#but most of us are left wing and care about civil rights immigration womens rights and lgbtq rights

[socialistexan]

Just a reminder, Jewish people voted 78% for Kamala Harris and against Trump. Trump got the lowest share of Jewish voters since George Bush in 2000.

Immigration in particular are important to Jewish organizations and voters.

We see what's happening, what was proposed by Trump, the threat he represents, we see the threats against our ancestors in him, and we say never again.

We will fight this.

[anexplanationofunfortunateevents]

A Tale of Red States and Blue States

Once upon a time, there was a state.

It was a large state, with vast stretches of country between its world-class cities. It had communities rich in diversity and activism and ideas – and it had a lot of resentful white people who were just plain old rich.

The richest and most resentful white people created a terrible blight they called “modern conservatism.” They set their wicked curse on the state, and then unleashed it on the nation with two Republican presidents – one lamentable, the next even worse.

There were many along the way who sounded the alarm, but there were more who ignored the danger far too long. The spell had summoned a beast. The beast was hideous and stupid. It was no good at anything except being a hateful beast. But the dark spell had done so much damage that being a hateful beast was enough for the beast to win, at least for a time.

In one version of the story, the state is called “California.”

In another, it is called “Texas.”

It’s strange to think of now, with a decade of sneering about the “left coast” and “San Francisco liberals” and blah blah blah baked into political conventional wisdom, but it’s true. The reactionary modern conservatism which held the whip hand on the backlash to the great civil rights advances of the 1960s was born in California. California voted for Richard Nixon six times: once as their senator, twice as Eisenhower’s vice president, and then three times as the Republican presidential nominee. In between those elections, Nixon of course had to win primaries. In 1968, when he was the Republican front-runner, he faced an upstart challenger who wanted to make sure he’d be racist enough to keep conservative southerners in the tent. That person was not a southerner, but the then-governor of California, Ronald Reagan, who would go on to be the next Republican elected after Nixon.

So what the fuck happened? Well, a lot of things, and I don’t want to pretend to do justice to the generations of righteous activism that pushed back against this disastrous regime. Democrats did occasionally win state-wide – notably, California elected two Democratic women to the Senate in 1992 – even though Orange County was practically a metonym for American conservatism right up until the 2018 midterms. But the turning point that seems to have gotten your average voter to turn on the Republican party for good was in 1994. Governor Pete Wilson, a kind of hard-right proto-Trump, threw his weight behind a hateful anti-immigrant ballot initiative. It passed, even though it was so deranged that it never went into effect because a federal court ruled it unconstitutional within days of the vote, because the California electorate really was that conservative. The electorate changed, almost on a dime. Mexican-American voters organized. Their friends and neighbors and fellow citizens realized that sitting back wasn’t an option. And now the Republican Party of California is a fucking joke.

This isn’t, like, the eternal winds of history blowing microscopic chips off the statue of Ozymandias. If you remember the Clinton presidency, this happened in your lifetime. If you’re a little bit younger than that, it happened in your big cousins’ lifetimes.

Part of what makes it hard to see changes like this is that the dim bulbs in our political media see everything through a horse race lens, where who gets one particular W is the only piece of information worth retaining. You win and you’re clever; you lose and you’re a dumb sucker who tried. Who gets power is really important! But if you only care about that, then you miss the really important trends.

Take the Georgia 6th, the district once represented by Newt fucking Gingrich. Its representative joined Trump’s cabinet in early 2017, at least in part because it was such a supposedly safe Republican seat, so there was a special election for his replacement. Traumatized Democrats and Women’s Marchers threw themselves into the steeply uphill campaign of former John Lewis intern Jon Ossoff. When he came up a few points short, our blue-check media betters tried to turn Ossoff into a punch line stand-in for silly #Resistance liberal losers coping with Trump by losing some more, SUCK IT, MOM! but the other, correct, interpretation is that Ossoff only came up a few points short in a district that was supposed to protect the kookiest of right-wing cranks. His campaign had functioned as kind of an ad hoc boot camp for novice organizers, canvassers, and future school board candidates who had previously been too discouraged and disorganized to take this kind of swing, and it showed Democratic party donors that the district was winnable. So when gun safety advocate and Mother of the Movement Lucy McBath stepped up to the plate in the 2018 midterms, her campaign had the infrastructure it needed, and now she’s well-positioned to be reelected because she’s doing a great job. Meanwhile, Ossoff’s organizing chops and the enthusiastic work his supporters did for Rep. McBath are a big part of why he’s in a dead heat against incumbent Republican Senator David Purdue.

That’s why I’m keeping an eye on the South this year. The presidential campaign there is interesting, but the real story is in those network effects. There’s a rising tide that threatens to make the blue wave of 2018 look like a light spring shower if things break the right way. Just look at the Democratic senate candidates. They’re a diverse group: men and women, Black and white, preacher and fighter pilot. Most are relative newcomers to national audiences, but only some of them are young. Jon Ossoff is just 33; when he was in grade school, Mike Espy of Mississippi was Secretary of Agriculture. What they do seem to have in common is that they are having the time of their fucking lives.

Here’s Espy:

Moving and grooving in McComb. pic.twitter.com/RANCRGGpX7

— Mike Espy (@MikeEspyMS)

October 31, 2020

Ossoff:

The people of Georgia are tired of having a spineless, disgraced politician serve as their Senator. pic.twitter.com/OdaYwFKzmz

— Jon Ossoff (@ossoff)

October 30, 2020

Senator Doug Jones of Alabama:

I know you’ve heard us say it before, but when you see this clip, it bears reappearing: This guy really is clueless. https://t.co/w9YOUHegCW

— Doug Jones (@DougJones)

October 22, 2020

Jamie Harrison of South Carolina:

It's debate night and y'all know I'm going to walk it like I talk it. Let's see if @LindseyGrahamSC can do the same. pic.twitter.com/TNABxsaTEO

— Jaime Harrison (@harrisonjaime)

October 30, 2020

And the bad bitch with her eye on the big prize, MJ Hegar of Texas:

It's about time Texans had a senator as tough as we are. https://t.co/8MQ8Tykmyt pic.twitter.com/bgPr5vtgdh

— MJ Hegar (@mjhegar)

October 16, 2020

Clutch those pearls, John! https://t.co/iWej8MrhtV

— MJ Hegar (@mjhegar)

October 22, 2020

The spineless bootlicker Hegar is challenging, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, is currently resting his dainty patoot in the seat once held by none other than Lyndon Baines Johnson. As president, LBJ would aggressively push for some of the greatest human rights legislation in American history in pursuit of what he called the Great Society. That meant Medicare and Medicaid. It meant a revolution in environmental protections. It meant PBS. And it meant telling the one-party authoritarian regime in the Jim Crow south that America was done with their bullshit, they were going to have real democracy, they were going to do it now, and if they didn’t like it they could eat his ass.

Johnson was a complicated guy and left a complicated legacy. His project required an unusual leader of courage, conviction, and unmitigated savvy, cut with streaks of megalomania and dubious mental health. No architect but Lyndon Johnson would have built the Great Society, and no place but Texas could have built Lyndon Johnson.

Then again, Texas also gave us the Bushes in the late twentieth century. It gave us a terrorist attack on a Biden campaign bus just this weekend.

That darkness is real. So is the long, grinding slog to turn on the light. Like the GA-06 silliness, Democratic efforts in Texas get laughed at as some quixotic waste of resources by arrogant flops. In fact, the past few years of high-profile statewide elections in Texas have been on a pretty clear trajectory. In 2014, Wendy Davis, a state senator from Fort Worth who captured widespread progressive attention with her heroic filibuster of a 2013 state abortion ban, ran for governor. She lost by the ~20-point margin you’d expect in a year where Republicans everywhere did really well, but it was a vitamin B-12 shot to a perpetually overwhelmed state Democratic party. The 2016 Clinton campaign, when it was (correctly!) on the offensive before FBI Director Comey decided he would really prefer a Trump presidency, invested heavily in its Texas ground game. It was always a long shot, but even after the Comey letter and the Texas-specific sabotage by the Russian Internet Research Agency, Texas Democrats cut Trump’s margin there down to single digits. That is to say, they recruited the volunteers and taught the skills and raised the cash and registered the voters to carry the ball way down the field. And in the 2018 midterms, El Paso representative Beto O’Rourke built on all that energy to fight Senator Ted Cruz to a near draw. O’Rourke didn’t quite make it, but he did help a lot of downballot Democrats over the finish line and forced Republicans to light a few oil drums of cash on fire to save a seat that they had always assumed would be safe.

That growth has been possible because of a ton of hard work and persuasion, but it’s also been possible because there was so much untapped potential. As progressives have argued for years, Texas was less of a “red state” than a non-voting state. I’m not a person that usually has a lot of patience for people not bothering to vote, because the people who get to be loud about that are whiny, privileged assholes who can afford to be flip about the right to vote. But there are a lot of people who find it hard because they absolutely do know the weight and importance of voting, because they or their mothers or their grandfathers were beaten and terrorized to keep them away from the polls. They might make the same mouth-noises as the selfish dilettantes about how it doesn’t matter and they’re all corrupt and blah blah blah. But a vote is a tiny little leap of faith. It’s at least a skip of hope. And it hurts to know the weight and importance of that and to keep feeling that disappointment over and over again.

A key thing that Republicans in the South managed to do for a while, but California Republicans didn’t, was to let their misrule seem almost tolerable day to day. As outrageous as the overall trends were, as catastrophic the results were for a lot of people’s lives, it didn’t necessarily feel entirely irrational for lots of people to avoid the inconvenience and disappointment of trying to stop them. But if you’re just going to be a constant, unwavering shit show of incompetence and evil, infuriating people every waking minute of every fucking day for years on end, they’re not going to be deterred by inconvenience and disappointment. They're not going to be deterred by fucking tear gas. They’re going to understand that it’s worth trying to get rid of you, even if it’s a long shot. They’re going to line up to kick you in the shin just for the hell of it. And that’s exactly what millions of them have already done.

These dumbass motherfuckers radicalized Taylor goddamn Swift!

LOOK WHAT YOU MADE HER DO!

So yeah. People who had given up are fucking voting. Texas has already had hundreds of thousands more people vote than voted in all of 2016. BEFORE ELECTION DAY!

Vice President Biden likes to recite a poem by the great Irish bard Seamus Heaney. It’s about how you have to have faith that a better world is possible, even when you don’t have any rational reason to expect it any time soon, because it’s the only way you’ll be able to seize the most precious of opportunities, when “justice can rise up/ And hope and history rhyme.”

Sometimes hope and history walk into a bar to tell dirty jokes for a bachelorette party in downtown Austin. And they rhyme.

For a hundred and fifty years, unreconstructed revanchist terrorist sympathizers have threatened that “the South will rise again.” They mean the treasonous mobsters who called themselves the Confederacy.

Why do those losers get to define the South? Like, literally, they’re losers. They lost.

There’s another South. The terrorists cut it off at the knees, so it never quite rose the first time. But it’s always been there. The South the heroes of Reconstruction tried to build. The South of the Kennedy Space Station and the Center for Disease Control. The South of the French Quarter of New Orleans and the gay neighborhoods of Atlanta. The South of Barbara Jordan, Ann and Cecile Richards, Stacey Abrams, and the young women of the Virginia state legislature. The South of Maya Angelou, Molly Ivins, and Mark Twain. The South of the exiles of Miami and the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. The South of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Representative John Lewis. The South of James Earl Carter, William Jefferson Clinton, and Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Once upon a time, there was a colossus. The richest and most resentful white people feared it, for it was both great and good. So they hunted it mercilessly. They tortured and killed its most vulnerable people. They bound it and silenced it and told the rest of the world it didn’t even exist. But they knew that wicked lie was the best they could do, for something so mighty could never be slain by the likes of them.

The giant grows stronger every day as it struggles against its chains, and those chains are turning to rust. One day soon  - maybe in this decade; maybe this week – it will break free. It will rise. And it will shake the earth. Just you watch.

[nicklloydnow]

"But there is something rather curious in being Whitman in the nineteen-thirties. It is not certain that if Whitman himself were alive at the moment he would write anything in the least degree resembling Leaves of Grass. For what he is saying, after all, is ‘I accept’, and there is a radical difference between acceptance now and acceptance then. Whitman was writing in a time of unexampled prosperity, but more than that, he was writing in a country where freedom was something more than a word. The democracy, equality, and comradeship that he is always talking about are not remote ideals, but something that existed in front of his eyes. In mid-nineteenth-century America men felt themselves free and equal, were free and equal, so far as that is possible outside a society of pure communism. There was poverty and there were even class-distinctions, but except for the Negroes there was no permanently submerged class. Everyone had inside him, like a kind of core, the, knowledge that he could earn a decent living, and earn it without bootlicking. When you read about Mark Twain’s Mississippi raftsmen and pilots, or Bret Harte’s Western gold-miners, they seem more remote than the cannibals of the Stone Age. The reason is simply that they are free human beings. But it is the same even with the peaceful domesticated America of the Eastern states, the America of Little Women, Helen’s Babies, and Riding Down from Bangor. Life has a buoyant, carefree quality that you can feel as you read, like a physical sensation in your belly. It is this that Whitman is celebrating, though actually he does it very badly, because he is one of those writers who tell you what you ought to feel instead of making you feel it. Luckily for his beliefs, perhaps, he died too early to see the deterioration in American life that came with the rise of large-scale industry and the exploiting of cheap immigrant labour.

Miller’s outlook is deeply akin to that of Whitman, and neaarly everyone who has read him has remarked on this. Tropic of Cancer ends with an especially Whitmanesque passage, in which, after the lecheries, the swindles, the fights, the drinking bouts, and the imbecilities, he simply sits down and watches the Seine flowing past, in a sort of mystical acceptance of the thing-as-it-is. Only, what is he accepting? In the first place, not America, but the ancient boneheap of Europe, where every grain of soil has passed through innumerable human bodies. Secondly, not an epoch of expansion and liberty, but an epoch of fear, tyranny, and regimentation. To say ‘I accept’ in an age like our own is to say that you accept concentration camps, rubber truncheons, Hitler, Stalin, bombs, aeroplanes, tinned food, machine guns, putsches, purges, slogans, Bedaux belts, gas masks, submarines, spies, provocateurs, press-censorship, secret prisons, aspirins, Hollywood films, and political murders. Not only those things, of course, but, those things among others. And on the whole this is Henry Miller’s attitude. Not quite always, because at moments he shows signs of a fairly ordinary kind of literary nostalgia. There is a long passage in the earlier part of Black Spring, in praise of the Middle Ages, which as prose must be one of the most remarkable pieces of writing in recent years, but which displays an attitude not very different from that of Chesterton. In Max and the White Phagocytes there is an attack on modern American civilization (breakfast cereals, cellophane, etc.) from the usual angle of the literary man who hates industrialism. But in general the attitude is ‘Let’s swallow it whole’. And hence the seeming preocupation with indecency and with the dirty-handkerchief side of life. It is only seeming, for the truth is that ordinary everyday life consists far more largely of horrors than writers of fiction usually care to admit. Whitman himself ‘accepted’ a great deal that his contemporaries found unmentionable. For he is not only writing of the prairie, he also wanders through the city and notes the shattered skull of the suicide, the ‘grey sick faces of onanists’, etc, etc. But unquestionably our own age, at any rate in Western Europe, is less healthy and less hopeful than the age in which Whitman was writing. Unlike Whitman, we live in a shrinking world. The ‘democratic vistas’ have ended in barbed wire. There is less feeling of creation and growth, less and less emphasis on the cradle, endlessly rocking, more and more emphasis on the teapot, endlessly stewing. To accept civilization as it is practically means accepting decay. It has ceased to be a strenuous attitude and become a passive attitude — even ‘decadent’, if that word means anything.

But precisely because, in one sense, he is passive to experience, Miller is able to get nearer to the ordinary man than is possible to more purposive writers. For the ordinary man is also passive. Within a narrow circle (home life, and perhaps the trade union or local politics) he feels himself master of his fate, but against major events he is as helpless as against the elements. So far from endeavouring to influence the future, he simply lies down and lets things happen to him. During the past ten years literature has involved itself more and more deeply in politics, with the result that there is now less room in it for the ordinary man than at any time during the past two centuries. One can see the change in the prevailing literary attitude by comparing the books written about the Spanish Civil War with those written about the war of 1914-18. The immediately striking thing about the Spanish war books, at any rate those written in English, is their shocking dullness and badness. But what is more significant is that almost all of them, right-wing or left-wing, are written from a political angle, by cocksure partisans telling you what to think, whereas the books about the Great War were written by common soldiers or junior officers who did not even pretend to understand what the whole thing was about. Books like All Quiet on the Western Front, Le Feu, A FArewell to Arms, Death of  a Hero, Good-bye to All That, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and A Subaltern on the Somme were written not by propagandists but by victims. They are saying in effect, ‘What the hell is all this about? God knows. All we can do is to endure.’ And though he is not writing about war, nor, on the whole, about unhappiness, this is nearer to Miller’s attitude than the omniscience which is now fashionable. The Booster, a short-lived periodical of which he was part-editor, used to describe itself in its advertisements as ‘non-political, non-educational, non-progressive, non-cooperative, non-ethical, non-literary, non-consistent, non-contemporary’, and Miller’s own work could be described in nearly the same terms. It is a voice from the crowd, from the underling, from the third-class carriage, from the ordinary, non-political, non-moral, passive man."

[science-fiction-is-real]

STOP TRYING TO GET ME TO VOTE FOR BIDEN.

Okay.  Look.  If you plan to vote for Biden, I won’t stop you.  And I understand.

But I would like to make a few points as to why I personally will NOT be voting for Biden.

We do actually have other options.  Biden is evil, not just “less than perfect,” but actually evil.  Donald Trump is not the cause of our problems, and this becomes especially clear when you look at the behavior of past Democratic presidents and when you apply a little Marxist theory regarding the State. Also A Biden victory is in itself a form of harm, not harm reduction.

1) WE DO ACTUALLY HAVE OTHER OPTIONS BESIDES VOTING FOR BIDEN.

First of all, the fact that you can even mention 3rd and sometimes even 4th and 5th party candidates indicates that: Yes, we LITERALLY DO have other options.  Are they LIKELY to win? 

No.  But only because people don’t vote for them. We are not trapped in a two party system, though we may be trapped psychologically.  It IS actually possible to create new political parties, and for existing small parties to grow into large parties.  This is a long-term goal, and probably not something that will happen by November.  But the first step is to realize that the democratic party are not our friends.

Second, and most important, voting is a tiny plastic water gun in the vast nuclear arsenal we have at our disposal when it comes to political activity.  Historically speaking, even the most nasty and reactionary asshole presidents suddenly start acting REAAAAAL progressive when they are faced with mass populist movements causing civil unrest.  This also applies to senators, congresspersons, and members of the court.  Remember Richard Nixon passing landmark Women’s Rights legislation?  In fact, the level of political activity of the masses is 8 millions times more important than who is in the Whitehouse.

Where we should really be focusing our efforts is in organizing and movement building.  Protest. Go on strike.  Propagandize.  Obstruct.  Disrupt.  And most importantly:

JOIN AN ORG! Join an org.  Join an org. Join an ORG!  Join labor unions.  Join political parties.  Join non-profits.  Becoming a dues-paying member of a Socialist organization is worth a thousand votes.  You will meet experienced comrades who know the ins and outs of political activism, who will show you the ropes, and will put you to work doing something productive.

Join the Democratic Socialists of America.  Join the Industrial Workers of the World. I’m a member of a political party called the Socialist Alternative.

2) BIDEN ISN’T “LESS THAN PERFECT.”  HE IS A MUSTACHE TWIRLING SUPERVILLAIN.

Biden is not a Liberal.  He’s a center-right conservative.  He embraces Neoliberal policies that leave working class people to die in poverty and debt.  He has made no serious attempts to cater toward Bernie’s base.  He is unspeakably Racist, and actually wrote the bill that created Mass Incarceration as we currently know it.

As part of the Obama Administration he was complicit in all of Obama’s abominable atrocities.  From the drone strike program which killed countless civilians, to the escalation of a draconian surveillance state, to the mass deportation of 3 million immigrants.  Obama created the structures that Trump is currently using to terrorize immigrants, minorities, and protestors.  And he created them for the very purpose Trump is using them for.  Biden was there every step along the way.  Biden has espoused violent rhetoric about doing violence against protesters, arresting people with certain political beliefs, and condoning police brutality.

Biden is better MAAAAYYBE better only on 2 issues.  Abortion rights and LBGT rights.  And while those issues are important.  I highly doubt he will make any progress on those issues.

Biden has said over and over again that he would pander to the republicans and compromise with them every chance he gets.  He certainly has stated callous disregard for the lives of working class people.  And we can only assume that he will betray women’s rights and LBGT rights the moment he finds it politically convenient.

And don’t give me crap about RBG.  Biden will not replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg with another liberal.  He will replace her with a centrist, or do what Obama did and let the Republicans pick the replacement for him.   And also the supreme court is a tyrannical, undemocratic institution anyway and should probably just be abolished full-stop.

Joe Biden’s rhetoric isn’t even less fascistic than Trump's either.  He says his racist, sexist, anti-working-class sentiment out loud.

And with his billionaire and corporate backers, he certainly can’t be trusted to act on climate change.

He will not respond positively to the pandemic either.  He has expressed out loud no plan of how HE would handle the pandemic, and if his democratic colleagues in congress give us a clue… well, the Dems have been incredibly stingy with their money, refusing funds for relief for the working class.  They have not put up a serious fight for any measures to actually stop the Virus’s spread.

If he’s the “Lesser of Two Evils.”  He is just evil.  

3) IT DOESN’T ACTUALLY MATTER WHO THE PRESIDENT IS.

Trump is not actually the cause of our problems.  He isn’t.  Donald Trump is a fat asshole with a desk job.  Donald Trump did not invent racism.  He did not invent sexism or xenophobia or hatred against the LBGT+ community.  If Donald Trump died tomorrow, the forces of reaction would carry on their merry way.  Donald Trump is in office because he is willing to carry out policies that are favorable to the ruling class.  And the moment he stopped doing that, he would be quickly disposed of, either by impeachment or by a military coup.

And in fact, the violence we are seeing from the Trump administration comes from the way the government itself is constructed.  Not from some diseased ideology unique to the American Right Wing.

So let’s think about this a little more carefully.  Why do we have a government in the first place?  You know, a government, the “state,”  the law itself?  It’s not to negotiate peace between different conflicting segments of society, because they are obviously very bad at that.  It’s not to ensure the public good and protect the rights of the citizens.  Because the government doesn’t really do that either.

And this isn’t just a problem when Republicans are in power.  See my previous examples of Obama’s unspeakable atrocities.  

The reason we have a government is to enforce and maintain class based society.  The State is nothing more than Armed bodies of men who exist for the purpose of allowing one class to suppress another class.  The government’s job is to suppress uprisings, control the working class, assume risk on behalf of the capitalist class, and to fight wars on behalf of the capitalist class.  That’s why the Feds are kidnapping protestors.  That’s why immigrants are being put in cages.  That’s why the police harass and intimidate Black people.  To maintain and enforce the power structure.

All of these bad things happened when Obama was president.  And All of these bad things will continue to happen if Biden is elected. This violence we’re seeing isn’t the result of Trump.  You can’t even call this violence Fascism, because this is NORMAL. Fascism is a specific political phenomena that occurs under very specific circumstances . This violence is literally just the government doing its job.  It’s worse now because the economy is going through a rough patch, which isn’t the government’s fault, it’s just because Capitalism is unstable.

The Right and Left Parties represent different segments of the ruling class, and the election process is about the ruling class negotiating differences among itself.  The democratic party does not represent the interest of regular people like You and me, and you DO NOT OWE THEM YOUR VOTE.

2) VOTING FOR BIDEN ISN’T HARM REDUCTION.  IT IS ITSELF A HARM.

A Biden Victory could have several negative consequences.

The democratic party will continue its decades-long drift toward the right.  The democratic leadership will see once and for all that they can get away with running any evil sleazy candidate they want who will serve the interest of their corporate benefactors, and that the public will remain loyal as long as they coat their sleeziness with “Woke” rhetoric.  If the Democrats learn that you will vote for them no matter what they do, then your vote loses all of its power.

It could trigger violent backlash from Trump’s far-right base.

It gives legitimacy to an ultimately UNdemocratic system which is breaking at the seams.

It could pacify a lot of the militant, but less educated segments of the working class who have swallowed the rhetoric that Biden is their ally.  They will disperse from the streets, meanwhile Biden is free to continue the violent, racist, war-hawkish, neoliberal agenda that Trump, Obama, and Bush did before him.

CONCLUSION

Joe Biden is not our friend.  The Democratic Party are not our friends.  Trump is awful, and he sucks.  If we DON’T vote for Biden, Trump may very well win the Presidential Race.  But considering that Biden himself is very evil, and that Trump is not the true cause of the violence and hatred we see coming from our government, the stakes in this race are a lot lower than you have been led to believe.

A protest vote could send a strong message to the Ruling Class that we are not satisfied with racist, violent, neoliberal leadership, and that we want real change.  

Also, we actually are NOT stuck in a two party system.  There is a growing movement within the United States to create and grow a worker’s party that represents truly progressive ideas, one where regular people hold party leadership directly accountable, and the party is forced to serve our interests instead of those of the ruling class.  The first step in building such a party is to let the Democrats go, and stop placing our hopes in people who do not care about us.

But the most important thing to remember:

The ballot box is not the end-all and be-all of political activity.  The ruling class has created this little ceremony of “voting,” inviting us working class folks to come and play their little game of “pick the dictator,” and giving us the illusion that this makes a real difference.  But we have no way of holding politicians in office accountable when they break their campaign promises, and we are only allowed to vote for options the ruling class allows us to see on the ballots. 

We DO have power to change the system, but we have to do it outside the ruling-class’s terms.  We have to be organized and active and militant enough that the ruling class believes we pose an actual threat to their authority.

We have to do the type of things we currently see American’s doing in the streets right now.  Causing a major disruption, threatening the capitalists’ profits, and threatening the politicians’ sense of authority and control.

But we have to remain organized and militant even after the current wave of protests dies down.  And we do that by building left wing institutional power -- by JOINING ORGS.

JOIN A GOD DAMN ORG YOU COWARDS.

[saintambrose]

haha it’s US politics hours

listen, this tumblr has always been a fandom place since its inception and I’ve not really designated it as a space for political discussion because 1) I have several other avenues for that arena of discussion and 2) escapism was the theme here; but I’ve finally watched The Comey Rule and I have some THOUGHTS 

and I’m not really sure how active anyone is here anymore anyway, because I’ve not really been around as regularly as I was before the nsfw-ban shitstorm, so. Diving right in.

Probably my favorite thing was how it painted the American right wing as this faux-centrist bastion of impartiality at first, the whole circus with HiLLaRy’S EmAiLs being about how they legitimately believed they could play the angle that the emails were a threat to national security all while they knew damn well it was a huge big nothingburger (with a side of hatred of women) while doing that thing that right wingers have done since the Reagan administration where they malign anything left of fascism as communism (including basic human rights) and then, predictably, you have all these very furrowed-browed old white men sitting around a conference table being VERY CONCERNED that precisely the thing they wanted to happen came true and they are completely unprepared to do damage control on the mess they engineered because WHITE MEN ARE INCAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING THE CONCEPT OF CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR OWN ACTIONS. 🤣😂🤣😂

In all seriousness. I wasn’t crazy about Hillary either. I don’t like dynasties of any kind, royal or political. I don’t like establishment dems who are really just center-right in the real world while masquerading as left in backwards-ass bizarro-world USA. But I’m an old motherfucker now, I’m well into my 30s, I’m boring and watch CSPAN for leisure and shit. I read the reports coming out of the DOJ. One of my degrees is in political science, though admittedly, that’s the least thing that matters, in the scope of everything else these days. But it’s safe to say Hillary was unfairly maligned while republicans committing atrocities exponentially worse have been treated with kid gloves for decades. A very distinct double standard has been applied here for....longer than I’ve been alive, that even the most educated people on the left have refused to acknowledge for far too long. I watched that entire BeNgHaZi hearing (which is easily accessible on youtube, so there’s literally no excuse not to know the facts on this), and everyone knew -- everyone knew it was a bullshit smear campaign. 

So, this post isn’t so much a review of the miniseries more than it’s an indictment of the corruption of American politics. The most damning aspect being that, on principle, US politics has always had a problem with embracing progressive policy, and basic civil rights in general. That’s not news; people have known this for some time. But the thing that this miniseries really illustrated in a very cartoonish, yet succinct, way is that there are experienced professionals who hold the highest, most powerful seats of authority in this country who won’t bat an eye at dedicating their entire careers to denigrating common decency, basic human rights, and even constitutional law, while being absolutely incapable of conceiving the long-term consequences of these actions, who will then turn around and concern troll over the ashes of the empire they enthusiastically helped to burn down. It’s nauseating. It’s infuriating. It shows a pathological disregard for personal responsibility.

Everyone was so preoccupied with their massive turgid erection for hating the Clintons (and women) that no one saw they were enthusiastically living in a henhouse built by fucking foxes. No one saw the genuine threat. 

And, by extension, no one had the balls to acknowledge that age-old instinct of white men willing to engage in a scorched earth campaign simply to satisfy their worst impulses and entitlement complexes. 

Can you fit “Who cares if we’re screwing over several generations with corrupt court-packing and a flagrant disregard for checks-and-balances predicated entirely on the honor system; we just don’t feel like doing domestic labor or respecting women and minorities so we’ll continue expediting reprehensible policies that exploit the most vulnerable people in this country because we can’t compete in an authentic meritocracy" onto a campaign slogan banner? 

I sounded the alarms on this trend 20 years ago, meanwhile. My parents and I had just gotten US citizenship, luckily months before 9/11 and the patriot act; and as an outsider looking in, as someone who had risked their life escaping a dangerous regime at an incredibly young age, I saw the warning signs in the republican party even back then. Naturally, I was denigrated as an alarmist and a butthurt liberal. 

You know, I’ll acknowledge that as a white person, I’m not the average American’s image of what an “immigrant” looks like. My experiences here over the past couple of decades have thrown into sharp relief how “immigrant” is just a dogwhistle for racist bullshit, because people who concern troll about us don’t seem to have many problems with us white ones. But I came out of a communist country. I’m straight outta the eastern bloc. And I don’t think there are any words in any spoken language that can do justice to how insulting it is when americans try to americasplain communism to me. Bitch. Y’all don’t fucking know. You just don’t.

The point is, even back then, I could see the slippery slope republicans were tumbling down, and I can't say I derive any pleasure from being vindicated in such an extreme fashion. Like. I told y’all motherfuckers. TWO DECADES AGO.

People who aren’t familiar with US politics, and even long-term US citizens who for some reason feel like it’s a waste to pay attention to your own shit, seem to spend a lot of time trying to unpack what precisely went wrong. My observations came up with 1) the manipulative aspect of US history in public schools glossing over, and even omitting, the most gruesome aspects of the revolutionary war, the holocaust, and the cold war (and oftentimes, the cold war is NEVER EVEN COVERED, which is especially insulting to me, for obvious reasons); 2) the manipulative aspect of US history in public schools teaching kids that the Declaration of independence and the Constitution are unassailable doctrines of freedom and liberty, and, as such, after independence was won, no further activism to maintain democracy was needed so we can all just smoke a bowl and be complacent because all those authoritarian third world regimes we constantly ridicule and criticize can NeVeR HaPPeN hErE 😒; and 3) how limpdick both-sidesism replaced civil, comprehensive political discussion because the right spent so long abusing, denigrating, and bullying the left that it was just easier to play it safe and take the milquetoast ~centrist~ stance, which always, always, always capitulates to the lowest common denominator, which is always the oppressor. 

And generally just this age-old trend of holding the victims of systematic oppression to a higher moral and behavioral standard than the perpetrators of systematic oppression. 

Guys, I’m tired. I’m so tired. 

I’ve gotten a few questions over the years about why my writing is so angsty, why it always seems to follow the same themes; war crimes, PTSD, gore, torture. 

I already escaped one authoritarian regime. The USA promised us one thing, and then once we got here, it started emulating the very tyrants we worked so hard to get away from. A lot of people have no idea what that feels like. How much of a betrayal that is. Especially considering all the financial and legal landmines one has to navigate just to do it, and then we’re punished for that, too.

I write about PTSD because I fucking have it. I write about war crimes because I’ve experienced them firsthand - just as a victim and not the perpetrator. I so often write about soldiers committing them because I want to roleplay what it’s like to not be a victim for once. 

tbh writing a fucking Hamilton fanfiction is one of the most cathartic things I’ve ever done, but the extensive research I’ve had to do to be able to write this thing has been low-key traumatic. There’s a lot of historical material I’ve consumed that should have been covered at the most basic level of compulsory education, but conspicuously isn’t. And I know that’s a feature, not a bug. It’s by design. 

Democracy - and independence, freedom, liberty, justice, civil rights in general - isn’t just some final xbox achievement that you unlock and then just shelve the game and forget about it for the rest of your life. You have to keep grinding to maintain it, because there will always be selfish, malicious people out there who will dedicate their entire lives playing a long con to ensure you don’t get the same opportunities as them. For the love of god, stop playing the both-sidesism game. From someone coming out of the eastern bloc, I can tell you with great confidence that that was part of the propaganda campaign you were fed to keep you from engaging so they could install a dictatorship under your nose. Do some self-guided historical research, guys. It can be very illuminating.

Anyway. I’ve gone on long enough here, but damn, don’t screw this up again, guys. Today is the first day of early voting in Texas, and I’m going to do my duty. When I first came to this country, after experiencing the rigorous vetting process and labyrinthine legal requirements of US citizenship, I was led to believe that in exchange for that privilege, I was personally responsible for my own civic self-education. It’s so much more important than you've been led to believe. 

[attheexactlyrighttimeandplace]

May I ask why you don't want to vote? I don't mean to be rude and if you don't want to reply that's fine, but I am curious!

Hi Anon,

Be assured; there’s nothing rude about your question:)

As a woman coming from a immigrant family, I have been raised in the idea that voting is more than a fundamental right when you become a citizen of a country but an obligation (i have dual citizenship and i share only one with my parents: the one from the country they come from). It has always been a serious matter for us to show a sense of responsability for what we took (being welcomed and take care off in the new land) and how to repay it, though our hearts have stayed overseas and exil was a very painful upprooting.  

And i fully believed it, even more when i studied law and get to learn more about the history of political systems in the european democracies, constitutional law and civil and human rights.

But i belong to a religious and ethnic minority which is currently the object of a massive institutional discrimination that attacks not only your religious freedom but also our place in this nation, our capacity to be part of it.

The attacks don’t come only from the extreme ring wing as expected, but from people for who i used to vote and still vote. The left wing in this country has been completely dismantled, mostly because embracing the european political construction have exposed its political members  to the massive influence of neo liberalism and they chose to embrace it, instead of fighting it.

What’s left of those social parties is facing the spectacular rise of fascism here like everywhere in Europe. So to keep their reduced electorate, the ones that didn’t run away, they feel that targeting in their public speeches my community, by presenting us as being at the origin of most of the problems: terrorism, insecurity, unemployment, decline of the respect for the public institutions, would help. 

I voted for them to have progress made on urgent issues: climate change and social justice but there’s not a day of the week where instead of talking how to change our way of living to face the major changes to come or to fight inequality, they don’t prefer to bring a controversy showing that our allegiances to this country is to be doubted.   

Well, i’ve been living in this country all my life: my children memories, my postgraduate studies in law,  my family bonds, my cultural and linguistic inheritance for a major part are all connected to this country. So  I don’t know how i can prove more where my place should be.

Things are getting more dangerous since the same people for who i wanted to vote in those european elections have tried this week to change the law to remove any public sign of our religion beliefs from their sight. In public school, women with a veil won’t be able to do anymore school visit/trips because our faith is seen as propaganda only. 

So that’s why i don’t want to vote: it’s not for me a choice between climate scepticism and fascim vs democracy. It’s a choice between climate scepticism and fascim vs democracy knowing that the democrats will turn against us at one point and vote more discriminatory laws, making it a free way to chase us from this country one day.           

[newstfionline]

Liberal Blind Spots Are Hiding the Truth About ‘Trump Country’

By Sarah Smarsh, NY Times, July 19, 2018

WICHITA, Kan.--Is the white working class an angry, backward monolith--some 90 million white Americans without college degrees, all standing around in factories and fields thumping their dirty hands with baseball bats? You might think so after two years of media fixation on this version of the aggrieved laborer: male, Caucasian, conservative, racist, sexist.

This account does white supremacy a great service in several ways: It ignores workers of color, along with humane, even progressive white workers. It allows college-educated white liberals to signal superior virtue while denying the sins of their own place and class. And it conceals well-informed, formally educated white conservatives--from middle-class suburbia to the highest ranks of influence--who voted for Donald Trump in legions.

The trouble begins with language: Elite pundits regularly misuse “working class” as shorthand for right-wing white guys wearing tool belts. My father, a white man and lifelong construction worker who labors alongside immigrants and people of color on job sites across the Midwest and South working for a Kansas-based general contractor owned by a woman, would never make such an error.

Most struggling whites I know live lives of quiet desperation mad at their white bosses, not resentment of their co-workers or neighbors of color. My dad’s previous three bosses were all white men he loathed for abuses of privilege and people.

It is unfair power that my father despises. The last rant I heard him on was not about race or immigration but about the recent royal wedding, the spectacle of which made him sick.

“What’s so special about the royals?” he told me over the phone from a cheap motel after work. “But they’ll get the best health care, the best education, the best food. Meanwhile I’m in Marion, Arkansas. All I want is some chickens and a garden and place to go fishing once in a while.”

What my father seeks is not a return to times that were worse for women and people of color but progress toward a society in which everyone can get by, including his white, college-educated son who graduated into the Great Recession and for 10 years sold his own plasma for gas money. After being laid off during that recession in 2008, my dad had to cash in his retirement to make ends meet while looking for another job. He has labored nearly every day of his life and has no savings beyond Social Security.

Yes, my father is angry at someone. But it is not his co-worker Gem, a Filipino immigrant with whom he has split a room to pocket some of the per diem from their employer, or Francisco, a Hispanic crew member with whom he recently built a Wendy’s north of Memphis. His anger, rather, is directed at bosses who exploit labor and governments that punish the working poor--two sides of a capitalist democracy that bleeds people like him dry.

“Corporations,” Dad said. “That’s it. That’s the point of the sword that’s killing us.”

Among white workers, this negative energy has been manipulated to great political effect by a conservative trifecta in media, private interest and celebrity that we might call Fox, Koch and Trump.

As my dad told me, “There’s jackasses on every level of the food chain--but those jackasses are the ones that play all these other jackasses.”

Still, millions of white working-class people have refused to be played. They have resisted the traps of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and nationalism and voted the other way--or, in too many cases, not voted at all. I am far less interested in calls for empathy toward struggling white Americans who spout or abide hatred than I am in tapping into the political power of those who don’t.

Like many Midwestern workers I know, my dad has more in common ideologically with New York’s Democratic Socialist congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez than with the white Republicans who run our state. Having spent most of his life doing dangerous, underpaid work without health insurance, he supports the ideas of single-payer health care and a universal basic income.

Much has been made of the white working class’s political shift to the right. But Mr. Trump won among white college graduates, too. According to those same exit polls trotted out to blame the “uneducated,” 49 percent of whites with degrees picked Mr. Trump, while 45 percent picked Hillary Clinton (among them, support for Mr. Trump was stronger among men). Such Americans hardly “vote against their own best interest.” Media coverage suggests that economically distressed whiteness elected Mr. Trump, when in fact it was just plain whiteness.

Stories dispelling the persistent notion that bigotry is the sole province of “uneducated” people in derided “flyover” states are right before our eyes: A white man caught on camera assaulting a black man at a white-supremacist rally last August in Charlottesville, Va., was recently identified as a California engineer. This year, a white male lawyer berated restaurant workers for speaking Spanish in New York City. A white, female, Stanford-educated chemical engineer called the Oakland, Calif., police on a family for, it would appear, barbecuing while black.

Among the 30 states tidily declared “red” after the 2016 election, in two-thirds of them Mrs. Clinton received 35 to 48 percent of the vote. My white working-class family was part of that large minority, rendered invisible by the Electoral College and graphics that paint each state red or blue.

In the meantime, critical stories here in “red states” go underdiscussed and underreported, including:

Barriers to voting. Forces more influential than the political leanings of a white factory worker decide election outcomes: gerrymandering, super PACs, corrupt officials. In Kansas, Secretary of State Kris Kobach blocked 30,000 would-be voters from casting ballots (and was recently held in contempt of federal court for doing so).

Different information sources. Some of my political views shifted when my location, peer group and news sources changed during my college years. Many Americans today have a glut of information but poor media literacy--hard to rectify if you work on your feet all day, don’t own a computer and didn’t get a chance to learn the vocabulary of national discourse.

Populism on the left. Today, “populism” is often used interchangeably with “far right.” But the American left is experiencing a populist boom. According to its national director, Democratic Socialists of America nearly quadrupled in size from 2016 to 2017--and saw its biggest one-day boost the day after Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s recent primary upset. Progressive congressional candidates with working-class backgrounds and platforms have major support heading into the midterms here in Kansas, including the white civil rights attorney James Thompson, who grew up in poverty, and Sharice Davids, a Native American lawyer who would be the first openly lesbian representative from Kansas.

To find a more accurate vision of these United States, we must resist pat narratives about any group--including the working class on whom our current political situation is most often pinned. The greatest con of 2016 was not persuading a white laborer to vote for a nasty billionaire with soft hands. Rather, it was persuading a watchdog press to cast every working-class American in the same mold.

[surly01]

The Avatar of American Apartheid

The Trump years have revealed new truths about our relatives, neighbors, and friends. Or former friends. They have embraced the Avatar of American Apartheid.

We’ve had to open our eyes to the fact that some with whom we’ve happily shared parts of our lives stand revealed as racist to the core. Just fine with kidnapping and incarceration of immigrant children, forced family separations, and compulsory hysterectomies for some refugee women. OK with cancellation of decades of environmental regulation and climate change denial. OK with the negligent homicide that comprises the administration’s Covid-19 response. Enthused about deploying anonymized companies of military-style shock troops into the streets to “black bag” protesters and gas peaceful demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights. Fully embracing the author of 20,000-plus lies, the serial sexual assaults, the mind-bending attacks on institutions great and small.

Enough. I am not fine with any of the above, nor am I fine with those who are.

Some reading this might protest, “But I’m not a racist. I have a black friend/co-worker/neighbor, etc.” The election of the first Black President led many believe that we had entered a “post-racial society.” In arguments elsewhere about structural racism in the US, my opponents have cited Obama’s election as proof that race issues were now over.  Would that it were so. Trump’s election has revealed American Apartheid as it really is. Howard Zinn and others have brought the receipts to show American history is a procession of mass murder and colonial appropriation, an uncomfortable truth we remain unwilling to hear. And the resurgence of the hard edge of neo-confederate militia rage and racist taunts from Charlottesville to Michigan highlight the dark stain on America’s soul.

America is as divided as it was in the 1850s, in that tense time of conflict before the Civil War. The windfall of territories gained in the wake of the War with Mexico led to arguments about how those territories would be apportioned between slave states and free states. This led to the Compromise of 1850, a package of bills abolishing slavery in Washington DC, admission to the Union of California as a free state, and enhancement of the Fugitive Slave Act. This last required northern magistrates to act as agents and slavecatchers for southern slave-owners. The Compromise also provided for existing territories to be admitted as “slave” or “free” depending on the inhabitants’ electoral will. This led to “Bleeding Kansas,” those battles waged between roving bands of abolitionists and slaveholders, and where abolitionist John Brown made his bones.  A period of widespread domestic terror.

Much has been made of the rural-urban divide, which is actually the 21st-century code for racism. In a recent National Review column, Rich Lowry observed that Trump is

“the foremost symbol of resistance to the overwhelming woke cultural tide that has swept along the media, academia, corporate America, Hollywood, professional sports, the big foundations, and almost everything in between,” including “the 1619 Project.”

Those who live in Trump country, where the KKK still has a relatively strong established presence, care little for what he does as long as it gives them license to hate liberals. The bigger the outrage, the louder the applause. Thus when Trump said, “he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue...,” he was correct. Non-Trump-cult members who wonder “how can they still back Trump after this scandal or the next” fail to understand the underlying motivating factor of his support. It’s “fuck liberals.” Since according minorities their constitutionally-guaranteed rights would require an acknowledgement of America’s actual history of racism, it is vigorously opposed by change-resistant conservatives determined to preserve the prerogatives of white entitlement.

Attempts to have a logical, rational conversation with Trumpists invariably reveals a person who believes their well-being depends upon avoiding things they’d rather not know. Or who will replace evidence with an alternative set of facts, generally created of whole cloth and breathed into life like a golem through repetition in right-wing media.

Consider QAnon, that hatchery of right-wing fucknuttery. Scratch their “Save the Children” marketing disguise and find revealed a narrative similar to that in the most influential anti-Jewish pamphlet of all time, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” This was written by Russian anti-Jewish propagandists around 1902. Central to the mythology was the Blood Libel, which claimed that Jews kidnapped and slaughtered Christian children and drained their blood to mix in the dough for matzos consumed on Jewish holidays.

Consider the current package of accusations:

A secret cabal is taking over the world. They kidnap children, slaughter, and eat them to gain power from their blood. They control high positions in government, banks, international finance, the news media, and the church. They want to disarm the police. They promote homosexuality and pedophilia. They plan to mongrelize the white race so it will lose its essential power.

Thus are “The Protocols” repackaged by QAnon for Americans largely ignorant of history. Some have even suggested that QAnon is a Nazi cult, rebranded. What is appalling is that so many of our neighbors, relatives, and “friends” are so credulous.

As David Pollard has observed,

Trump’s support among white males remains basically unchanged over the past four years. This, not Republicans, is his real base — a clear majority of white males continue to support Trump, and it hasn’t been that long since they were the only people allowed to vote. Whites, and male whites moreso, have voted against every Democratic presidential candidate since the civil rights movement of the 1960s. And let’s be clear — I didn’t say, old white males. Young white males of all voting-age groups remain committed, almost as much as their older counterparts, to support Trump. Their entrance into the voting age cohorts has barely caused a ripple in the plurality of white males supporting Trump. That may surprise you until you consider that a disproportionate number (about half) of young voters are nonwhite (only a quarter of boomers are nonwhite), so looking at the entire youth cohort’s seemingly progressive attitudes obscures the reality that most young whites hew to the same extreme right-wing politics that the majority of old whites subscribe to; there’s just fewer of them.

We’ll leave it for you to consider that it means that a majority of white males of all ages are knowingly prepared to vote again for a blatantly corrupt candidate, a pathological liar, mentally deranged, uninformed, racist, sexist, utterly without principle, and increasingly untethered to reality. One whose “White House Science Office” takes credit for ‘ending’ the pandemic as infections mount to all-time highs.

But after 20,000 lies, who’s left to quibble?

“I love the poorly educated.” Donald J. Trump 

Trump may lose the election, but white American males (and some true-believing females) aren’t going anywhere. They are the product of our systemically racist, sexist, patriarchal culture, born to preserve the prerogatives of white men of property while denying justice to the nonwhite, the native, the immigrant, the female, the “weak.” While they also control the courts, the banks, the legal system, and law enforcement, created in their likeness to support and preserve white male power, they are quick to snap into a well-practiced victim pose whenever challenged.

This past summer, members of the ShutDownDC movement protested at Chad Wolf’s home. They said,

“We know there are no career consequences for these men and women. We know there are no financial consequences for these men and women. We know there are no legal consequences for these men and women. We must make social consequences for these men and women. We must make it uncomfortable for them. We will not be good Germans. We will not be the people who sat by and watched our neighbors commit these atrocities and said nothing because their kids were home.”

The differences between both sides of a culture war are as strong as the conflict between “slave” and “free” in the 1850s, and are likewise framed in moral absolutes. No matter what happens on or after November 3, Trumpism remains with or without Trump. How will we live with its followers?. And whether or not there are “consequences” for their actions, the stink of Trump will never wash away, and what has been seen can’t be unseen. Nor will it be forgotten.

[khalilhumam]

Navigating race and injustice in America’s middle class

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/navigating-race-and-injustice-in-americas-middle-class/

Navigating race and injustice in America’s middle class

By Jennifer M. Silva, Tiffany N. Ford The United States of America is a race-plural nation – the American middle class is no different. If we define the middle class as those in the middle 60 percent of the household income distribution, with annual household incomes between $40,000 and $154,000, then 59 percent of the middle class is white, 12 percent of the group is Black, 18 percent is Hispanic, and 6 percent is Asian. Given the racial make-up of this group, this current period of civil unrest, and the looming presidential election, it is more important than ever for those of us concerned with the well-being of the American middle class to understand the attitudes of different racial groups within the middle class. In a Brookings study begun in late 2019, in which we conducted focus groups and personal interviews with a broad range of middle-class Americans, we were able to have real discussions about race, racism, identity, and injustice. To promote comfort and honesty, we stratified our focus groups by race and gender, which allowed different middle-class race-gender groups to talk openly about their experiences in their workplaces, with their families, communities, and in their everyday lives. Below, we present what members of the American middle class had to say about racial injustice, both in the months leading up to the first identified case and in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Navigating Injustice  

Summer 2020 witnessed national uprisings against racism and police brutality, with deeply rooted tensions concerning power, identity, injustice, and belonging that erupted into protests, riots, and lethal violence. These tensions were already brewing in our conversations about identity and respect in our focus groups in the fall of 2019.  For the Black and Hispanic people in the focus groups, experiences of disrespect and discrimination in the workplace were prevalent. Black women described how they had to restrain their emotions and opinions out of fear of retaliation or conflict, while also working harder to be given a fair chance. As Patricia, a Black woman who works in IT, describes: “I got to work harder. I have to work hard. I have to bust my kneecaps and ankles, just for somebody to give me a chance. I have to not respond the way someone would expect for me to respond so that they can respect me. Nobody respects women, and especially a Black woman.”    

Black and Hispanic individuals attested to racism in their everyday lives, whether stereotyping by their co-workers, discrimination in higher education, or racial profiling in the criminal justice system.

Black and Hispanic individuals attested to racism in their everyday lives, whether stereotyping by their co-workers, discrimination in higher education, or racial profiling in the criminal justice system. Justin, a Hispanic man in a Las Vegas, Nevada, focus group, shared his experience, “I’ve never had a positive association or positive experience with a cop pulling me over.  I got to a point where being Hispanic and being behind the wheel at night, it was almost a no-go for me.”  In Prince George’s County, Maryland, Black men described being “trolled for speeding” when they ventured into suburban areas and getting “pulled over because you ‘fit the description’” when they were wearing dreads, driving a nice car, or simply having a laundry bag in their backseat. One man said soberly, “In most of our movies, the person dies. A lot of these movies conditioned us to not prepare for a long life, not prepare for marriage. We figure we get to twenty-one, man, I’m blessed.”  

“I’ve never had a positive association or positive experience with a cop pulling me over.”

In Houston, Texas, Black men referred to the “injustice system,” documenting their fears of their children “getting railroaded for something petty” while wealthy people “get a slap on the wrist, two to three years’ probation for something petty,  while they just violated my child and mess them up for life.” One man tied crime to economic inequality and racism, explaining, “Just because I can’t get a job, the bills don’t stop coming. I can’t get a job. My child’s stomach’s not going to stop rumbling.” Another man chimed in, “It’s more profitable to keep us locked up and to keep this system rolling because you’re rented out as free labor, you’re rented out for for-profit prisons, and there is a quota the police and system has to make to keep those facilities rented.  My biggest thing is to keep my children out of their facilities.”[1]  Men and women in the Black and Hispanic focus groups attempted to acknowledge and fight against injustice,  but also tried to protect themselves from exhaustion and despair.  As a Black woman in Wichita, Kansas, noted, “I can switch it off real quick if I see stuff, like even with the police officers killing a lot of Black men, and women too, I can tune in and tune out.  I don’t want to see that, I don’t want to watch that, because all it does is bring my spirit down. So, I’m an optimist on life in general, and just knowing that the future is going to be as bright as you make it, it’s up to us to make our future bright.”    Brian, a 57-year-old Black man from Detroit, Michigan, moved to Texas when the automobile factories were closing, leaving behind “a post-apocalyptic world.” In Houston, he moved into the technology field, performing computer upgrades and technical assistance on government contracts.  Brian has not had steady benefits such as health insurance or retirement contributions as a contract worker, yet has invested substantially in his own career advancement, most recently in a $7,500 online course on data security. Since COVID-19 hit, he has been “trying to get two certifications, maybe three, between now and Labor Day weekend, because right now it’s just very hard to get a job because the work source is gone. The unemployment office, they’re closed. You can’t go online because the website just keeps crashing if you get on there.”  He has been getting some help from SNAP.  Brian reflects, “I think that if you want the American Dream, if you’re a minority, you have to work so much harder. I mean, you can get it, but you’ve just got to work a lot harder. There have been times when I’ve been down here where I think that race played a part in me getting the job, because when you’re the only Black person and everybody else is white, you kind of figure you’re probably the token guy that they kind of had to hire, to keep the government off of them. I’ve had a couple of jobs like that. I think there’s just a lot more opportunities, if I were lighter-skinned or white.” He continues: “I mean, plus what’s going on in Detroit right now. I mean, they’ve got the highest COVID cases in the country, and like I said. Detroit is 80% Black, so, like I said. That’s one reason why I’m glad I’m not there.”  

Nostalgia and Resentment  

For some of the white people we spoke with, we heard anger toward perceived “quota-filling” hiring practices or attacks from the “left.” Some white participants resented being put into a racial category at all, while others feared they were on their way to becoming a “minority” in America. Leslie, a white woman from Las Vegas, described her experiences: “The culture has definitely shifted. Because in the [19]80’s, I think being a white working American woman, a lot of people strived for that, and now we are definitely the minority. I feel like we’re the minority and [we’re] discriminated against, especially in the workplace.” Other white people believed that race had become too politicized in recent years, fueling unnecessary conflict between Americans of different racial groups. Jake, a pastor from Pennsylvania, put it, “There’s this bizarre focus on race. And granted there are racists, there’s always been racists, there’s always going to be racists. But it seemed like the country went from this, we’re all in this together mentality, to we’ve literally been carved out. They’ve carved us out into groups now.  I don’t understand why we’re now white people. It just feels like we were people. When I was in New York, we were people. Some of my best friends were the people I worked with who were all different shades of different stuff.”   Promoting a colorblind[2] view of the world, Jake, a Trump supporter, continued, “We elected our first Black president, which was supposed to be this big deal. I didn’t care if he was Black. I cared that he didn’t have any experience and I thought he shouldn’t have got the job.” While Jake insists that racism is wrong, he does not like how quotas – “the numbers” –  seem to have replaced individual merit: “Almost anywhere you go to fill out something now, you’re asked specifically,  are you Latino or Hispanic? Are minorities receiving maybe some additional treatment because we have to get our numbers up to match and we want this to look fair and equal?” In his interview, Jake also worried about a growing “disrespect for our authorities, like police officers. In ministry, there are people who don’t live the way they’re supposed to live.  Everybody makes bad choices and doesn’t, but you can’t throw everybody out because just one or two make bad choices. Any profession, any type of work you do, is going to have some bad apples.”[3]  Overall, Jake seemed perplexed by enduring racial conflict and resentful that we can’t all just be “people.”   Joe, a white man with a high school diploma who works an entry-level factory job, asserts that America has been “going downhill since 1965.”  Joe favors protections for workers such as trade barriers, opposes US involvement in foreign wars, and generally supports “left-wing economic ideas,” labeling himself “kind of a Socialist.”  But Joe is staunchly against immigration, insisting, “End it. All of it. Until every single American has a job and is taken care of, we have no business importing competitive labor.” He is also right-wing on cultural issues – “My issues with the Democrats are cultural progressive issues. I’m all for universal health care, universal basic income. But then they push all the progressive cultural issues. I joke around and say, give me the universal health care but hold the gay marriage.”  While Joe voted for Trump in 2016, now he thinks Trump “has to go” because he has supported Wall Street over American workers.   Joe tentatively tells us about his involvement in white nationalist politics. He has long been involved in Civil War reenactments and has traced his American roots back to the 1660s in New England. He struggles to define what it means to be American today: “if anybody can be an American, then what’s it really mean?” When I ask if it used to mean something, he replies, “Well, when you say he was an American, you knew what they were talking about. That you’re someone of European ancestry. Originally it was white English Protestants and they had different waves of immigration after that. But until the 1960’s, it was pretty straightforward what an American was.  Now that’s becoming much more diversified.” Joe has been heavily involved in the Confederate flag and monument controversies and was part of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. He states, “But what irks me is the monuments, particularly those put up by widows and orphans to their fallen kin. I think that’s low. It’s almost a personal attack because history is the foundation of my identity is the way I look at it. It’s an attack on white American history more than anything else.” Joe worries about his children growing up as a “minority,” viewing diverse societies as unsustainable and prone to “culture ruptures” and violence. He feels betrayed by Donald Trump’s treatment of the white nationalists in Charlottesville, telling his supporters to “go out there and fight those people, but then when people do it, he leaves them out to dry, which I think is kind of a cheap move.” He says he is willing to give Joe Biden a chance in November.   

Evidence of racial inequality abounds.

Evidence of racial inequality abounds. Qualitative data from our American Middle Class Hopes and Anxieties Study is yet another contribution to that body of evidence. Black, Hispanic, and white middle class Americans have had vastly different experiences in America – to say the least – and thus hold different views on current inequalities. Armed with their stories, we are better prepared to think more carefully about how to address injustice and inequality, challenge misinformation, and bridge the nation’s longstanding divides.   

About the Study 

  The Future of the Middle Class Initiative has spent the last several years studying the American middle class. We have explored survey data, reviewed the literature, and consulted with experts. But we also wanted to base our conclusions on talking to members of the middle class, listening to their stories, and in the process, deepening our understanding of their lives and their well-being.  In fall of 2019, we launched the American Middle Class Hopes and Anxieties Study, a mixed-methods study that brings together in-depth interviews, survey data, focus groups, and quantitative analysis to better understand how the middle class is faring across five core domains: time, money, health, respect, and relationships. For the first phase of our study, we conducted twelve focus groups in five locations across the United States, with a total of 127 white, Black, and Hispanic or Latino middle–class Americans. In April of 2020, we began phase II of the study, conducting one-on-one in-depth interviews with a subset of the focus group participants. As a result of these interviews, we were able to hone in on the new challenges that have arisen as a result of COVID-19, including balancing childcare and work, sharing household tasks, coping with mental and physical health concerns, and dealing with economic uncertainty.  This work would not have been possible without the collaboration of Econometrica, Inc. researchers and the generosity of the 127 middle class Americans who shared their stories.  

Footnotes

[1] See Rios, Victor. Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys. New York, NY: NYU Press, 2011. [2] Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. Racism without Racists. Lanham, MD: Roman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009. [3] Rashawn, Ray. “Bad apples come from rotten trees in policing.” Brookings How We Rise (blog), May 30, 2020. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2020/05/30/bad-apples-come-from-rotten-trees-in-policing/   Jennifer M. Silva did not receive financial support from any firm or person for this article or from any firm or person with a financial or political interest in this article. The author is not currently an officer, director, or board member of any organization with a financial or political interest in this article.

[dipulb3]

Progressive activists are wary over criminal justice under a Biden-Harris administration

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/progressive-activists-are-wary-over-criminal-justice-under-a-biden-harris-administration/

Progressive activists are wary over criminal justice under a Biden-Harris administration

In a series of interviews this summer, organizers told Appradab their angst over the records of Biden, who wrote the 1994 crime bill, and Harris, a former prosecutor, along with the pair’s outwardly supportive rhetoric for law enforcement, fuels their concerns about the future. And while Biden choosing Harris, a daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, was in part a nod to influential Black women who wanted to see a reflection of themselves — Black and highly qualified– in the highest office in the land, the young activists said representation alone is not enough.

After a wide open primary that showcased the diversity of the Democratic Party, it ended with the nomination of the 78-year-old Biden, a moderate whose 1994 bill is often cited as one driver of mass incarceration, in part because of the “three strikes” law that ensured mandatory life terms for defendants with at least three federal violent crime or drug convictions.

Yet Democrats of all stripes have largely set aside their misgivings about Biden to focus on ousting Trump. That focus was amplified and sharpened following the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Republicans’ rush to fill her seat. It was buoyed further this week by the lack of charges brought against three officers for the killing of Breonna Taylor, the 26-year old woman shot in her own home while Louisville police were executing a search warrant, signaling the limits of this summer’s pressure campaign on legislative and judicial change.

View Trump and Biden head-to-head polling

Young progressive activists are reasoning that they stand a better chance of successfully pressuring Biden into taking up key elements of their cause than Trump, who has lambasted peaceful protesters and refused to condemn all but the most egregious acts of police violence.

“There are a lot of people, including myself, who aren’t excited,” Gicola Lane, a 31-year-old Black woman and criminal justice organizer from Nashville, told Appradab in an interview. “Because of what we have seen happen in courtrooms, in our own neighborhood and all over this country. And we know that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have played a part in that system.”

Still, she plans to vote for the Democratic ticket in the fall.

The lack of enthusiasm for Biden and Harris points to deeper concerns over their ability to unite the party absent what many perceive as an existential threat posed by four more years of Trump. Demonstrators on the front line of a wildly invigorated social justice movement see movable objects in Biden and Harris, where the current administration looms like a stone wall blocking their push for change.

“Voting is not an expression of my moral values, it’s a decision to choose the political terrain that we fight on,” Aaron Bryant, a 28-year-old Black man from Durham, North Carolina, told Appradab.

Bryant, an organizer and electoral justice fellow with Movement for Black Lives, plans to vote for Biden and Harris, but only as a means to an end.

“Do we want to fight on a political terrain that advantages the worst among the capitalist class and the right wing? Or do we want to fight on the terrain that advantages the middle of the road centrist moderate option? I think one of those options gives us as a movement a better opportunity to strategize and move forward,” Bryant said.

A blueprint

Simran Chowla, a 20-year-old Indian woman whose parents are of Punjabi and Bengali descent, said that she’s never before seen a South Asian woman like Harris reach this level of American politics.

“It’s been pretty monumental for me as a young Indian woman,” Chowla told Appradab.

Still, despite their similar backgrounds, Chowla said she does not have full confidence that a Vice President Harris — whom she plans to vote for — would represent her interests if elected.

An organizer with March For Our Lives DC and a lobbying lead for Team ENOUGH, a pair of gun violence prevention organizations, Chowla hopes to bring up her proposals to a Biden-Harris administration. She would like to see a defunding or redistributing of funds within the police, among other initiatives.

Neither Biden nor Harris support defunding the police, contrary to Trump’s insistence otherwise. Biden has voiced support for conditioning federal aid to police based on behavior and Justice Department intervention against departments who violate civil rights standards. Harris has often said the US needs to “reimagine” public safety and how the police and the communities they serve interact but has said violent crime should stay the remit of trained officers.

Biden has also voiced support for a federal ban on police chokeholds, reestablishing a Justice Department oversight panel that investigated police practices established during the Obama administration, and other steps to increase police accountability.

Alongside New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, Harris introduced the Justice in Policing Act in June, at the height of a national uprising against racism and the police killing of George Floyd and other unarmed Black people. The bill would create a National Police Misconduct Registry, provide incentives for local governments to conduct racial bias training for officers, and set caps on the transfer of military-grade equipment to law enforcement, among other initiatives.

And during her primary campaign, Harris released a plan that sought to end mandatory minimum sentences on the federal level, legalize marijuana, end the death penalty, and end the use of private prisons– a far cry from the policies she once enforced as California’s attorney general and the district attorney for San Francisco, positions that led to her being labeled a “cop” by young Black activists.

Among a litany of issues, she was criticized for disagreeing with a bill that would have required her AG office to appoint a special prosecutor to probe all deadly police-involved shootings in 2015, saying that the decision should be kept in the hands of local prosecutors. A year later, she pushed a law to expand the AG’s ability to appoint special prosecutors if district attorneys consented.

Some criminal justice activists say they have been heartened by the Biden campaign’s willingness to take some increasingly progressive positions on climate change — and believe that, with pressure and time, they could push a Biden-Harris administration in the same direction.

Zina Precht-Rodriguez, the deputy creative director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, highlighted Biden’s revamped climate change platform, the product of deep engagement with leading activists and progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who co-chaired a task force on the issue that brought together Biden allies and supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“Biden’s climate plan is unrecognizable from the plan he entered the race with, and you could say that extends to his rhetoric and how he speaks to young people,” Precht-Rodriguez said.

But asked if the Biden-Harris ticket is doing enough, she said, “I think the short answer would be, they could always do more.”

“It sort of speaks to the point of, you know, how we will push the ticket to the left,” Precht-Rodriguez said. “Voting is only one basic part of organizing, and we won’t win the Green New Deal just by voting one President or congressperson in.”

‘I don’t have faith that they’re fighting for my revolution’

Organizers have highlighted Biden’s stance that “not all cops are bad cops” as part of their critique that the ticket has not engaged in enough “deep listening” from those who are victimized by the police. It is evidence, they say, that Biden and Harris are more concerned with pushing back on attacks from Trump and the GOP than representing their movement’s priorities.

“It’s very clear that what they’re saying is completely opposite of what the movement is saying right now,” Lane said.

She works for Free Hearts, a Tennessee organization run by formerly incarcerated women that provides support to impacted families. Lane, who supported Sanders during the primary, challenged the pair to be open to a litany of policies produced over the summer to combat the current carceral state, like the BREATHE Act, which would divest federal funds from incarceration and policing and invest in community safety. That legislation is supported by progressive Reps. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.

“I would like to see them not talk down on the movement. Instead of making it seem outrageous, actually challenge themselves to listen and adopt them on a federal level to really gain confidence of the people,” Lane said.

Rukia Lumumba, co-director of the Electoral Justice Project of the Movement for Black Lives, credited Harris for meeting with M4BL organizers to hear about the BREATHE Act before her selection as Biden’s running mate. But neither Harris nor Biden has endorsed it.

Ty Hobson Powell, a 25-year-old Black man and founder of Concerned Citizens DC, said Democrats’ current message doesn’t give him “faith that they’re fighting for my revolution in this moment.”

Though Hobson Powell says Biden and Harris have not aligned themselves with his desired policy changes, he acknowledged that the other side is further away from his vision of reform.

“When we talk about voting for anybody, that is understanding, that I will be settling,” he said.

In response to young organizers’ criticism of the lack of policy shaping to match their needs, Harris press secretary Sabrina Singh told Appradab the campaign understands “the need to address systemic injustices facing communities of color in criminal justice, housing, health care, and other aspects of society.”

“They’ve held listening sessions and virtual meetings with activists and community leaders to listen and learn and are committed to enacting their concerns into real and meaningful systemic change to achieve racial justice,” she added.

Additionally, both Biden and Harris have visited the battleground state of Wisconsin, speaking with Jacob Blake — a 29-year-old who was shot by police seven times in the back by a Kenosha police officer — over the phone and meeting with his family. Biden held a community meeting on September 3, where he condemned Blake’s shooting, as well as the violence and damage done to the city during subsequent protests.

‘She’s shown up to address these issues’

Jeremiah Wheeler, the 22-year-old Black Student Union President at Wayne State University, asked Harris how she would resolve injustices in the Black community at a recent campaign event in Detroit.

“I’m gonna need your help,” Harris told organizers and participants at the gathering on 7 Mile Road.

Wheeler told Appradab that Harris later reiterated the need to work both inside and outside the system to create change, something that Harris has said she’s done throughout her career as a prosecutor. He credited Harris for her engagement, but said this moment is less about the candidates’ individual backgrounds than their policy vision.

Like so many others, Wheeler said he will be voting for Biden and Harris, and encouraging others to do so, but that decision was as much about ousting Trump as an endorsing the Democratic ticket.

“We need to vote,” said Wheeler, who supported Sanders in the primary. “I don’t want to offer any more reasons on why not to vote, whether I feel we’re getting the gourmet meal that we rightfully deserve or we’re getting some fast food. Participation is key.”

Chelsea Miller, a 24-year-old Black woman and co-founder of civil rights organization Freedom March NYC, applauded Harris for convening an “intimate” video conference with racial justice organizations from around the country.

“She asked questions, we asked questions. It came from a place of understanding. I think it’s commendable that [Harris] would step into that space and create this opportunity for activists and organizers,” Miller said. “She’s shown up to address these issues.”

Asked what Biden and Harris could do to prove that they are serious about delivering change, Porche Bennett, an activist, mother and small businesses owner who spoke passionately at the community meeting with Biden in Kenosha, said the nominee’s time there “changed how people view him,” and called on Biden and Harris to hit the streets to make their case.

“Get out here and go through these neighborhoods. Without cameras,” she said. “Treat us like we matter.”

[upshotre]

Death Of Civility And The Rise Of Rage

Azu Ishiekwene Angry mobs have dominated recent images from the streets of South Africa and Nigeria – Africa’s two largest economies. Even within national boundaries, we have seen pictures in the last few days of defiant groups who feel hard done by, pressed to the wall or left behind by their government. Yet, there are threats of more – not just more protests – but of more of violent, “revolutionary” protests, to come. Politicians should not pretend that they’re embarrassed, surprised or even confused. Why should they be? Lack of compromise and desperation for power for its own sake – two illegitimate children of politicians – have finally come of age. The result has been a deadly culture of rage and self-help among citizens mis-directing their anger. Politicians have played a leading role in murdering civility and the streets that produced many of these politicians are reflecting their worst demons. This might sound a bit unfair, especially since in the xenophobic attacks in South Africa, for example, there was a genuine sense of shame and regret in some circles in that country. The point, however, is that this sentiment has been muted, even eroded, by mixed messages from sections of the political elite and viral videos of mobs in a few townships at the weekend threatening fresh attacks on immigrants. In Nigeria, angry crowds impatient with the government’s diplomatic shuttle have besieged perceived South African businesses, forcing them to shutter for the second week running. The costs are stacking up. Even though Pretoria announced plans by President Muhammadu Buhari and President Cyril Ramaphosa to meet in South Africa in October to find ways of ending the violence, the mobs think they already know the way: loot, destroy and kill till the last immigrant – the last African immigrant, that is – leaves South Africa. Why? Why would people who lived as friends, neighbours, and even family for years, suddenly turn on the next man or woman with sticks and machetes? It’s partly because they believe what their politicians have been telling them: politicians who were either products of mob culture or who paved their way to power by feeding that culture have been telling the mob exactly what it wants to hear. That the immigrant has been stealing their jobs, polluting their streets with drugs and crime, and violating their women. That the immigrant has infested and compromised their social security systems and is stealing their benefits. That the immigrant has been reaping where he did not sow and it’s only a matter of time before he will not only steal their harvest but also steal their seed and their land. For years, this has been the immigrant’s burden – Jew, Chinese, Lebanese or Nigerian. There has been an upsurge in nationalism and right-wing politics, partly fueled by religious extremism and globalisation. And perhaps the most notorious mascots of nationalism in recent times have been US President Donald Trump, Hungarian President Viktor Mihaly Orban and the British pair of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Brexit Party leader, Nigel Farage. But these politicians, however despicable their politics, are not trees outside the forest. Their emergence and rise to power received nutrition and nourishment from the broken, toxic politics within their national boundaries. In the race to the top, only the fittest survive; and by the fittest here, I mean those who have the deepest pockets and the deadliest political machine, including, of course, the ability to use sound bites to stir up the basest instincts of their supporters against the “other”; the “other” being the opponent or the immigrant. It’s convenient to blame the streets and to forget that the politicians we complain about are either products of the system or had to play the system to get to the top. Whether it’s former President Olusegun Obasanjo describing politics as “do-or-die”, Trump asking immigrants to go back to their “shithole”, or Ramaphosa giving the impression during the last campaign that immigrants are South Africa’s problem, civility has broken down in politics as in society. Politics is, in fact, imitating society and we may have lost the right to complain about the incompetence of politicians long ago. As Jared Diamond wrote in his book, Upheaval, polarisation has degraded politics just as badly as it has many aspects of our ordinary civic life and how we relate to each other. Notice the way the driver behind honks at the light repeatedly, even before the light has changed from amber to green. Reckon the fury in the eyes of the next driver as your car pointer flicks for space ahead of a dead-end or the stone-cold face of the fellow who, knowing that the doorway cannot take more than one person at a time, shoves you aside just to get in first. Things are worse on social media where avatars hide behind the veil of anonymity to savage people who either hold a different view, look different or belong to a different party, religion or tribe. While social media has aided plurality and democratised communication, it has also created multiple cells of hardened, uncompromising warriors. Those who hold similar views band together in their trenches, while viciously attacking or “unfriending” those who hold different views. In Nigerian political parlance, both groups are dis-affectionately called, “the hailers” vs “the wailers”. As for the shrinking few in-between, there are enough filters and channels to provide them just the kind of news or entertainment they want 24/7. The rest of the world may burn, for all they care. This is the cauldron which produces our politicians, and which they, in turn, feel obliged to leverage to rise to power and once in power, they exploit it to maintain their base. There’s an angry mob out there and it’s frightening what we’re getting into with our eyes open. Whether it’s the viral video of mobs attacking a jeep on what looked like a Lagos road, the chilling threat by a respondent in a Vox-pop that the streets of Nigeria will be cleansed with the blood of “big men” in the coming revolution, or the implacable mobs on the streets of Johannesburg, something is fundamentally broken. We have moved from a time when civility urged us to ask a disagreeable person to go to hell in a way that still made them look forward to the trip, to a season when we prepare hell and process the inhabitants even before we got to know them. If we want to change what is happening on the streets we must start by taking civility back, the golden measure of which is doing to others as we would like done to us. We must deplore lack of compromise in politics and call out – instead of applauding – politicians who play to our base instincts. We must demand more of ourselves as citizens and, of course, demand more of our leaders. In our desperation for a better, more secure future after years of failed expectations and betrayal, we have created the fiction that finding scapegoats will heal our wounds and assuage our pain. Politicians, ever so anxious to get power and keep it at any cost, are saving us the trouble of looking far or doing the tough job producing results by performance. They are simply supplying more than enough scapegoats for the sacrifice, whether they are immigrants, opponents or their own fantasies. Ishiekwene is the Managing Director/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview and member of the board of the Global Editors Network Read the full article

[wizardsuniterpg]

CHARACTER BASICS

Name: Her Grace Alter Ingrid Meira, Baroness of Greenock and Blackhall Date of Birth: May 1, 1985 Place of Birth: Petah Tikva, Israel Actual Age/Age of appearance: 34/30 Marital Status: Happily married Sexual Orientation: Bisexual, female leaning Pronouns: She/Her Religion: Pagan Health details: Undiagnosed mental issues regarding empathy, untreatable dysmorphic and aging issues due to repeated and prolonged exposure to dark magic, mild nearsightedness in her left eye Occupation: Former Hit Wizard (retired), task force member, head of estate for the Barony of Greenock and Blackhall

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION (OR WRITE A COUPLE PARAGRAPHS)

Height: 6’ Eye Color: Dark brown Hair Color/Style: Dark brown Aesthetic/Style: Tweed, 1910s-20s vintage, hunting clothes and “country attire,” a rocks glass with two centimetres of scotch at the bottom, rolling green hills, a disappearance in a crowded nightclub, a cold night with two people grasping each other tightly Other: There were some tattoos, no one’s sure where they went. Play-By Used: Gal Gadot

BACKGROUND AND CHARACTER

It was all decided for her.

When her mother took her at barely six months and moved with her pagan collective to Alonissos in the Sporades to be one with nature and worship in her own way, it was all Alter knew. She was happy growing up among the mothers and daughters of Alonissos, among the magical creatures and the various wildlife of Greece. The magic they did through rituals and understanding, the education, all of it was intense, but also highly supportive.

And then the representatives came.

Israel is still located in something of an active area, the result of numerous magical conflicts, mythology, and traditions that spread out from the cradle of civilization. At eighteen, all eligible birth citizens are required to do at least one year’s service with the Wards, a defensive unit designed to protect the nation from the numerous human and otherwise magical threats. As several of Mater Meira’s adherents were originally from there, their daughters had come of age and were to serve their time in the Wards. They could resist, but that would mean a standoff and an incident with the wizarding government of Israel. So Alter and the other daughters left their land for their “homeland” and an uncertain fate. 

It was odd, her tour. Alter and her “sisters” had never been so close to dark magic, and the intense environment tended to warp things, to say nothing of the near-constant culture shock both from a new home and significantly different demographics from the all-woman island. With her advanced aptitude, Alter managed to transfer from active duty to combat instruction, training Wards for their field missions and active defense rather than being on the lines themselves, but after an incident involving an uncontained dybbuk left her base short-staffed and Alter and her students having to buy time until help arrived, she was transferred back into defense operations. Out of a desire to care for her squadmates and defend her current home, she ran two years on city defense, pushing herself further into danger so those with her would be less affected. It had a profound effect on her both physically and mentally, and at the end of it, she counted down the days and left. 

With a desire for anywhere else, Alter traveled around and learned what she could as she went, backpacking her way north through Asia, into Russia, and then west into Europe, never settling down, never quite figuring things out until, after a year or two of travel, she reached England. She was out of money and didn’t have many friends, just an odd command of the language and her magical talents, but with the world still reeling from encroaching darkness, she wanted to help where she’d be most useful, got a work visa, and took the civil service exam for the Ministry.

Halfway through the exam, she was removed when a background check pulled up her Wards service. She was instead brought in front of the Aurors, interrogated for about six hours as to why she was in the country until they were sure she wasn’t a spy, and offered a choice: Immediate deportation, or a chance to work with the Ministry and correct some of the numerous pockets of dark magic that had gone wrong. With no other options, Alter accepted, was issued full immigration status under the name “Ingrid Meyer,” and was sent to train with a squad of four other wizards to become a Hit Wizard.

For years, that was her life. She had a normal life, hung out with work colleagues, and was bright and effervescent as can be, committed to living life to the fullest every step of the way outside of work. When they were on assignment, though, two things happened:

First, no matter what, if any of the other four ran into trouble, Alter would immediately put herself between them and whatever it was. Didn’t matter if it was horrifying fungus, curses, or anything, on assignment Alter considered her squad under her wing and you did not mess with anyone she cared for. The second thing was that she was oddly able to turn herself off. She almost became another person, like someone flipped a switch, able to do absolutely anything and everything to get the job done. It was honestly a bit scary, even to the ministers above her, and some even quietly whispered that they were sending her team on more dangerous assignments in the hopes that she might be rotated out.

And it was her last assignment, of course, that would prove the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was supposed to be routine, a simple raid on a small agrarian island, round up the blood cultists and off to Azkaban, but someone was tipped off, and someone knew her hit squad’s playbook, right down to Alter. It turned into first a hostage situation and then an all-out siege, a massive and unpleasant skirmish through the dark woods with no way off the island. The strength of curses and dark magic warped the land itself, and at the end while the cultists were finally defeated, it was at great cost to the Ministry.

Alter, of course, was immediately taken off of active service and given a full exam from St. Mungo’s. There were some odd issues (she’s never been able to deal with intoxicants quite the same way, as they have a much more pronounced effect on her), and she’d inexplicably grown larger somehow, but apart from that, there wasn’t anything too distressing, apart from, again, the odd way she was suddenly able to switch herself off and on. Still, they didn’t feel good putting her back on active service, and instead offered her early retirement and a land and title in Scotland out of bravery and service. Alter, without many other options, accepted.

And finally, she felt free. She changed her name back to the one she preferred, keeping “Ingrid” as a middle name to explain why people called her that, and accepted her retirement graciously. Alter set about fixing things up on the estate, stocking it with magical creatures and regular creatures alike, also developing part of the land so she could raise cows and sheep. Without the need to switch off, she seemed much more at peace, entertaining guests, being her bright and odd self, babbling constantly and treating every guest like they were her best friend and family. She also adopted a much different aesthetic, attiring herself more to her claimed home’s vast countryside and incorporating older styles, things she’d seen in books, and generally what she could find as “country attire.“ 

Through the end of her service and retirement, she’d had more than a few people show interest in her, though for a while she’d managed to completely confound several people by, when asked if she’d like to come back to their place, smiling politely and asking, ”…why?“ She had her fill of nights where she wasn’t lonely, of course, a few men and even more women, but nothing particularly stuck. But one person stuck out above all the rest. With her, Alter never felt like she had to be anything, like she had to do anything other than what the two of them wanted. She was the last person Alter told before leaving for the fateful island, the first person Alter told she was okay when she got back, a constant guest at the country manor where Alter kept her estate, using occasional hunting and fishing to stave off the darker urges and always on the list at every party.

But while the two connected on some level, they stayed apart, Alter never wanting to infect her closest friend and confidante with the odd distance, with that darkness. But one day, about a year or two after Alter took her title, her friend confided something: First, that she’d been proposed to but she didn’t want to accept, and second, that she felt some odd ties and weight to Alter. Alter agreed, and the two decided that a month or two would be enough space to figure things out. Finally, after two months, Alter took a rather odd step. Rather than apparating, she flew her hunting hipogriff to her friend’s house in her shooting clothes and, once let inside, offered a proposition: She was an eccentric, but that worked, and she would love for the two of them to be eccentric together, but wouldn’t push it. If the eccentricity was too much, she’d leave her friend space and the two of them could go back to what they had.

In a scene that’s become a major joke and a minor source of embarrassment for Alter, the two rode off back to Alter’s manse and agreed they’d rather be eccentric together than apart. Arrangements were made for a small elopement and a civil partnership a few weeks later, and while her friend’s family did sort of disapprove of her marrying a wild and eccentric immigrant, Alter’s demeanor and stature was enough to convince them it wasn’t a mutable statement. The two resumed reading to each other nightly, gardening, practicing duels, enjoying their lands, and life in general

This peace lasted until, with the resurgence of magic, another representative came to Alter’s home. This one she sent packing, and the next two, but the fourth from the Ministry wasn’t asking. They needed her back, as there was a possibility that the recent statute breaches had dark origins. Alter agreed to join, but it caused numerous arguments between herself and her spouse, as well as worry that Alter would be thrown back into danger headfirst. But Alter knows danger always comes sooner or later, and she wants to stop it before it gets to those she cares for.

Connections:  - Alter’s spouse, the two of them live on a manse in Scotland in Alter’s barony and enjoy being eccentric nobility together, I’m leaving a lot of it open other than their marriage, that they’re relatively non-toxic with each other, and the broken engagement.

- Ministers and investigative aurors as well as other hit witches and wizards who would remember Alter from her time in the Ministry and probably have a great many thoughts about her reactivation. 

Future plot ideas: Alter’s "dark side” getting a little out of control, tensions between her home life and her job at the ministry, her past catching up with her, intrigue with dark wizards, a family reunion of some sort.

FAMILY

Mother: Miriam Simcha Meira Father: Unknown Siblings: Numerous “sisters"  Pets: Lys, her Irish setter, Bladeclaw the Terror, her hunting hipogriff Children: None Spouse: Open, but there is one.

MAGICAL

Wand: Willow, Dragon Heartstring, 15” Basic education: Received a pagan education in magic and wand use until eighteen Higher/other education: Combat/hex/curse training during her time in the Wards Lineage: Blooded, but unsure of how much. She’s never found any info on her father Skills: Hexes, curses, in general dueling spells, some minor memory charms and the like as well. Objects: A petrified piece of the willow tree her wand comes from

SOME FACTS

Smoking: Not a great idea, she doesn’t know how her body will react Drinks Alcohol: Very small amounts Worst Habit: Bites her nails Most Common Misconception about them: That she’s some kind of avenging angel or Darth Vader figure Biggest Fear: That the dark, switched-off part of her she used for her work will win Greatest Strength: Has never let anything stand in her way Greatest Weakness: Way too overconfident and throws herself into danger far too easily Weapons: Apart from her wand, she’s fairly capable at hand-to-hand and is something of a trained savant when it comes to knowledge and recall

INTIMATE FACTS

One Wish: Settle down, world peace, live her own life Greatest Secret? She keeps her lives very separate, maybe one or two people know both parts of her Ideal Kiss? Quiet hours of the morning, just before waking Sleeps In? Sometimes, when she can Virgin? Hardly What turns them on? A deep emotional and intimate connection with someone

RANDOM FACTS

Most Uttered Phase/Word? “Oh! Sorry…” Tends to Always? Apologize even when she doesn’t have to Is Ticklish? Gaia, yes Oddest Thing? Probably her practicing paganism Most likely to find them? Buried in a book, sprawled over some furniture in an odd way, just in general trying to get comfortable Knows they’re really sorry if? Touch combined with words. It’s the easiest way to discern between apologies.

[insist-on-resisting]

The 14 primary points of fascism, and why Trump is a fascist

1) Powerful and Continuing Nationalism

Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

While Republicans were not the most patriotic sort during the Obama administration, now that the black guy is out of office and the orange one is in, they’re turning the nationalist fervor up to 11. Trump is planning another series of support rallies already, wanted tanks at the inauguration, and conservatives are once again wrapping themselves in the flag. 

2) Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights

Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

Trump is listed as a threat to human rights due to his attacks on journalists and free speech, his attempts to de-legitimize citizens exercising speech at protests and town halls by directly stating they are not genuine, and his agenda, which has points against women’s rights and immigrants, not to mention is pro-torture. Human Rights Watch considers him one of the greatest threats in the world today for human rights.

3) Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause

The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

Does this one even need explained? When a SEAL died on his watch due to a poor decision made with bad intelligence, he blamed everyone but himself. When anyone in his administration fucks up, he either doubles down, says it didn’t happen, or uses them as a fall guy to insulate his own image. His entire campaign is built on the racist scapegoating of immigrants for economic woes that are not caused by them. He blames President Obama for protests, despite his policies being massively unpopular (a fact which, like many others, he denies). 

4) Supremacy of the Military

Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

Trump wants to give the military free rein to attack what they want, increase military spending when we are already the largest spender in the world, and quite literally, as mentioned earlier, wanted tanks at the inauguration. Fanatical military worship is bread-and-butter for Republicans. Increasing military spending while decreasing domestic spending is a key part of fascist regimes, and exactly what Trump is doing.

5) Rampant Sexism

The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.

I’ll just leave this here.

6) Controlled Mass Media

Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

Trump’s bullying and attacks on the press are accomplishing what they were intended to do: the press is on defense, and the new normal is conservative publications known for publishing outright lies and propaganda getting a place in the press corps. His chief of strategy was a key voice on one of those publications, Breitbart, and maintains ties. Organizations that give favorable coverage take precedence, even if they publish things which are not true. He has successfully made objectivity “left-wing” and his followers have their own fact-free echo chamber that nothing enters that he doesn’t allow. They don’t care if they’re lied to, they believe in Trump and only Trump. 

Unfortunately, it’s likely that Trump’s war on the free press is only just getting started.

7) Obsession with National Security

Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

Once again, Trump is described perfectly. This, too, is a propaganda tool. If people are fearful of the “other,” they will look to a “strong leader” to tell them what to do, and are more likely to allow their civil freedoms to be eroded in the process. Trump’s useless border wall and pointless Muslim ban are both examples of costly, frivolous actions in the name of “national security” that do not actually do anything other than serve as a propaganda tool.

8) Religion and Government are intertwined

Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

A theocrat is our vice-president. Attacks on abortion, the LGBT+ community, and Muslims as an entire faith all come from evangelicals, who have a strong voice in our new government. 

9) Corporate Power is Protected

The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

Trump has not only moved to cut taxes for corporations and the uber rich, but actually used an Exxon press release for an official White House statement and made a commercial for them from the White House. He continues to profit from his own businesses, too, and refuses to document potential conflicts-of-interest or divest. Rich guests at his country club get special access to the president.

10) Labor Power is Suppressed

Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

Sadly, labor power was so far eroded by the time Trump took control of the country that there’s not much left to do -- but Trump doesn’t want to let that get in the way. He’s already planning on trying to restrict unions nationally. Republican right-to-work laws have already destroyed unions in many states, and weakened the national ability of unions to collectively bargain or lobby for the rights of workers. Trump’s own record on unions as a private citizen isn’t pretty, either, and his disdain for workers is well documented. 

11) Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts

Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.

This is already a well-established point of Republican ideology. That’s why you see so much hate on the right wing for “leftist professors,” and why they want to pass laws like this one. Trump obviously has serious issues with the freedom of expression, and because his skin is so thin, he frequently attacks celebrities or artists who satirize him or are critical in any fashion. 

12) Obsession with Crime and Punishment

Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

Despite the fact that the overall rate of violent crime has been dropping for decades, Trump makes an awful lot of noise about crime being “out of control.” In fact, he signed three different executive orders designed to “bring crime under control” and “restore safety to the nation.” Republicans support the privatization and industrialization of prisons. This comes at a time when we already incarcerate a higher portion of our own population than any other country in the world. He has set out to purge national agencies of “disloyal” members.

13) Rampant Cronyism and Corruption

Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

Trump’s corruption is so evident and varied it’s difficult to even know where to start. His lack of released tax returns? His refusal to divest from businesses? His daughter, on multiple occasions, using official resources to promote family brands? Foreign dignitaries staying in his hotels in the hopes of favors? His self-dealing foundation, which may have been operating illegally? His appointment of friends, relatives and sycophants to numerous government offices? He’s not even two months in yet!

14) Fraudulent Elections

Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

Whether or not there was collusion between Trump and their agents, there is no doubt at this point that Russia meddled in the United States election on Trump’s behalf. A massive, concerted propaganda effort was made, as well as attacks on state voting systems and hacks into the DNC, with carefully timed releases. 

But that’s not even the primary danger we face as voters. Furthermore, that’s from a foreign government (unless collusion is proven). Under the guise protecting against virtually non-existent “voter fraud,” Republicans are working hard to take away your voting rights, or at least make it as difficult as possible to vote. That’s why they close down polling stations, restrict early voting hours, pass unconstitutional voter ID laws, and why they have gerrymandered voting districts to the point where a Republican vote is worth more than a Democratic one. Trump has continued this trend by spreading the falsehood that there were “3 million illegal votes” (the amount he lost the popular vote by) and demanding an investigation. 

#KeepResisting

[racingtoaredlight]

Opening Bell: February 3, 2017

Senate Democrats have borrowed from Senate Republicans’ playbook and started to boycott the final committee votes of some cabinet officials. While this tactic has only delayed committee votes by about one business day, it shows the extent to which Senate Democrats intend to return the favor to Senate Republicans who promised to do everything to block appointments and legislation submitted or favored by the Obama administration over the previous eight years. Though some observers have called this intransigence the rise of the “Tea Party of the Left,” I think it too early to call it anything other than a reaction to the manner in which Donald Trump has governed to this point. That said, the only cabinet nominee in danger of not being approved, Education Secretary nominee Betsy DeVos, seems liked to slide past the Senate with the help of Vice President Mike Pence.

Meanwhile Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose wife Elaine Chao was confirmed this week as Secretary of Transportation, penned an op-ed in the Washington Post decrying initial Democratic opposition to the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch. Gorsuch is almost certainly to be confirmed, though certainly not without a contentious Judiciary Committee hearing. 

Amidst the reports on the closeness of Treasury-nominee Steven Mnuchin and his failure to disclose approximately $100 million in assets prior to his confirmation hearing, something which I mentioned in this space last week, Mnuchin’s position that funding for the IRS must be increased has been lost. The Brookings Institution analyzes, with excellent data, how Mnuchin’s proposal would benefit both the IRS itself and the federal government as a whole.

 The CEO of ride-sharing app Uber has quit the economic advisory council to which he was named by President Trump. His resignation is apparently due to the negative public reaction to his connection the Trump administration’s executive order on administration which was issued last week.

Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics has an early analysis on those congressional districts whose vote shifted measurably to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and those Democrats which sit in districts which suddenly seem less friendly to their constituents. This is a fascinating analysis and provides an excellent first step towards the 2018 midterm elections. Midterm elections have traditionally gone against the party in the White House.

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump was a vociferous supporter of Israel and of Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank. This position stood in stark contrast to that of the Obama administration, which sought to restrain Israeli expansionism as a first step to returning to comprehensive peace talks, a policy which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was openly contemptuous of. This week, in a surprise, the Trump White House said that the expansion of Israeli settlements—construction of 2,500 new homes was recently announced by the government—was not helpful in getting parties to return to the peace table.

During the daily White House press briefing yesterday, National Security Advisor Michael Flynn made an appearance and declared that a recent Iranian test of a cruise missile was unacceptable and that therefore Iran was “on notice.” What this constitutes exactly is unclear as cruise missile tests were not covered in the Iran nuclear agreement with the United States and several European nations. Newly sworn in Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will likely be forced to address this in a more formal manner in the near future.

More details have emerged from the U.S. special forces raid in Yemen, the first of the Trump administration, which resulted in the death of one special forces operator. While criticism has been railed against the Trump administration for perhaps acting too hastily, some reports indicate that the Navy SEALS who carried out the mission came into contact with Al-Qaeda fighters who used civilian women and children as human shields. While in office President Obama relied heavily upon raids and missions by special forces detachments to take care of emerging threats or targets of opportunity. It will be interesting to see to what degree President Trump uses the same commandos.

Recently, Kurdish resistance fighters in Syria began showcasing new armored vehicles allegedly received from the United States. The shipment was, apparently, one of the last acts of the Obama administration, but it also creates a question of the type of support which the Trump administration can be expected to provide. Recall that Turkey, a key U.S. ally in the region, regards the main Kurdish political organization in the region, the PKK, as a terrorist organization, responsible for bombings throughout the nation.

Yesterday, the Treasury Department announced an adjustment to a sanction against the Russian state security agency FSB—the successor the KGB in the post-Cold War period—which made a technical change to a sanction which the Obama administration had enacted in December. The original sanction prevented any U.S. business from doing business with the FSB. The adjustment now allows technology licenses to be purchased by the FSB from American companies so long as the transaction does not exceed $5,000 per calendar year. Many viewed this as an initial step to lifting other sanctions against Russia which the Obama administration implemented, but Foreign Policy explains why everyone is viewing this small change incorrectly.

This week, the USS Antietam, a guided missile cruiser based in Japan, grounded in Tokyo Bay. 1,100 gallons of fuel were leaked, which the Navy has already promised to cleanup. The cruiser is headed to dry-dock for what will likely become extensive repairs.

Austin, Texas is the capital of the Lone Star State and also one of its most liberal cities. During the deportation of the Barack Obama’s first administration, Austin became a magnet for undocumented immigrants; a sanctuary city. Now it is being targeted both by the federal government but also by Texas Governor Greg Abbott who this week withheld a $1.5 million grant to Travis County, in which Austin is located, which was unrelated to immigration policy. Austin, which has a Democratic mayor and a Sheriff who was elected with 60% of the vote in November, is shaping up to be the first battleground with the Trump administration over the viability of sanctuary cities.

Last week, or perhaps it was the week before—with the whirlwind of activity in Trump’s first two weeks in office, keeping track of time has become difficult—I linked to a story about President Donald Trump floating the creation of a vaccine safety commission which would be headed by vaccine-skeptic Robert Kennedy, Jr. Though no movement on the creation of such a commission has occurred in the interim, the Washington Post notes the enormous amount of public support for vaccination programs.

Stuart Rothenberg on Donald Trump's first two weeks in office. Rothenberg examines the actions by Trump as compared to his actions during the campaign, with the result that there is not much dissimilarity between the two. The question then, Rothenberg explicates, is whether Trump’s actions will have unintended consequences which many of his followers do not like and did not anticipate.

Unbeknownst to many Americans, the First Lady of the United States, i.e. FLOTUS, hires her own staff as a means to pursue her own policy objectives. The First Lady’s office is located in the East Wing of the White House—as opposed to the West Wing where the Oval Office and most of the president’s senior advisors sit—and typically focuses on relatively non-partisan issues which are meant to better certain parts of the American public. Though First Lady Melania Trump has returned to New York City, she continues to follow the pattern set out by previous First Ladies by filling out her own personal staff, which includes an Obama administration appointee as social secretary.

Five juveniles who were arrested for defacing a historic black school in Virginia with racist propaganda have been given an unusual sentence by the district judge. Three of the juveniles were themselves minorities and spray-painted “Brown Power” to go along with the “White Power” graffiti of their co-assailants. The judge presiding over the case, upon the prosecution’s recommendation, ordered that the assailants read a list of books by Jewish, Afghan, and black authors and that reports of each book be prepared. The judge further ordered that the juveniles prepare a research paper on the subject of hate speech and that they each visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. If the juveniles fulfill all of these requirements, then the case against them will be dismissed and their records expunged.

The woman at the center of the incident which lead to the detention and lynching of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955, has apparently recanted the story which lead to Till’s brutal death. Till who was 14 years old at the time, was assaulted and ultimately hanged by a group of white men after he allegedly made an advance on a white woman in public. Till’s mother insisted on an open casket funeral so that his mutilated corpse would be seen by the nation. His death, along with those of the choir girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, a subject I’ve written about here before, is considered one of the catalysts of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

Welcome to the weekend.

[marcjampole]

When news media changed its definition of objectivity, they opened door to ignorance & Trumpism

Once upon a time, the news media defined objectivity as presenting the facts, and just the facts, usually substantiated by at least two reliable sources. Then the right-wing, led by its own sometimes vibrant sometimes moribund cadre of media, hammered mainstream media that its side wasn’t getting a fair hearing. 

According to Nicole Hemer’s Messengers of the Right, which covers the development of the right wing media from the end of World War II until the ascent of Rush Limbaugh and his various imitators, the right wing began assaulting the idea that the mainstream news media was objective from the early days of William Buckley’s National Review and Regenery Press, which published right wing screeds about communism and the evils of labor unions and government regulation, usually financed by their trust fund authors or bulk purchases by corporations run by right wingers.  But the real assault on objectivity began in the 1970’s, about the time that the right wing added cultural issues such as abortion to its agenda. In place of objectivity in coverage, the right-wing proposed balance—presenting all sides of the issue. 

The right wing never admitted it, nor did anyone notice at the time, but the critique of factuality as the central value of reporting correlated with the general compliant that the mass media were too “liberal,” by which they meant “left-wing” or “collectivist.” The right was subtly admitting that liberal positions were right, because the facts supported them. The news media only print facts. The facts skew liberal.  

Thus the right wing pushed the notion that judging by the facts in and of itself didn’t create objectivity.

Their substitute definition of objectivity—balanced reporting—required journalists to quote the one crackpot who doesn’t believe in global warming when they had already talked to two thousand who do. Stories that should have been about how to we are addressing human-caused global warming instead rehashed whether it existed or not. This balanced approach enabled many lies to sneak into news coverage on a wide range of issues, including women’s reproductive rights, immigration, crime, science, education and health care. The biggest band leader for balance was, of course, Fox News, which did not balance its coverage but applied major pressure on other media to balance theirs. That brings us to the current situation in which most Americans have their choice of right-wing news or news that presents both the right and the left without evaluation of the truth, validity or factual basis of either side.

Remer doesn’t speculate on why the mainstream news media responded to the exhortations to replace facts with balance as the guide star of journalistic objectivity and integrity, but I’m pretty sure that two motivations drove the mainstream news media; 1) The inherent controversy in “presenting both sides” is more dramatic than a technical discussion and therefore more like entertainment; 2) Writing he said-she said stories is easier than becoming an expert and developing an in-depth discussion of an issue.

From letting people tell lie in these balanced stories to accepting their lies without question, as the media has done with trump, was a small step. Balanced reporting allowed Trump to flourish because he is a master of phrasing every argument as an “us-versus-them” battle, or, to be more specific, the great Donald versus them.

Remer’s book walks an interesting tightrope. It focuses on the right wing media’s various players, their media mix and marketing techniques, their internal squabbles, especially on whether to cut ties with the proto-alt-right John Birch Society and to support Nixon, their suspicions that the media was too left-wing, and their attempts to influence elections, political parties and mainstream media. But very little is said about the actual positions that the right-wing media held, except that they believed in the ascendancy of individual rights over what’s good for society and they disliked unions. The opposition to the civil rights movement, government regulation and all social welfare programs, including Social Security; the belief that communists had infiltrated the government; the flirtation with racist organizations; the ultra-hawkish militarism; and the belief that an elite of highly educated white men should lead society—none of these planks in the right wing media’s platform in the 1950’s and 1960’s are worthy of discussion in Remer’s telling of the story. It’s a bit like discussing the Donald Trump phenomenon without talking about the lies, lechery and lawsuits.

[usebigwordslikesanguine]

stuff

So i just watched Obama's final farewell speech, and it made me think a lot about not just Obama's reign as president, but how the political landscape has changed drastically over the course of several years.

Undoubtedly Obama did a whole host of good. Ended a recession, led an international climate change agreement which included china, legalized same-sex marriage, the Iran deal, restored relations with Cuba, ended the war in Iraq and Afghanistan whilst killing Bin Laden, regulated the banks. Hell, he’s been one of the only presidents who’s genuinely tried to extinguish lax gun laws. Obama has been well meaning, and has made some meaningful changes. Oh, on top of that he also received a Nobel prize for peace.

At the same time, one cannot ignore that despite the good Obama has done, and despite his trendiness and impressive oratory skills, the Obama regime still has it downfalls. They have bombed more countries than his war-mongering predecessor, George bush, despite his pacifist demeanor (7 countries) and popularity with liberals. Civil liberties have been eroded, I’m talking a 34% increase in wiretapping within his first 2 years of office, introducing indefinite military detention without trial or cause, The renewing of the patriot act in 2011 (which grants american intelligence agencies the power and impunity to spy and monitor on private citizens).and a FISA extension which allows federal agencies to eavesdrop on communications and review email without following an open and public warrant process, and worryingly the first president to have an official “Kill list” of targets for his extensive overseas drone campaign. Like Obama's list of accomplishments, i could go on and on about this too.

But interestingly, a president who remains popular at the end of his presidency, is about to swap seats with a man completely antithesis to himself.

I remember thinking the world was boring, and politics was boring. 10 years ago, all that was happening is we had invaded a couple of middle eastern countries and that was it. Compared to the 1930’s, where half of Europe was communist, half of them fascist, and a few democracies, i always felt that we would never go back to a world of such political extremes.

Oh how i was wrong.

Now i’m not saying half of Europe will turn communist and american fascist, but the political landscape has changed drastically and is much more unstable now, than it was a few years ago.

Russia is truly a dictatorship, and annexed part of a sovereign country. In Europe, in the 21st century. I really want that to sink in for you. Firstly it was Georgia in 2008, and recently it was the Crimea in Ukraine. If you were to say this would have happened 10 years ago, nobody would have believed you. Parallels to Hitler's Anschluss and Sudetenland anybody?,

The Eu is disintegrating. Britain voted to leave. Austria almost voted in a far right party. Greece did vote in a far left party. The far right are rising and in vast numbers all across Europe, from marine le pen to Geert Wilders of the Netherlands. There is a real possibility that the EU will capitulate, and member states, if given referendums, will vote to leave.

For the first time since the fall of the ottoman empire, a terrorist organization has had enough strength and guile to form a hard-line Islamic caliphate, which at its peak controlled 10 million people and amassed more landmass than Britain. Think about when al-Qaeda struck the twin towers (If you don’t believe they did, then just think about one of their numerous terrorist attacks). The apex of al-Qaeda's power was striking a blow on the american heartland, killing 3000 people. Islamic state owned land larger than countries in Europe, with millions of people under their control. If somebody was to say to you in 2001 than al-Qaeda would almost be redundant in 14 years time, to be surpassed by an organization labelled extreme by even them, would you have believed them?

The EU capitulation will be catalyzed by the refugee crisis. And it won’t go away this year, or the year before that. Question for you. If there is an open door policy to refugees in Europe, like Germany had, and the Islamic state loses all its territory in Iraq and Syria, which by the way it is currently happening, where do you think they will go?

We’ve already seen terrorist attacks by supposed refugees who have come from Syria. Terrorist attacks are likely to amplify dramatically in the coming years.

As a consequence of increased terrorist attacks on mainland Europe and even America, more civil liberties will be eroded. It’s a compromise, right? The less liberty you have, the safer you are, supposedly. And there’s no doubt in my mind Donald trump, who wants to do a lot of things which are questionable, for example his total rejection of climate change and advocate of torture, renegading on the iran deal, dismantling Obamacare etc etc, will erode civil liberties even more.

The problem is that given how the political climate has shifted, the left and right are now more divisive than ever before. Take the UK, for example. We have the main opposition party’s leader advocating for a wage cap,dismantling of the armed forces, and an open immigration policy, along with a whole host of other socialist ideas. A wage cap is dangerously close to communism. Again, look back at 1997 when tony Blair's new Labour were elected, a centre-left party in disguise (arguably they weren’t left at all) who were by far the most successful Labour government of all time. It's almost inconceivable to say that the Labour party would be as left wing as they are now. Given that Gordon brown was more left than Blair, and then Ed Miliband was more left than Gordon Brown, Jeremy Corbyn blew them all out of the water.

We are transcending away from moderate politics. Even the conservative party has drifted to the right, viciously attacking welfare, huge public cuts, zero hour contracts and facilitating the economic disparity in the UK. The problem is they can do this, as there is no alternative opposition. Given far left Labour and an increasingly stringent conservative party, the Tories will win every time.

Without dwelling too much into UK politics, I am highlighting how across the whole world politics has become increasingly divisive. It puts someone like me, a young, middle class white male, in a precarious position. Am i supposed to support a party which quite simply has deserted the white working class? Am i supposed to support a party with utter ludicrous, unpragmatic policies? How anyone with monetary ambitions can support a party advocating wage caps, dismantling of the armed forces, unlimited borrowing in total disregard to the reality of debt? Alternatively, should i vote for a party which cares little for young people, who are more than happy to see me on zero hour contracts with no labour rights and a pseudo living-wage?

The establishment, especially Labour, has totally abandoned white working class Britain,, and were forced to reap the consequences of that in the wake of Brexit. Likewise, white america rose up loud and clear. Regardless of how much of an impotent, uncharismatic leader Hilary is, for America to vote in a president who advocated a ban on Muslims entering America, claiming that climate change is a hoax, and a plethora of insensitive and controversial comments, shows the political turmoil in America and indeed the world. For god sake, America voted in a president who was recording talking about women “grab them by the pussy”. Could you imagine if Obama had said that?

At the time of writing this, there are allegations that Trump had clandestine meetings with Russian officials, who are also reported to have hacked and swayed the American election. Again i ask you, could you fucking imagine if 10 years ago somebody would tell you that Russia would hack a US election? You’d have said, no i don’t, the cold war was over years ago.

And yet it seems almost like a weird second cold war. America has sent troops and tanks to Baltic states to assure them and to fend of Russian expansion aspirations. We have a US president about to be elected, with no political experience and allegations of collaborations with the Russians and political espionage, who may well be impeached before he even gets elected.

And don’t even get me fucking started on the shambles that is Syria

You have KKK membership on the rise

You have police brutality on blacks at an all time high, or at least modern technology has advanced so that any brutality is made public.

Divisions from Race haven’t been this bad for a very long time. Trump was only elected because of the White vote. His rhetoric on Mexicans and on black lives matters have further increased hate crime. On both sides. (Just like Brexit did, after the vote, there was a sharp rise in hate crime). Trumps comments on black lives matter “THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS RACISM ANYMORE. WE’VE HAD A BLACK PRESIDENT SO IT’S NOT A QUESTION ANYMORE. ARE THEY SAYING BLACK LIVES SHOULD MATTER MORE THAN WHITE LIVES OR ASIAN LIVES? IF BLACK LIVES MATTER, THEN GO BACK TO AFRICA? WE’LL SEE HOW MUCH THEY MATTER THERE”

In no way am i saying that ww3 is around the corner. In fact, a good relationship between Russia and USA is a good thing.

What am i saying then, after all of that? ( and yes I've probably missed loads, its 7am)

The division between the left and right is more bitter and extreme than it has been in years. Racial division is at its worst than it has been in years. Political integrity and veracity are a thing of the past, if it was ever there at all. The capitulation of the EU is looking exceedingly likely Terrorist attacks are will occur more often and with more fatalities in mainland Europe and America Civil liberties will continue to be eroded Far-right and far-left political parties with extreme ideologies are going to be increasingly elected, due to the omission of centre ground parties A constant flow of refugees to mainland Europe, increasing tension and the demographic makeup of European countries Increasing economic disparity

Anyway, happy 2017 everyone.