, American Exceptionalism seems to extend, primarily, to certain Americans feeling entitled to being exceptional.  With the recent school shooting in Parkland, a spate of articles have been written about toxic masculinity amongst, in particular, white males in America.  An article in Harpers Bazaar points out that the recent shootings in Parkland, Aurora, Charleston, and the Isla Vista killings near UC Santa Barbara were all carried out by young white males who were ostracized by their peers, angry about perceived slights by girls and other students, and were enacting their own sense of “retribution” (the Isla Vista killer even uploaded a YouTube video using the word retribution) for these perceived slights.  However, as the Harpers Bazaar article detailed, these types of killings and shootings are not new.  In the late 80s into the mid-90s, people were being killed, primarily by men, at workplaces because of layoffs and the notion that a disgruntled worker could come and shoot up his workplace became the norm.  So why do some male Americans feel they are entitled to anything, in particular?  I believe this goes back to the myth of American Exceptionalism.  If America is, in fact, exceptional, then it would follow those at the top of that food chain – historically, white males – should be exceptional and live exceptional lives (or so they may believe).  So imagine their disappointment when equal rights for women, equal rights for racial minorities, equal rights for sexual minorities, and globalization and global trade policies force them to compete for the jobs they had previously gotten by being at the top of that food chain.  And then think about how these same men are hard-wired to handle their disappointments – with aggression, anger, and lashing out. It is absolutely their own choices and agency that bring them to this point, but to ignore what society teaches men about the correlation between aggression and success and self-worth is to ignore history.

I’ve heard a lot of gun-rights advocates and politicians, who tend to be from conservative districts, blame the media, and video games, and violent movies for the increase in violence from these men.  This strain of thought goes, “We used to bring our hunting rifles to school back when I was in school and people didn’t shoot each other.  It’s society that has changed, not the guns.”  Let’s presume I accept, whole-cloth the notion that society has changed in significant ways.  Is it really the video games and movies?  Or might it be the equal rights, and anger, that those rights illicit.  The reason that many liberals find Donald Trump’s rhetoric so dangerous is because it feeds into this same anger.  It blames minorities or immigrants for the plight of the white working class man. It blames globalization.  And as that rhetoric blames “the other” for these slights, it also asks for violence.  In a rally during his campaign, Donald Trump specifically urged violence against protestors.  So is it really any wonder that we are here?  To be very clear, I’m absolutely not blaming Donald Trump for the shootings as many happened before him and will likely happen after he is out of office. But his rhetoric is indicative of the overall disease that is American Exceptionalism and, at its base, white male exceptionalism.  His appeal was to working class white voters who felt like “their country was being taken from them.”  

My only advice to anyone struggling with these acts and who may or may not be raising children or helping others raise children:  teach your children they are owed nothing.  Teach your children that hard work does not always compute to success and that setbacks are a natural part of life.  Teach your children that they have value despite their job, despite their romantic prospects, and despite the number of “likes” on their facebook feed.  Value comes from making the world a better place, making the world a happier place, and being kind to others, particularly when those people are struggling.

2.   The More Polarized We Become, the More Likely We Will Have Mass Violence

Dr. Brene Brown, a Christian and a clinical researcher, writes extensively about her research in vulnerability.  She recently spoke/gave the guest sermon at the National Cathedral and I would urge everyone to find the YouTube video of her sermon.  I’m not religious and many in the crowd were not particularly religious, but Dr. Brown spoke about religion as the interconnectedness of people.  She said that she cannot be happy or satisfied if there are people in sub-Saharan Africa suffering.  That to be a godly person or a religious person, she believes our interconnectedness makes it important that we strive to end suffering for all people.  And she discussed politics and the polarization of politics.  

Dr. Brown posits that our political discourse is so polarized that we, essentially, dehumanize the other side of the debate.  She explains that humans are hard-wired to be social animals and that we are genetically hard-wired to care for one another.  So in order to write, think, type or read the kinds of things we often read or write about our political opponents, we have to think of them as less than human.  This dehumanization is so virulent to the fabric of our society and, really, to the fabric of our humanity, that it makes it possible for someone to go into a classroom of kindergartners and open fire on small children and their teacher trying to protect them.  

I’ve made some efforts, in recent weeks, to set standards for my political discourse. For instance, I try not to paint with a broad brush.  I try not to accuse people of biases or –isms simply because I disagree with them politically.  I try to call out when I see other people engaging in non-civil discourse.  To me this, more than anything else, is the way we get out of the mess we are in – both politically and in terms of violence. We have to start treating each other like human beings again.  We have to quit thinking that the other side is “evil.”  As Dr. Brown said, if you didn’t like people saying awful things about the Obama girls, don’t be ok with people calling Ivanka names.  

We need to teach our children to work on their empathy.  We need to teach them to come to us, as adults, when they have frustrations and feel like lashing out.  We need to listen to those frustrations and we need to both empathize with those frustrations and give them a roadmap of how to handle those frustrations in productive ways.  We need not go to combat for our children after any and all perceived slights.  We need not call their school or call other parents because our children have faced disappointments.  They need to face those disappointments and they need to learn how to cope with them without blaming others, without dehumanizing others, and without losing their own humanity.

3.  We Need to Be Willing to Talk About Guns Without Going to Our Bunkers

Again, I’m biased against gun ownership.  I don’t like guns, and I’m pretty vocal about my dislike for them.  I don’t like guns because, during my professional career, I have seen some very angry and irrational people who are daily confronted with painful and frustrating court decisions for which they have very little legal recourse.  I don’t like guns because I know the statistics about the number of Americans who are currently addicted to, or use daily, mind-altering substances that have a propensity to cause violence.  I don’t like guns because when I go to your house with my child and I know you have a gun, I have to have an uncomfortable conversation with you about how you have your gun stored to be sure my child is protected while in your home.  But mostly, I don’t like guns because they pose an unnecessary risk to human life.  I carried scissors, blade down, arm outstretched until I was at least 20 years old, so my risk-aversion runs deep.

But I’m also a lawyer, and a strong proponent of the First Amendment, so I’m interested and capable of engaging in civil discourse over the legality of guns and gun-control legislation from both the perspective of someone who abhors firearms and an adherent to the constitution.  I’m also a follower of politics and culture, and I know the capabilities/difficulties of our legislative bodies on having meaningful discussions about these issues.  

When I hear politicians say, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” or I hear politicians say, “we don’t have a gun problem, we have a cultural problem,” I guess I don’t disagree.  But my question is: “Ok, so what are you doing about that?”  Clearly, the answer is little to nothing.  When I hear gun-control advocates ask for enhanced background checks or bring up the Obama-era Executive Order that Trump helped to repeal in February 2017, I wonder if those people know what they are fighting about.  What kind of enhanced background check?  What Executive Order?  The first issue has myriad answers because myriad states and counties within states enforce background checks differently.  The Executive Order?  It was a decent idea, but not as a broad-brush prohibition.  The Executive Order people have discussed made it so that people who were assigned a Social Security benefits payee (e.g. people who are both judicially and non-judicially thought to be incompetent to handle their financial matters), were added to the NICS background check database automatically, without due process, but were allowed an appeals process.  Even the ACLU was against this Executive Order because it included people whose mental capabilities in no way would make them more likely to be violent, but deprived them of a cognizable constitutional right.  Personally, I don’t mind the original Executive Order because 1) there was an appeals process to be removed from the database, so there was some due process built in; and 2) I don’t like guns anyway.  But I’m willing to engage in the discussion of whether the Executive Order did, in fact, unnecessarily infringe on a constitutionally protected right.  I’d go as far as saying, the designation of a payee should be included in the background check database, but it cannot be the sole grounds for prohibition.  The licensing or permitting agency must make an extra step to investigate the inclusion on the list.   I’m also willing to concede that I haven’t done much scholarly research on the topic and it probably is something that I should defer to experts at the ACLU and in gun-control advocacy groups to fight it out. Or it should be something that is adjudicated by the court system with evidence and research to support both positions.

Regardless, we should be willing to listen, learn and then decide.  Just because someone posts on their facebook wall that we should have reasonable gun control doesn’t mean that person wants the government to come seize your guns.  If you are a gun-rights advocate or, at least, a gun enthusiast, you can’t bunker down and claim we are coming for your arsenal.  Step up to the plate and have a conversation about what controls you’d feel comfortable with to help the rest of society feel safer about gun safety.  How about mandatory gun safety measures in the home such as a lockbox or a gun safe? How about background checks that MUST use the NICS database?  How about shortening the length of time a purchasing permit is effective so that people have to get rechecked more often than the 5 year limit in states like North Carolina?  How about liability insurance?

And if you want to discuss armed guards and enhanced security in our schools and public spaces, we have to discuss funding those measures.  Our teachers are already responsible for purchasing many of their own supplies and have lost the tax deduction for those purchases in the most recent tax bill.  How will we pay for metal detectors and security personnel at each school entrance? How will we pay to enclose breezeways to limit incoming traffic at schools to one or two entrances?  

The arguments I hear against gun control measures is that anything we do wouldn’t have had an impact on X shooting.  It may have helped in one shooting, but it’s not going to help in another with a different set of facts.  What’s missing in this argument is that any number of lives we can save by doing something is better than saving none by doing nothing.  We have to talk about these issues and we have to be civil about it. I promise not to suggest a repeal of the Second Amendment or a mandatory buy-back program if you promise to tell me which individuals you are ok with not having firearms.  And we both need to be very specific.  

Lawyers like words.  We like to use them against each other, we like to find loopholes and we like to argue that we can’t come to a solution unless we are agreeing upon a set language. Gun control debates always lack specificity.  Polling shows that 90+% of Americans support enhanced background checks, but that’s because 90+% of Americans have never agreed upon what an enhanced background check would entail.  I’d love it if our background check process was similar to the process that parents go through when trying to adopt a child, with home visits and everything, but that’s wildly unrealistic and burdensome on both our government and people’s Second Amendment rights.  So let’s discuss what we can agree upon instead of bunkering down.  

And gun control advocates need to quit having the attention span of gnats.  If you want gun control laws to be passed after a mass shooting, you need to come to the table on that issue in 3-4 months when the law is in the process of being written.  It can’t always be knee-jerk in reaction to a tragedy.  Gun owners are, typically, gun owners 365 days out of the year.  I imagine that it’s pretty annoying that 9 months out of the year, off and on, they can exercise their right to own guns without any debate at all.  And then 3 months out of the year, they are on constant defense because someone has abused the right to own a gun.  If you want something done about gun control, we all have to come to the table with our thoughts 365 days out of the year.  We cannot forget we care about this issue when the news agencies start reporting on Trump’s next Russia tweet.

So in short: teach your kids, directly and by example, about humility, humanity, empathy, listening, learning, and empathizing.  Teach them about resilience and about hanging in there with our fellow Americans even when things get tough.  Do these things and we may actually be able to accomplish something.

[khalilhumam]

Systemic racism and America today

Register at https://mignation.com The Only Social Network for Migrants. #Immigration, #Migration, #Mignation ---

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/systemic-racism-and-america-today/

Systemic racism and America today

By John R. Allen Unaddressed systemic racism is, in my mind, the most important issue in the United States today. And it has been so since before the founding of our nation. Slavery was America’s “original sin.” It was not solved by the framers of the U.S. Constitution, nor was it resolved by the horrendous conflict that was of the American Civil War. It simply changed its odious form and continued the generational enslavement of an entire strata of American society. In turn, the Civil Rights Movement struck a mighty blow against racism in America, and our souls soared when Dr. King told us he had a dream. But we were and still are far from the “promised land.” And even when America rose up to elect its first Black President, Barack Obama, we may indeed have lost ground as a collective nation along the way. That is our legacy as Americans, and in many ways, the most hateful remnants of slavery persist in the U.S. today in the form of systemic racism baked into nearly every aspect of our society and who we are as a people. Indeed, for those tracing their heritage to countries outside of Western Europe, or for those with a non-Christian belief system, that undeniable truth often impacts every aspect of who you are as a person, in one form or another. The reality of this history has been on stark display in recent weeks. From the terrible killings of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, to the countless, untold acts of racism that take place every day across America, these are the issues that are defining the moment—just as our response will define who we are and will be in the 21st century and beyond. Truly, the very nature of our “national soul” is at stake, and we all have a deep responsibility to be a part of the solution. For us at Brookings, race, racism, equality, and equity are now matters of presidential priority. Addressing systemic racism is a key component of those efforts, with research also focusing on the Latino and Native American communities; faith-based communities, including our Jewish and Muslim communities; and the threat of white supremacy and domestic terrorism also playing a major role. It will also include work on the important need for comprehensive police reform, to include reform rooted in local community engagement and empowerment. We will not solve systemic racism and inequality over-night, and we have so much work ahead. But in a world where we often spend more time debating the nature of our problems than taking meaningful action, we must find ways to contribute however we can and to move forward as a community. I firmly believe that we as Americans cannot remain silent about injustice. Inaction is simply unacceptable, and we have to stand up and speak out. And if our elected representatives and our elected leadership deny the problem, and refuse to act, then we must take on the responsibility of reform from the bottom up with special attention at the ballot box. And especially for those Americans who may look like me – a white American male – or come from a similar background, action begins with reflection, and most importantly listening. It’s also about elevating and supporting the voices of those traditionally underrepresented, or even silenced, throughout society. How We Rise is an absolutely critical part of that solution.