#do you really think that letting trump win is a better moral outcome?

[sunfoxfic]

about the “recognizing stereotypes is actually what’s racist” thing NO BC THAT TAKE HAS BEEN SO AGGRAVATING TO ME FOR SO LONG.

without going into the eight page long essay about how passionately i feel about this, all i have to say is how important it is to recognize stereotypes in media in order to accurately understand what’s wrong with them and criticize the media we consume in our everyday lives.

if you just Watch Media without recognizing the problems the stereotypes represent, you just end up internalizing them. to better describe what i mean, its just like the problem with anime and misogyny. you see it happen again and again and again and again, and eventually your brain (since it learns from patterns and familiarity) starts to expect that women and feminine-presenting people are in those roles and Only those roles.

go into it with a mindset of “oh these stereotypes are okay, i cant think about it or else im the bad one” and suddenly theyre just like the people on tiktok who just throw around buzz words without any critical thought behind it.

okay thats all, thank u for coming to my summarized ted talk

Anon, you're so valid. It was such a bizarre take and unlike anything I've personally run into before. It's like?? It almost treats coding as though it's a retroactive association with *insert group here* rather than an intentional insinuation. Coding in and of itself is a neutral thing - plenty of coding is used for good, plenty of coding is used for bad. Sometimes it's really hard to tell the difference between subtext and coding, too (and subtext is also in and of itself neutral).

When you frame coding, and in particular racist sorts of coding, as a retroactive association, it turns it into a no-win situation - the person who points out the coding is the one creating the association, and therefore is the one who is bigoted.

In my eyes, when you're calling out bigoted stereotypes via coding, the "best" outcome is for the creator to have been thoughtlessly replicating bigoted media. We'll never know if she-who-shall-not-be-named was doing it intentionally or unintentionally at first (it being anything you can think of, there are more than a few examples) but clearly her reaction to being called out is to dig her heels in the ground, so considering the "best" outcome is kinda moot in this particular case.

But yeah, you're really spot on with the thing about stereotypes. Because even if you can recognize that the stereotype is wrong while simultaneously keeping your mouth shut about it in fear of someone thinking you're the one who's doing the coding, you're the one who's bigoted - even if you can manage that, you're letting these ideas perpetuate to someone who doesn't know.

My politics recently have shifted to the ideology that "what works > what is ideal." I'm not interested in debating whether the person who knew it was wrong and said nothing is more innocent than the person who wasn't educated on the matter and adopted the ideas without critical skills to challenge them. I'm not interested in debating whether the latter was a victim, whether the former is part of the problem. Ideals are great when applied inwardly but nothing trumps results when trying to change the world - and it is true, great is the enemy of good.

In an ideal world, everyone could just agree to stop this sort of bigoted coding in works and then we don't have to worry about whether it's retroactive or not. We don't live in an ideal world. The actual way that it works is that, regardless of innocence and morality, change depends on Person 1 calling shit out so Person 2 doesn't fall into it. Is that sort of act an act of social justice, or just what a good citizen does? Should people get credit for it?

Man, fuck if I know. People in three hundred years won't be studying me in their textbooks either way because I don't want them to, but where we are now, people are dying and the climate is changing, so I really prioritize making a world where they have trees to make into textbooks and a history that's written not only by the victors, but the good guys.

[fission-mailure]

My view, and it's a view that's only backed up by the debate, is that the question of Trump vs Harris is basically the same as the question of Tories vs Labour in the UK general election.

I might not especially like Keir Starmer or Labour, but I voted for Labour at the general election in July because Labour was a party that actually seemed to want to govern and be serious about governing, as opposed to the Tories who are venal psychopaths addicted to cruelty to others, for whom governing is only the means by which they can alternately satisfy themselves by hurting people and enrich their friends.

And so far, the outcome of Labour getting into power has been mixed. There have been really good things: They shut down the horrific 'traffic refugees to Rwanda' scheme, they have a Renter's Rights bill going through that seems genuinely amazing, they've got workers rights reforms and nationalisation of public services plans which while I don't think are going far enough are at least improvements on what we have now. And there have been bad things: Taking Winter Fuel Allowance from pensioners is an absolutely massive one that may prove to be the thing that sinks them, for example, and I'm sure there'll be more, some of which might affect me and drastically change my opinion of them. On balance so far, though, they've been an improvement. I said before the election that I didn't believe the UK could survive five more years of the Tories, and that remains true: The UK couldn't have survived the Tories. It might survive Labour.

Harris vs Trump feels like the same, only magnified. It's a choice between a competent politician who knows her stuff and is actually interested in governance, who for a lot of people absolutely doesn't fulfill being an ideal candidate; and Trump, who is a venal, stupid felon, an alleged rapist, who tried to commit a coup, who fantasises about being a god king and who honestly has absolutely no interest in making life better for anyone except himself, no interest in governing, who will gleefully take your rights away and cause maximum suffering because his only agenda is whatever makes him feel good.

I think the choice is clear. And that's often called incrementalism and derided, and yeah, it is incrementalism, and yeah, it doesn't always work, and in fact it often doesn't. But we live in Hell, and on election day the only meaningful choice is between The Candidate Who Might Improve Some Things And Who In Every Other Aspect Will Minimise Harm, and The Candidate Who Will Make Everything Worse As Fast As Possible. If the latter wins, people will suffer, and people will die, in greater numbers and to a greater degree than if the former wins. Women, POCs, Ukrainians, Palestinians, LGBTQ people, disabled people, and more and more besides, they cannot afford a Trump presidency.

I truly believe, as an angry progressive who hates the helplessness that this implies, that when your only choices are between harm minimisation and harm maximisation, that the ethical choice is harm minimisation, not refusing to make a choice at all. And I despise that I have to say that, but it is true.

And even within that framework: As far as harm minimisation candidates go, Harris is frankly not the worst candidate available to you. She is incredibly competent. She understands the issues, appears to have compassion, seems to have some kind of moral backbone, and she can be swayed on issues. Frankly, that's more than a lot of people can say about their leaders.

So I do hope that the US votes in Harris come November. Please, really please, do not let Trump become president again. That has dragged half the countries in the world to the Right before, and it will again, to say nothing of how many people in the US died because of him. It has emboldened fascists everywhere, within the US and outside of it, and it will again. Harris may do some good, and I genuinely think she will. Or she may keep things exactly the same, which wouldn't be great but is an improvement on things getting worse.

From an outsider's perspective, the US is lucky with Harris. I would kill for Harris to be Prime Minister of the UK instead of Starmer, and I don't even particularly dislike Starmer. It sucks to say, but your choice in November is binary: Make the right one. God knows the fascists will all be voting for Trump.

Something else that stands out: Trump was repeatedly asked questions about what he would do to improve various issues: healthcare, the environment, the war in Gaza. And all he does is say “well this problem never would have happened if I had been the president.” And that’s not the question asked! Like, tough luck, but you weren’t president. Here is what the situation is now. What are you going to do about it? And he doesn’t have an answer. Not on healthcare, not on environment, not on Gaza. He appears to think that all these problems will magically disappear if he becomes president. Well, they won’t. The problems will still exist, and he has no plan to deal with any of it; if he had a plan, he would have told us. (He’s so good at telling us his plans for illegal immigrants, after all.) He does have a plan for the economy, but it’s a complete disaster that would raise the cost of living and increase the deficit—tax breaks always increase the deficit unless you offset them with a tax hike somewhere else, and the cost of tariffs is always passed on to consumers (which is why Harris was calling it a sales tax, because more people would understand how that affects cost of living). Oh, and he also accused immigrants of eating cats, accused the FBI of fraud, repeatedly trashed our country, and generally sounded like a listing for an alphabet-soup brand’s product on Amazon, only instead of “chair seat papasan loveseat perfect for living room bedroom parlor,” it’s “immigrants crime China Mexico Venezuela fracking guns executing babies.”

Harris, by contrast, has plans. I personally think they are pretty good plans. There are some minor details I would change, but it’s a hell of a lot better than “no plans, I’m too awesome for plans” and/or a reskinned Project 2025. She also hasn’t accused immigrants of eating cats or accused anyone of “wanting abortions in the ninth month” (an utterly ridiculous claim; if someone doesn’t want a baby at that point, you induce labor and the newborn becomes a ward of the state).

It’s a race between utterly incompetent dictatorial insanity and a competent woman whose policy positions may be somewhat off from your preference (or not).

Please don’t vote for the guy who thinks immigrants eat cats and dogs.

[m0onjellies]

You’ve really convinced yourself that always voting for whoever the Democratic Party tells you to is “pragmatism,” and that you’re just so much more intelligent and forward thinking than anyone who actually has standards.

I assure you, I have standards. I’m not saying I necessarily like everything that the democratic candidates stand for, but when the stakes are this high, im gonna vote for whoever is closest to my ideology AND has a chance to win.

Tell me the last time that wasn’t from a major party won the presidency? You couldn’t because they’ve never won! In fact, voting en masse for a 3rd party acts as a spoiler. Essentially, if a significant amount of potential voters for a major party/major party members vote for a 3rd party, the other major party is much more likely to win the election. The us operates under a 2 party system unfortunately. It is what it is. If voting for a 3rd party was effective, I would.

I can’t see how you’d describe voting for the option that will do the least harm even if it isn’t the perfect solution with the most moral outcomes other than as pragmatic.

I don’t like posting much about the issues with the democratic candidate because plenty of people are doing that already, and I’m not gonna stand by and encourage people to not vote blue. Frankly, I think everyone arguing to vote 3rd party or even against voting democratic is being stupid.

Project 2025 is super dangerous. Republicans are already trying as hard as they can to repeal protections in place for marginalized people. I’m not gonna sit and let that happen. So many things that have happened in the past 4 years, such as overruling roe v wade are direct consequences of trump’s first term.

I can’t think of a policy of the current that I disagree with that trump would potentially have a better version of.

And anon, what do you want to happen? Do you want the democrats to lose and have another 4 years of trump? Do you think that democrats are going to radically change their party? Do you think that a 3rd party would win?

[cultml]

Breaking of Now

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"

That’s what I should have said to my sister when she asked genuinely what my problem with wearing a mask was.  On this occasion I had gotten trapped and was pretty pissed about the whole situation. The week before one of the big retailer announced a mandate masks. Virtue signalling group think as far as I was concerned and assumed, wrongly that if i bought a little more I would have time to finally workaround them. The day the mandate took effect and the day i talked to her,  I stopped by one of the more expensive less convenient workaround places to find a mask mandate. An couple hours latter i find out my main grocery store and the others options where going to mandate as well. Online is feeding a different beast and sending someone in my place is out sourcing my acquiescence. Trapped. In the end I just told her no one knows what they are doing (the failure to still count the deaths correctly), it's ridiculous (contradictory studies and disparate rules), that i suddenly didn't have a choice and it was going to take me a few days to adjust.

What was really going through my head was about USSR.  “ It wasn’t the just the necessary lies it was the absurd little pointless ones that broke the spirit of the people” to paraphrase badly from a place I don’t remember. That is clearer statement of Voltaire and a simple explanation of why we shouldn’t lie. It’s not the childish notion that we should not because the truth is easier. Most see mask wearing a virtuous, for me it’s an affirmation of a lie, of several, of the ones closer to the roots. It’s not a herculean feat to see for me it’s just stupid hard wired reflexive contrarian angst , not hell no so much as why the hell . It leads you to question anti-vax, reduced fat, publish or die, replication crisis, Russell conjugation, virtues signalling, Overton window, attacks on moral relativism destroying gradation of sin and virtue, cognitive biases , government building as nation building, gas lighting, the church defending itself and the existence of God but not the moral order(not that it knew the difference), the irreconcilability of socialist thought and Jihadists with the west, big government as government playing god, half the people are dumper than the other, death of the common, the long list of what’s called the regressive left we focus so much on (more of a symptom than a cause),cultural relativism, common human behavior dressing up common human behavior as conspiracy, fragility of high civilization, economics standing in for moral order, monogamy, “perfect as your are” drowning the phoenix, nuclear family, woke rewrites hiding more subtle rewrites of western mythos, the prison of two ideas, deep silos of knowledge standing in for wider wisdom, and....

At some point you find yourself  outside and not in some sort of edgy artsy way, not quite smart enough to figure out why no one else is there. I am sliding back into the hope I have gone insane. You deal with the whirling nightmare as little as possible, you don’t call it out at every turn, you don’t cheer it on, you don’t help it, and YOU DO NOT FUCKING LIE ABOUT IT. 

So sitting in the parking lot,deciding if one of the innocent creatures that lives with me, approaching month four of the six the vet said she had left, gets the food she prefers at the moment...  She had other food that was better for her anyway.., not that it matters now. I have a duty of care especially now. She won’t understand the problem or the cost to my honor, for lack of a better word. She will just miss the thing she is used to. In reality avoiding the mask is likely impracticality anyway.  On the verge of throwing up, crying, punching the dashboard or screaming fuck over an over... a car pulls into the spot across from me and a woman starts unpacking a kid out or the back seat... none of the above. A few deep breaths and fuck it, the easy way it is.  Never thought about actually punching a stranger or really anyone but the assigned finger wager at the door.... “I am a virtuous little citizen and those who know better know better” and not “we aren’t all writhing around in the liquefying corps of a great civilization” On queue they where still out of or ran out of again of the food I was after.

I didn’t feel anything brake that day. Thinking about it since something is missing. Maybe things are just numb and will come back in time. As of now thinking about what may have to be done in defense of a civilization worth defending against those that can not be reconciled with it, elicits little. The little emotional triggers that made question if I could if i had to, are gone.... I am pretty weak willed and was happy to stand on the side lines. Muse at what might untangle this mess. I am not a hard man by any imagining, but you made me lie exactly in the way that end civilizations. Not that mask work. Not that I was virtuous for doing so. Not that “we are all in this together”. Not that those in charge know. Not that anyone is in charge. Not that some version of normal coming. Not that this version of the west isn’t dead. It’s the lie that there isn’t a massive upheaval coming.

The mass of rubble , ideological and real that will have to be cleared. Unfortunately a fair amount of blood that is likely to be spilled. Driving now the phrase “ the ugliness of modern architecture” rings in my ears. Affordable little canvases of our own that last only a life time is not the worst thing, but churches in strip malls? Regardless if this is just contrivance of my head or not I have been pushed a few degrees off of where i was. For now, a reprieve as there is still the innocence creatures in my care. It sadly is not open ended.

This kinda of thing might not have pushed as hard as it did if the ground wasn’t already soft. Before all that a few thing had pushed me to wrap up what i was thinking and walk from my online musings. So. Brit Hume has been one of the perennial “ this is the most important election of our lives... til the next one”  He and Thomas Sowell, calling it a point of no return have both come to the conclusion that it actually is. If Biden wins the next election wouldn't matter and any other road blocks would be gone.

Charlie Hurt calling it a make it stop election and latter Victor David Hanson questioning if a silent major exists leads one to believe that reason may have been locked out. That this is a who ever can convince enough people they can save them election. It really fell like the argument don’t matter at all. My suspicion is that if you had really solid polling and knew the outcome of a handful of thing you could easily predict this election now, nothing the candidate did would mean anything. I have kind of gotten used to the idea that thing are going to get well... bloody when the left takes power and finally nails the door shut behind its self.

I was under the illusion that there are a number people that “know” where that leads and would as a last resort raise the black flag. Someone “on the inter webs” I thought was one (for no good reason on my part) when asked opted for the benedictine option. “The monasteries survived”. The monasteries where not an existential threat to the king. Little literacy. little printing and no internet. The parallels to the Maoist and the jihadists to our current insurgents? rebels? look pretty clear. What makes anyone thing they going to be left alone by this “madness”. I got very worried. Those you think might keep Trump in power surrender to the mob.... and those who would fight might decide to hide..... A number of things start looking pretty frivolous.

Author Brooks among a legion of others, well meaning I am sure, prescribe kindness and reason and be patient. I short you don’t hug the guy with the suicide vest.... clear? For the jihadists anything said buy outsiders is meaningless, faith isn’t easily to question on the best of days. For the utopians, you can’t understands till it finally works and usually the censors and secret police help.  To our little friends if your the oppressor you have no room to speak even if you think you understand how evil you are or your so oppressed that your don’t know what your taking about. It all insulated ideology, and all of it gets people killed. They haven't officially taken power so i guess you could try it one a time, cult deprogramming. However the cult isn’t living in the middle of nowhere, we are all living in it.

Jordan Peterson comes at it from a reasoned position focused more on the broader problems of the West. “Orientate your self properly,aye”. You raise yourself up and it raises those around you. Don’t think saving the West was at the top of his list when it all started  Again a one at a time, bottom up approach. At the time I was sure it was far to slow and he never seemed to have a handle on American politics though he knows how badly societies can go wrong. He and many other I don’t think quite understood how bad intentioned the left really was, or how much the compromises made with them where always seeding ground. It seems like a great many people are still living there.

The other problem is the lack of a common. “if there is no common understanding there is no common sense” Mark Steyn if memory serves. My past understanding of the malignant “God is dead” quote was just that and it was a good thing. In part from Peterson, my understanding now is “the common belief in a common God / moral order is dead”.  A strong civil society might be able to hold things together and let people do generally what they want....... as long as the reap the consequences of their choices.  The problem comes when all choices become valid because there are no consequence . A strong moral order would have put the brakes on.

This is the general problem with the various libertarian imaginings.  Over time it will always be a problem. Any significantly democratic organization will trend left or as to hear the left tell it “the long arch of history tend toward justice”... social justice.... popular judgement..... mob rule. Entropy.  We all want to be nice and liked so we let the margins slide, leave a little wiggle room in the rules. Eventually it ticks over. Instead of allowing it’s restricting. I doesn’t matter now whatever the case. There is no way now to go any where near letting people reap their own consequences, what would the bureaucrats do with themselves.

So come at it from the other side? The moment the Enlightenment or the industrial revolution started the church was in existential peril. The less the average person need God to explain their day to day the less the ethereal wonder holds. The explosion of knowledge even if they didn’t understand all of it, become a surer path.  Defense of the moral order was what was called for. The church defended itself and eventually the existence of God. I would like one of these fill in the blank “nationalist”, common good conservatives, new theocrat types explain to me how governmental policy is going to fix it? They seem to see it as a problem caused by the left. The left is just taking advantage. If it wasn’t them now it would be something else in a generation or four. Not only are they misidentifying the problem their solution is making it harder to solve.  Setting government policy to favor what worked is not a guarantee it works going forward. There are plenty of good studies and sound arguments and some policies may work well. The problem, it introduces rigidity. It will help stave off the known worse, meanwhile  staving off the unknown both for the worse and for the better. It slows the development of better.

There is this notion that the “left and the “right” should just get a divorce. The “left” will never be satisfied with that. There is as well the notion that we are to diverse to coexist. This is another result of the lack of a common. If a civilization or a country in this case, are bound together even loosely by a civil order an a moral order diversity isn’t a fatal issue. To say it isn’t possible is to reject  the American experiment out right.

Those who have accepted a civil war is inevitable talk as if the fight will be to restore something? The war is between who? One side is usually the government. Not sure what is gained by pickling fight with Antifa et al.

I had thought after Ferguson leadership would have leaned it’s lesson.  APCs for riot control, yes. For no knock warrant, not so much. It’s become abundantly clear I assume far to many things. We went from throw a water bottle at a cop, jail and the protest is over to everything is acceptable up until your try to burn people alive in a public building. As far as I am concerned those mayors and governors who allow this signed there own resignation letters.

It is has become clear Trump or likely any president can’t fix this. Trump specifically doesn’t have the tack to talk us off this ledge. Suspend the campaign for a week and talk about the consequences, the nature of and solution for the problem.... and never mention himself? I don’t know that and president would have the resources to declare an insurrection, deploy enough federal agents and national guard (assuming the governors allow it) and hold on til the local government went back to arresting the first bottle thrower. I doesn’t look like the decades long hold the “left” has had on these city is going to be broken by this, so no major change in policy that will stop this short term is coming. Those who decide to leave are likely to bring the same ideas that lead to the policies that lead to the chaos where ever they go. It’s not going to stay contained.

It sounded like there where the start of some defensive militia and there are always community deescalation groups. This is driven by policy fuel by ideology that can not be question (though they used to act as if it could). All solutions look to be outside our normal acceptable practice. Comment by Mark Steyn about Islam are instructive. Surrender, destroy, or reform. As with Islam this is a self fulfilling ideology.  So? a form of colonization inside our country, an insurrection? Remove the mayors, city counsel and the prosecutors, none of which are doing their jobs. If the rule is that the feds don’t declare insurrections, and it is not declared as such then it is not. What about the governors?  Then what..? What policies changes the culture? What are the markers for holding the next election? It is outside our norm, not so much for history in general.

If Trump wins whatever the left does including secession will be responded to by the federal government, our little city experiment aside. That at best will just reimpose the status quo. It is very unlikely to force the “left” ideology into retreat. If Biden gets elected? Play the city experiment out writ large . The constitution almost by definition can’t survive. So... just reprint the thing and put a new start date on it?  What does that solve? Maybe I am not digging in the parts of the internet where these this are being hashed out. If they are I not sure it’s by the type of people I want running things.

A list of systemic grievances going into all this would be useful both as a guild for what comes after and as set of red lines. I am sure most libertarians could give you a library full of outrages. It is not the day to day bureaucratic nonsense that’s the problem or police outrages. It’s things like deferential impact, judicial realism, popular election of senators, and the supposed precondition in which regulation is allowed just to start. The last line may be when the left has easily won two or three elections in a row while everyone is being forced to do things they don’t want and never hear a word in the press about it.  It may be to late by then. I believed that would be the result if Hilary got elected and it looks to be a certainty if Biden gets in.

Whatever the case maybe the violence has started and to what degree it escalate who knows. The idea that violence is never the answer was always a myth, one we are coming face to face with now. The fact is violence on very rare occasions is the only answer unless you are prepared to surrender everything, to live on your knees in agony. That is why the idea that the constitution is not a suicide pact never made any sense. We seeing it now to with the virus. “we must sacrifice everything even if it save one life”. What childishness. If you won’t die or worse live in pain for your principles they only hold until someone or thing threatens you with just that. If others know it your principles don’t mean much. Further more at societal level if leadership isn’t prepared to risk the live of civilian to protect those principles they aren’t going to last long either

All that in the end still solves nothing. You have beaten back the enemy for what? If violence comes or not we have to have something to go to, to strive for as a civilization. We are a fractured mess of half thoughts and endless “problems” to solve. We have no common understanding of what the moral order or any order is or should be. As is we are done.

“We are very unlikely to come up with entirely new definition or invention. We are very unlikely to invent new Gods, very unlikely to come up with new religion, ...very unlikely to be able to go anything this good again.” Douglas Murray.

 A similar sentiment two plus years ago sent me in this direction.

“ Where the road we’re traveling takes us. Where do the above events and that one trend leave us? Not in a good place. Unless there’s a black swan somewhere down the line, we are heading inevitably towards a socialist America. “  “ I’m praying for a Black Swan. My prayers aren’t usually answered, though. That’s why I’m assuming that the American future will be totalitarian — either Marxist or Islamic — and that it might happen within my lifetime and will definitely happen within my children’s. “ - Bookworm

So what we are looking for is a Black swan, a new god, a new religion. In an ocean of ignorance with an occasional mist of wisdom let me see if I can puzzle this out a bit. First there  is no puppet master just us. Though they took full advantage ,even the “left” isn’t the problem. We began to gain knowledge abundantly, with certainty if not ease. It distracted, if not overwhelmed the the ethereal of the church and rendered the judgement of the wise mute. So what do we need? We need to temper knowledge. We need not just the facts or the working of the parts we see. We need to pursue the truth, not exactly the truth. Not the truth of the tangible world or that of the ethereal. It is the truth of the moment. Our best understanding of the working of the two combined.  And an understanding that some day it will change. And that is what we should pursue. The honest truth of what we know and a drive to find more. To try, succeed and fail, to find what is actually better. It is an extension of the road humanity was on before this diversion.

How to paint the picture? A discovered / revealed God/ devil/ saint/ mythic hero, a torch bearer along the path humanity has always been traveling. The path of our increasing understanding, the path that raised our civilization. A light that only shines on the path behind us, to illuminate the things we missed and on our figure calling us forward. One who demands that those who obscure the past repent. One who demands that those who misrepresent the path their on to get others to follow repent. One that asks us to forgive those who do and use the shape of their misdeeds  to search for our own misunderstandings and mistakes.

In practice, a secular church that is neither. A voluntary body with neither the force of law or a claim to the moral order. A nondemocratic organization because the long arc of history tending toward social justice. An organization the is trusted to ask better questions. A group of people that will put themselves in the experiments in order and be brutally honest about the results. 

So for instance the question about transmission of wisdom from one generation to the next is about how we raise children and that is about family and marriage. What is best? what do we really know?  Follow the path all the way back. Romantic marriage is new, so why not practical or arranged marriage? We see the obvious problems with polygamy, with polyamory? Maybe some combination? maybe not one big romantic marriage but three,may be four people, one marriage is practical, one arrange, and one romantic. I have no idea. We can’t just default to the wisdom of religion or assume the recklessness of the “left”. Let Go. If it works or not we are better for knowing. We will have surer footing on the path ahead at least in the understanding of this moment.

If don’t like that formulation good. You build a black swan. If there’s a flock of them maybe one survives. Maybe we avoid generations of brutality. Maybe something of what we have done survives.

All I can do now is try to find a way not to live on my knees before anyone, anything, any ideology or idea. Try. That is all I can do.

Credit to those i stole ideas from that i can no longer remember if they're mine or not. I am going to put away my crayons down, shut my mouth give my mind a rest, deal with only what i must, and hopefully find a way to wonder at the world again.

or try to

[jeidafei]

The Core Message of D.Gray-Man

In my opinion, every story has something to tell. So what is D.Gray-Man actually trying to show us beneath the layers of all this tragedy and deaths?

This is my wild guess!

P.S. This is just my opinion, everyone! Every story conveys several messages and we are all free to interpret what the core message is in each work of literature...or whether they have a message at all...(I believe they all do, though!)

What is the core message of a story? A very clear example would be Aesop’s fables, which all end with “The moral of this tale is...”.

Most stories don’t just shove the message right into our faces from the get-go. In fact, most stories didn’t set out to preach at all, and the authorーsometimes even unknowinglyーdevelops the core theme and message as the story progresses. And part of the fun for me as I read novels and manga is figuring out the core message stories are trying to convey.

As D.Gray-Man is still ongoing, there are possibilities of plot-twists and new revelations, so I’ll state my guess for the story as of now (Chapter 230). 

And most importantly, if you’re an optimist like me, this core message might have already ensured that D.Gray-Man will have a HAPPY ENDING.

Though it does not necessarily mean Allen will survive, though...

1. Denying the Fate of an Exorcist

The message is there from the very beginning.

Yes, the bomb dropped pretty fast. Too darned fast most peeps including me wouldn’t notice. I’m talking waaay back into the first volume. Over a decade ago. We folks might not recall much, but we'll definitely remember this signature quote from Allen:

"Fate has got nothing to do with this. This is the path I chose by my own free will."

Yes, folks! The BIG SPOILER BOMB has dropped. This whole manga is all about....

                                                Fate Versus Choice

In this scene, Allen is denying what the Grand Generals and Cross Marian have told him: that by being born with Innocence, his fate had been set in stone by God himself, and to fight to the death as an Exorcist is his destiny.

Allen, however, assures Mana that he walks this path for he himself had chosen it. To atone for Mana. To save the suffering souls only he could see.

He's not doing this because Godーbecause Fate forces him to. It’s his own choice.

Allen's choice to become an Exorcist is what sets him apart from most ーif not allーExorcists from the very beginning. Other Exorcists usually joined through pure necessity or by being forced to fight by the Black Order. It’s more like can’t help it and I’m born to do this rather than I chose this. And this, as Dumbledore would put it, makes all the difference in the world.

And though some of them, like Lenalee and Kanda, later embraced their fate bound by Innocence, it's only due to having no other choice; Lenalee knows she can't keep living her daydream of a world without Akuma, and finally accepts that the only way she could protect her world is to fight.

Meanwhile Kanda first accepts his Innocence solely in order to survive and find his lost love, then later to repay Allen for his kindness. After he's done with that, then he can finally get his long-overdue rest in peace. Krory destroys Akuma to make sure Eliade didn’t die in vain. Miranda can’t make herself useful otherwise. Timothy has to leave the orphanage due to the danger Innocence brought to those around him. And so on and so forth.

Allen, on the other hand, probably could have gone on living normally even with his arm activated; Cross had simply asked him whether he would like to be an Exorcist. Despite all his misfortunes, Allen had what the other Exorcists-to-be don’t: a choice. And he made it: He decided on his own to become one and atone for Mana, then later to save the Akuma, and eventually to fight alongside his friends. That is his sole purpose. Allen will not choose another path even if it is open to him, as I will talk about in the next point. 

Had they not possess Innocence, Lenalee would have chosen a normal life in China with Komui even after her parents had died. Kanda would have chosen to run away with Alma and Marie and start a new life. Lavi would have gone on training to be a Bookman. Krory stated himself that he would be content to stay locked up in that castle with Eliade forever. Miranda would have chosen anything else, any job she could do well. Timothy would have chosen to stay on at the orphanage with Mother Superior and Emilia, etc.

2. Denying the Fate of the Fallen One.

When Allen's left arm was destroyed, everyone thought his fate had been sealed. It's over. He's not an Exorcist anymore. He’s fallen. Bak Chang offered him many choices: he could walk a different path, become a Finder or some other support staff. I think he could even leave the Order, actually, seeing as nothing else binds him to the place, and be whatever he wants.

But Allen instead chooses to stubbornly walk forward on this road, even with no hope of regaining his arm, refusing to bow down to fate.

Later when he faces the destroyer of his arm, Tyki Mikk, once again in Noah’s Ark, he states that one does not cease to be an Exorcist when one’s Innocence is destroyed. He then demonstrates this by repairing his broken Innocence using nothing but his own willpower. Nothing, even destroying his arm, will stop him from pursuing his goal as an Exorcist. 

3. Denying the Fate of the Host

Yes, Allen never seems to get a friggin’ break. Right after the Invasion, he starts to learn that his beloved Mana might not be what he thought he was at all.

This is a very, very devastating blow to Allen’s personality and development. His whole life had been built around this illusion, this mask of Mana he cherishes.

He chose to walk this path primarily because he wants to atone for Mana, after all. He hates the idea of succumbing to fate, so he chose to be an Exorcist that fights with his own free will, instead of bowing down to the Innocence’s (or, in other words, God) will (that’s why he won’t let Suman’s Innocence kill its host).

Allen soon learns of his true fate: his fate is to disappear and make way for the 14th Noah to use his body to reincarnate.

But still he refuses to surrender and go quietly into the night. When Link brought him some porridge in jail and confesses to him about the Thirds, Allen said this one sentence that deeply moves Link:

“If only I knew, then I would be able to change something, wouldn’t I?”

Exactly, by trying to learn more about it all, Allen hopes to change his fate. Yet again he does not obediently accept his fate. He then leaves the Order to do so, vowing to Lenalee that no matter what fate throws at him, he will always remain an Exorcist, as he has finally found his home amongst his comrades in the Order. He also refuses to accept his fate and disappear even at Cross’s insistence, as he believes that if he continues to walk he might be able to change his fate, or at the least inspire those who walk the same path as him to fight.

Don’t stand still. Keep walking has always been the words Allen lived by, and may actually translates to Never stop fighting against fate. By coming to a stop on your path, you are accepting that fate no longer has a future laid out for you, and you simply await your end: your chance to change things is zero. By going on, walking on even when the end looms ahead, there is still hope for a better tomorrow.

And as Cross most wisely and beautifully put it: Our path is not laid out before us from the start; but the earth hardens and forms into our road after we have walked upon it. He is saying that there is no such thing as fate; our lives are decided solely by our own choices.

Really, the Hallow OP said it all:

「誰一人邪魔をさせるか。初めて自分で選んだ道だ」

I won’t let anyone stand in the way...of this path I first chose for myself.

4. Link’s confession to Kanda

This recent(?) piece of evidence is what seals the deal for me, actually. The penny drops in this scene Link confessed he fervently hopes Allen will be able to win against the fate of the host:

"There’s someone I want to save...

If heーif Allen Walker could really triumph against his fate as the host...then I want to be there to see him make it.

If it’s true that people could choose any future they want simply by following their hearts, then I want to know the source of their strength."

In my opinion, when Link said there's a person he wants to rescue, he is talking about Tewaku. He's hoping to see Allen win against such a hopeless fate, so he could finally believe in the power of choice himself, and use that inspiration to spur himself to save Tewaku and his remaining Third friends. Link, though he had started to have doubts about Lvellie, is still too weak-willed to openly defy his fate as Lvellie's dog, and relies on Allen to make him believe in himself. And if my noobie writer's sixth sense is to be trusted, THIS scene confirms that the core message of D.Gray-Man is indeed trumping fate, against all the odds. 

And this is why I say DGM would probably have a happyーor at least bittersweet ーending: Even though DGM has always been a very tragic manga, the message of friendship, love, sacrifice and perseverance in the face of impossible adversity is always portrayed as having an optimistic outcome. Characters may die or suffer a lot throughout the series, but every arc ends on a positive note.

This is what sets DGM apart from stories like Attack on Titan, whose message is cynical and pessimistic, and if any dude starts spouting idealistic crap you might as well just stick a death flag on his head, and not a single arc ends positively.

Hoshino-sensei herself said that no matter what happens, Allen will always have friends by his side. You won't see that kind of heartwarming note with AoT. So if the core message of DGM is winning against fate, you can be quite sure DGM won't betray it and will show Allen winning against fate in the end.

5. Even his personal motto confirms it.

The latest guidebook, Gray Log, has revealed Allen's personal motto: To wait for fate is to wait for death.

Exactly, Allen. Literally. 

6. Even his fate as the host is something he chose by himself

Yes, this is the real deal. This is why I say that there is no such thing as fate for Allen; even the so-called fate he is fighting to change right now is actually brought about by his own choice.

Other reincarnations of the Noah have been doomed by random; no-one knowingly becomes one (pretty much like the Exorcists, come to think of it!), but in the case of Allen (if that past!Allen really is him) he willingly chose to become one. Why? I’d guess that maybe he believed that by doing so he could help Neah save the world...help change fate.

The Allen of then already knew the Earl is the enemy of mankind, with his soul-sucking powers. His purpose has not changed, be it 35 years ago or now; he wants to save the world from the Earl, and now he’s going to learn why he brought this fate upon himself.

In the end, after he has learned the Truth, Allen may no longer be an Exorcist in the sense that he fights on behalf of the Order and dons the black coat, but in the sense that he fights to save Akuma and mankind alike, just as he had decided when he regained his Innocence.

Allen’s journey, from the time when he was Red the circus errand boy, has always been one of finding his true home and family. Now that he has found his second true home amongst his Exorcist comrades, he will not let his fickle fate tear it away from him.

(NEW!) 

7. The Mask of Allen and Red’s determination

I stumbled across this one while finishing my translation of Lost Fragment of Snow.  

As I mentioned earlier in Number Three, we now know that Allen’s current personality and motivations are mostly shaped by his determination to atone for Mana: The Mask of Mana. He doesn’t care that much for God or the Holy War or whether the Order wins this war; Remember, he refused to help the Order’s cause by being just any support staff; he just wants to save souls (and later humans) as an Exorcist. In this way, Allen’s worldview is perhaps just as particular and narrow as Lenalee, and that is why during his training to restore his arm, Lenalee’s question of “When you close your eyes and think of the world, what do you see?” constantly had him thinking hard, and finally adding humans to his world as well.

Back to the Mask of Mana. We now know that Cross despises that mask and torments Allen because 1) It’s payback for having him mopping up his two icky Ps and nursing him for months 2) He’s a d-head and d-bag 3) Because he likes his share of booze and boobs and 4) Because he wants Allen to drop that mask and be The Boy With A Red Arm once more. 

(Why do I not simply say Red? Because actually in the Japanese text of LFS and D.Gray-Man, Red is actually just “The Boy with A Red Arm”. It’s in BRACKETS. Yes. He has NO NAME AT ALL.  For the sake of convenience I’ll go back to calling him Red for now, but we must keep in mind that Red is not a proper name.)

In Lost Fragment of Snow, Red is initially a silent, traumatized yet unusually perceptive kid. But his true personality shines out when he starts befriending Mana after Allen the Dog’s death. Just like how Allen gets frustrated by the irresponsible, improbable Cross and yells at him occasionally, Red also loses his temper with and bossily mothers the distracted, naive, slightly amnesiac Mana. The more I read LFS, the more I notice the similarity between the rant-mode Allen to little Red, and normal Allen to Mana back then. 

But Allen’s mask has existed long before Allen turned Mana into an Akuma. His first mask was the Mask of Allen.

After a fiasco in the circus during which Red lost his temper with Mana and pummels him on the head with his dormant, Innocence-embedded arm, Mana became entirely amnesiac, forgetting even his purpose of searching for Neah, and even confusing Red for his dog. 

After an enraged Cross blames Red for Mana’s plight, an extremely guilty Red decides to play along as Mana’s dead dog Allen in order to payback to Mana and Allen for the simple love and happiness they showed him. That is how Red donned his first mask and adopted his first name: Allen Walker.

Why is all this important? 

Back when Red faced impending death, thrown into a lion cage, Red was thinking in frustration and despair about how his life is meaningless, his existence pointless, that he is helpless and powerless, simply waiting to be killed. During his childhood in the circus, Allen/Red repeatedly lamented having no power to change his own fate. He yearned to escape the hellish circus and make a better life somewhere, but with his disabled arm he was unable to do so. 

Evicted from the circus, and with the circus later destroyed by the Millennium Earl, for a while there Red had no clue how to proceed with his life. This is no different from the time Allen lost his arm and had no clue how to keep walking on. But then Red saw the amnesiac Mana and remembered how he destroyed him, and decided that atoning for Mana will be his new reason to live on.

Yes, Redーnow Allenーhas always lived to fight fate when it dropped him into terrible spots, to find meaning for his life. And that journey has led him through THREE turning points on his road, after all of which he still chooses to live to atone for Mana Walker. 

But then, along came Neah’s resurrection and the unfurling truth behind Mana. And now that (in the latest chapter) this Boy With The Red Arm has returned to Eddystone (which is actually Edinburgh according to lots of our dissatisfied readers XD), where he had first donned his mask of Allen Walker, he must question his reason for living and take action one last time to change his fateーand perhaps finally live for himself. 

After listening to the theme song for D.Gray-Man Hallow, I must say that though the anime’s quality (and decision to replace Ms. Kobayashi) might be up for debate, this is the best and most relevant theme song for Allen. 

Key-Bring it on, My Destiny mainly talks about the Path of One’s life, of choosing between crossroads and keep walking on with free will. Once I was researching suicide in Japanese culture, and I came across an interesting explanation of the importance of The Life Path for Japanese people. The Japanese of old seem to view life as one single path set out for them. Once they came to a standstill or hit a wall in their way, they feel as if their life is over, and thus many chose to end their lives. Unlike western culture, the Japanese do not seek an alternate path.

In my opinion, the concept of walking on one’s road and challenging that road is becoming more and more significant in D.Gray-Man. Allen has always been very fixated on one goal. He viewed his life as one road he cannot deviate from, and falls easily to despair whenever it seemed he could no longer live as he had chosen to. Cross reminds him that his life path is not straightforward but meandering. One’s fate and life goal can change during the course of one’s life. And understanding that, Allen finally sets out to face the truth behind Mana so he can decide what he should do next with his life. 

The concept of living on by yourself after the death of your loved one has always been another central theme, obviously, of D.Gray-Man. Allen early on said he came to understand that the tears of Akuma are not tears of hatred, but love and grief for the bereaved who could not find the strength to live on alone. But Allen himself is still unable to move on from Mana. In a sense, with Mana living inside of him as his Akuma eye, with Allen “wearing” Mana like a human suit, Allen is an Akuma himself. And thus his story might end with him exorcising himselfーby finally stepping out of Mana’s shadow, putting the past to rest, and freely choosing his own future.

End of uber long rant. Will add more when I could think of more XD

[forsetti]

On Voting: Be Part of The Solution Not Part of The Problem

In a recent article in “The Week,” titled, “Confessions of an Ex-Voter,” Matthew Walther presents a perfect example of privileged arrogance and civic malfeasance.  This isn't surprising because he begins the article laying out his childish, uneducated views of politics for the first twenty-three years of his life.  His “American Idol” approach to politics and voting is an underlying basis for his argument about why he doesn't vote.   Let's go through these reasons. (His words in bold) There are any number of reasons why I have not voted since. One is simply that I cannot manage to fulfill the minimum requirement of keeping my address up to date.

Translation: I'm so fucking lazy, I can't even be bothered to fill out a simple form and send it in.  Right after telling us he doesn't know jack about politics, he informs us he is lazy, as well.  It is going to be really difficult to make an argument that is taken seriously when your setup is, “I'm ignorant about the topic and lazy.” Another reason I have found for not voting is that in most cases it appears that my ballot will not make a difference.

This is a classic fallacy and not seeing the electoral forest for the trees.  If a particular candidate wins an election by a wide margin, no single vote is responsible for their win or loss.  The implication of this view is the only votes that “count” are the ones that decide an election by one vote.  The thing is, even in elections won by a single vote, every single person who voted for the winning candidate's victory can be legitimately viewed as the “deciding vote.”  The example the author uses is the presidential election results in Florida in 2000.  If George W. Bush had won Florida by a single vote, then every single one of the 2,912,790 votes cast for him was equally important because they all contributed to him winning the election.

The decline of regional newspapers has made local affairs outside major metropolitan areas a matter of anagogic frustration to voters, who have only the faintest idea how and by whom most decisions are made in their states and cities. One simply accepts things as they are.

Even if this statement is true, it is nothing more than another example of the author's laziness.  Yes, local news in many places is no longer disseminated by local newspapers but there are many good, online sources of information for anyone with access to a computer or a smartphone which I'm pretty sure covers the author.  If you “accept things as they are,” the problem with voting isn't the process or the candidates, it is you.

But my principal reason for declining to take part in elections is moral. It involves, I suppose, a private objection to democracy itself.

Now that the blatantly nonsensical arguments have been laid out, the author finally gets down to the real reason he doesn't vote-he has a fucked up view of morality and democracy.

For most of history men and women enjoyed the luxury of knowing that the sovereign's rule was a brute fact about which nothing could be done. They went about the ordinary business of life — laboring, raising children, worshipping their creator — untroubled by futile expectations of change. Some of us continue to aspire to this happy ideal.

Go ahead, read the above paragraph a few times.  Let the fucked up, idealistic view of history wash over you as you try and wrap your brain around this statement is at the crux of an argument against voting.  Even if you ignore the fact that the time and situation the author longs for was the main catalyst behind the Renaissance, the formation of the U.S., and most of the progress made the past 300+ years, this is still a severely fucked up premise.  The lives of the vast majority of people who lived under sovereign rule were deplorable.  The problems and issues of income inequality now are nothing compared to the era the author pines for.  The problem, besides not knowing a damn thing about history, is with the author's last word in the paragraph-”ideal.”  His entire view of history and voting is idealistic in the dangerous, mythologized, untethered from reality way.

Popular elections are a recent phenomenon in human affairs. I do not expect the illusion that there is something nobler about choosing leaders than inheriting them to hold sway over our imaginations forever. The neoliberal economic consensus that has united both of our major political parties, and indeed most politicians in the industrialized world, is a more powerful force than democracy.

There is a lot to unpacked from this word salad of nonsense.  First, “popular elections are a recent phenomenon...”  Yes.  So too are human rights, safe drinking water, indoor plumbing, television, the internet...  The notion that just because something is relatively new makes it bad or a passing fancy is fallacious.  

“The neoliberal economic consensus that has united both of our major political parties...”  Of course, someone who has proudly expressed their laziness and ignorance tosses out “neoliberal” as a cudgel.  Then, to make matters worse goes full, “both sides are to blame.”  One political party has been obsessively devoted to supply-side economics and the other has not.  One political party believes in unfettered capitalism and the other believes in capitalism with restrictions.  One political party believes in large tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations and the other in taxing these to fund social programs.  Just because someone uses, “neoliberal,” doesn't mean they understand it in the slightest.

In a bland way I hope to see Republicans control various state and national offices. This arises from a single issue: the legality of abortion.

The author has already professed his Libertarian bent and is a writer at Libertarian, Dudebro Central-The Federalist.  Yet, when it comes to standing up for and defending freedoms and individual choices, he is 100% against women being eligible for either.  So, besides being ignorant and lazy, the author is a misogynist and a hypocrite. The capriciousness of his (Trump) decisions, the hideousness of his conduct, and the visible descent of his mind and body into a ribald senescence are easier to bear if one sees him as a decadent potentate late in the decline of an empire...  I have neither the power nor the will to alter the reality of Trump's presidency.

Earlier, the author claims the number one reason he doesn't vote is based on some sense of morality.  Now, after laying out the immoral actions of Trump, he suddenly doesn't give a fuck about his morals.  At least the author is consistent with his laziness.  If you think you can't change politics in a representative democracy, you don't understand the meaning of “representative” or “democracy.”  If you don't have the will to alter the reality of what the author labels as, “hideous conduct...ribald senescence...decadence...,” then the problem is you.  

I like to imagine that my disinterest allows me to see things more clearly than partisans, but even if this is not so it certainly makes me happier.

Since the author starts the article with seriously faulty premises, he might as well end with one.  His argument at the conclusion is basically, “Since I don't know a damn thing about history, politics, democracy... I see things related to these more clearly.” “Since I didn't go to med school or study surgical techniques, but I write about them, I see things in the operating room more clearly.” You don't get to state you are lazy, uninterested in the process and outcomes, then claim you see the things you are lazy, uninterested in, and really don't give a fuck about, “more clearly.”  

This kind of self-congratulatory attitude about being lazy and ignorant about politics is bad enough.  When it is used to discourage others from participating in the democratic process, it is dangerous because it feeds the very problem that makes America less democratic-voter apathy.  

Voting is an individual right but a social obligation.  To not vote, to argue that voting isn't worth it, that not voting is the moral thing to do... is the very definition of social negligence and unethical behavior.  Of course, you should vote for the issues that are important to you and for the candidates you think best reflect these values.  However, if there aren't candidates who perfectly match what you want, it is still ethically necessary to vote for the person you think will do the most good because, unlike what the author claims, a single vote can make the difference between millions having health care, millions having better wages, millions having clean drinking water...  If you think not voting for moral reasons outweighs these kinds of benefits, your moral compass is severely fucked up.  

It has been suggested to me this article was written almost as satire, to be provocative.  If it was, it was executed very poorly.  Also, if it was written as satire because it was done so badly, it comes across as serious and in so doing, adds to what is already a dangerous problem-voter apathy.  There are far too many people who honestly believe the things written in this article.  There are a lot more coming of voting age who already believe the propaganda both major political parties don't care about them.  To write or say anything that feeds this apathy, this attitude is unconscionable.

[newstfionline]

How to Start a War in 5 Easy Steps

By Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy, April 2, 2018

Is the United States on the road to war? The number of people who think so seems to be growing, especially after President Donald Trump fired several of the grown-ups who were reportedly tempering his worst instincts and proceeded to elevate hawks such as CIA Director Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Writing in the New York Times Magazine this past Sunday, Robert Worth portrays Defense Secretary James Mattis as the sole voice of reason in Trump’s new “war cabinet” and highlights the risks of conflict with Iran, North Korea, and maybe a few other countries. How nervous should we be, and how might we tell if Trump is really serious about war or not?

The first thing to remember is that leaders don’t start wars that they believe will be long, costly, and might end in their own defeat. Plenty of wars turn out that way, of course, but the leaders who begin them do so because they fool themselves into thinking the war will be quick, cheap, and successful. Before World War I, Germany’s leaders thought the Schlieffen Plan would allow them to defeat France and Russia in a couple of months, and Hitler had similar hopes for the blitzkrieg and organized the entire Nazi war machine on the assumption that the war would be brief. Japan knew it couldn’t win a long war against the United States, and the attack on Pearl Harbor was a desperate gamble that Tokyo hoped would shatter U.S. morale and convince Washington to give it a free hand in East Asia. Saddam Hussein didn’t think anyone would resist the seizure of Kuwait, and George W. Bush and the neocons (as well as Bolton) foolishly believed the Iraq War would be easy, short, and pay for itself.

In a democracy, leaders bent on war also must convince the public that rolling the “iron dice” of war, to quote German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg in 1914, is necessary and wise. Congress abdicated its constitutional role to declare war a long time ago, which gives presidents a pretty free hand, but no president is likely to order the large-scale use of force (as opposed to drones or small-scale raids) if he believes the public is dead set against it. Instead, he and his team will go to great lengths to persuade the public to go along.

So, if a president and his advisors are looking to start a war, how will they sell it? Here are the five main arguments that hawks typically advance when seeking to justify a war. You might think of them as the Top Five Warning Signs We’re Going to War.

The danger is grave and growing. The basic logic behind preventive war is the assumption that war is coming and that it is better to fight now instead of later. Thus, Germany went to war in 1914 because it believed (incorrectly) that Russian power would soon eclipse its own, and the Bush administration attacked Iraq because it thought Saddam was hellbent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the situation would be intolerable if he ever managed to do so. Accordingly, anyone seeking to start a war will try to convince the public that the United States is facing multiple adverse trends and that its deteriorating position can be reversed only via military action. The lesson? Watch for rhetoric about “gaps,” “red lines” “points of no return,” or “time is running out,” which imply the United States must act before it is too late.

It is therefore worrisome that the Trump administration insists that North Korea’s improving nuclear and missile capabilities constitute an existential threat that cannot be tolerated and other warmongers conjure up lurid fears of a new “Persian empire” that must be defeated before it takes over the whole region. Both statements imply that America’s security is running out--like sands in an hourglass--making war almost impossible to avoid.

Such dark warnings rest on little more than guesswork about the future, of course, and typically depend on worst-case assumptions about where current trends might lead. If the United States were scuttle the nuclear deal with Iran and Tehran eventually got nuclear weapons, for example, there’s no reason to think deterrence wouldn’t work as effectively as it did with other nuclear powers. Similarly, it is hardly obvious that North Korea’s growing nuclear and missile capabilities will inevitably lead it to become more aggressive--let alone threaten the United States directly. It’s just as likely that it will become more cooperative once it is no longer worried about U.S.-sponsored regime change. I’m not saying that would be the case, mind you, but it is as plausible as believing that acquiring WMD or enhanced missile capabilities would suddenly lead Pyongyang or Tehran to launch a vast imperial rampage. Because the future is always uncertain, fear of adverse circumstances that may never materialize is a poor justification for war and especially for a country that is as powerful, wealthy, and secure as the United States actually is. That is why German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck called preventive war “committing suicide for fear of death.”

Notice further that the logic of preventive war implicitly acknowledges that the United States is still far stronger and more secure than any of these adversaries and need not go to war from a sense of panic. Which brings me to No. 2.

War will be easy and cheap (but only if we act now). As noted above, nobody launches a war if he or she is certain it will be long, costly, or likely to end in defeat. Accordingly, anyone trying to make the case for war has to convince him or herself and the public that it will be easy and that victory will be both inevitable and cheap. In practice, this means persuading people that the costs to the United States will be negligible, the risks of escalation controllable, and the likely outcome easy to foresee.

What does that tell us to look out for? Well, the more that the administration talks about “limited options,” a “bloody nose” strike, the potency of air power, the ability to conduct “precision attacks” with no collateral damage, or other supposedly controllable war scenarios, the more worried you should be. Those are the signs that a government is convincing itself that it has lots of options that will wreak havoc on its foes but pose little danger to the country. And you should be especially concerned when those advocating war seem to be assuming that the enemy will behave exactly as they would like them to, instead of coming up with responses they didn’t anticipate. “The enemy gets a vote” is a familiar cliche but also one that hawks routinely dismiss when making the case for action.

War will solve all (or at least most) of our problems. Advocates for war typically promise that victory will solve lots of problems at once. Saddam thought invading Kuwait was a masterstroke that would eliminate one of his main creditors, increase Iraq’s GNP by billions of dollars overnight, enhance his leverage over Saudi Arabia, dampen domestic discontent, and give him the wherewithal to compete with a potentially more powerful Iran. Similarly, Bush and the neocons thought toppling Saddam would eliminate a potential aggressor, send a message to other would-be proliferators, restore U.S. credibility after 9/11, and began a process of democratization in the Middle East that would eventually mitigate the danger of Islamic terrorism.

Hawks also like to argue the flip side: A failure to act now (or soon) will have dire consequences. Not only will it allow the balance of power to shift against the United States (see #1), but it will also lead others to doubt the country’s resolve and question its credibility. In other words: If the United States uses force, other states will respect it, deterrence will be strengthened, and peace will spread far and wide. If it doesn’t act, by contrast, adversaries will be emboldened, allies enfeebled, and the world will descend into darkness.

The astonishing thing about such claims is how often they get recycled. No matter how many times the United States goes to war or uses force--and it has done a lot of both in recent decades--it’s never enough. The positive effects of vigorous never seem to last more than a few months--at least according to the hawks--and soon they are telling Americans that they have to blow something up again so that others will know they can and will.

The enemy is evil. Or crazy. Maybe both. If you want to lead a country into war, don’t forget to demonize your opponent. Portraying the conflict as a straightforward clash of competing interests isn’t enough, because if that were the case, the problem might be resolved via diplomacy and compromise rather than by military force. Accordingly, hawks go to great lengths to portray opponents as the embodiment of evil and to convince the public that the enemy is morally repugnant and unalterably hostile. After all, if a foreign government does some bad things, and if its hostility to America will never, ever change, then the only long-term solution is to get rid of it. As former Vice President Dick Cheney put it, “We don’t negotiate with evil. We defeat it.”

A second line of argument is the claim that America’s adversaries are irrational, fanatical aggressors that cannot be deterred by its superior military power, huge arsenal of sophisticated nuclear weapons, robust network of allies, and assorted economic tools. Thus, Iran’s leaders are routinely described as religious fanatics who would welcome martyrdom, and North Korea’s three Kims have been routinely depicted as bizarre, crazy, extremely bellicose, and therefore impossible to deter. Never mind that both regimes have repeatedly shown themselves to be obsessed not with martyrdom or ideology but rather with retaining power and staying alive. To make the case for war, it’s more effective to tell the public these folks are dangerously bonkers.

Yet when it suits them, hawks also tend to portray the enemy as smart and sensible, to make using force seem safe. A leader like Kim Jong Un is said to be too irrational to deter, which is why the United States must go after him. But hawks also argue that if America does decide to attack North Korea’s nuclear infrastructure, it will in fact be possible to deter him from retaliating against U.S. allies or against the United States itself. Those who favor attacking Iran use similar arguments: Iran’s leaders are supposedly irrational fanatics who could not be deterred if they ever got nuclear weapons, but they are also smart and sensible enough to sit quietly while the U.S. Air Force conducts a devastating bombing campaign throughout their country. Needless to say, when you see an openly contradictory argument like this, you know you are in the realm of pro-war propaganda rather than serious analysis.

Peace is unpatriotic. The final warning sign is when an administration starts wrapping itself in the flag and suggesting that skepticism about the use of force is a sign of insufficient patriotism. During the Vietnam War, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon accused anti-war activists of giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and an administration eager to sell a war is bound to portray those opposing it as weak-willed, naive, or insufficiently committed to U.S. security. If Trump is contemplating war and prominent people start to challenge him, you’ll know by keeping a close eye on his Twitter feed.

As I’ve noted before, U.S. politicians’ present aversion to peace is puzzling. I’m a realist and not a pacifist, but a country whose global position is as favorable as the United States has an obvious interest in peace and stability and little interest in taking big risks for small gains. Unfortunately, after 27 years of being the indispensable nation, and 17 years of fighting the war on terror, Americans have become accustomed to presidents trying to solve complex strategic and political problems mostly by blowing stuff up. This approach hasn’t worked very well, but it is still the default response of the foreign-policy establishment. Just remember the outpouring of bipartisan support that Trump received when he fired a few dozen cruise missiles into Syria. It was a one-off gesture that did not affect the war there in the slightest, yet Republicans--and Democrats--hailed it as a sign that Trump was finally taking his presidential responsibilities seriously.

My point is that if this administration decides it wants to start a war, it will do everything it can to intimidate or marginalize skeptics. The most reliable way to do that is to impugn their patriotism, in the hope that everyone will have forgotten how much damage overzealous hawks have done in recent years.

So, if you see the Trump administration deploying any of the arguments I’ve just identified (and to be fair, it already has to some degree)--look out. What makes this tricky, however, is that an administration that didn’t want to go to war might still act as if it were itching for a fight, in the hope of persuading the other side to make concessions. But this is a dangerous gambit, either because the bluff can get called or because you can start believing your own propaganda and talk yourself into war by stages.

If Trump does choose war, where is it most likely to occur? I’d say Iran, for two reasons. First, North Korea already has nuclear weapons, and Iran has none, so the risks of war with the former are infinitely greater. Second, even a purely conventional war on the Korean Peninsula would make South Korea, Japan, China, and others very nervous; by contrast, America’s Middle East clients would be positively giddy if Trump succumbed to their blandishments and attacked Iran on their behalf. If Trump is eager to distract people from his other troubles, or is determined to compensate for those small hands of his, war with Iran makes a lot more sense than a war with North Korea.

Which is not to say that it makes much sense at all. I still think war with either country is unlikely because the United States has little to gain and much to lose by launching another war. And it shouldn’t take a genius to figure that out. But that’s pretty cold comfort because I’ve overestimated the intelligence, prudence, and judgment of U.S. leaders before. Sadly, sometimes very bad ideas get implemented anyway.

Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

[entireconfection]

Can We Turn It Around?

Hard to believe it’s been four years, isn’t it?

           As I sit down to write this, 5 weeks out from the 2020 election, it’s hard to know where to start. For almost four years now, we’ve been living in an altered (and very shitty) state of reality. Donald Trump’s America. A never-ending dumpster fire. And, to be frank, one of the worst chapters in our country’s history. On top of that, we’ve just crossed the half-year mark of a global pandemic, an ongoing crisis by turns devastating and surreal, one that seems sadly befitting of our dystopian, is-this-really-happening times.

           After 4 agonizing years of hate and stupidity ruling the roost, of nonstop assaults on science and decency and civility, of the obliteration of democratic norms, destruction of the checks and balances that we naively assumed would always be there for us, we’ve almost arrived at another election. And with it, the possibility that we can start to turn this around. That we can rise up and say “NO. We DON’T want a dictatorship. We WON’T go along with this. We will FIGHT for love and decency and our democracy.”

           Personally, I am proceeding under the assumption that Trump will be reelected. I have to do so for my own wellbeing. I don’t want to get my hopes up. The bitter, blindsiding defeat of 2016 is still fresh in my mind. There are many ways that this election could turn into a shitshow. Not the least of which is we have a ruthless dictator as President who is doing everything he can to sabotage the vote. And he has a powerful ally in the Republican party, which has expertly suppressed the vote for decades and is doing so now with as much gusto as ever, determined to hold onto power at all costs. Throw in all of the logistical challenges and obstacles caused by COVID, along with all of the flaws of our antiquated, broken-by-design voting system (courtesy of the democracy-hating GOP), and no one really knows what the hell is going to happen on November 3.

           So I have to assume that Trump will win. Because, awful as that will be, life will go on if he wins. And I need to be able to carry on as well.

           Still, as accustomed as I’ve become to the insanity of the Trump era, it’s sometimes hard to grasp that it’s come to this. That we are perilously close to becoming an authoritarian country with a permanent conservative majority. That it pretty much all hangs on this election.

           It’s not just our country either. It’s our planet that’s on the line. Perhaps you’ve heard of climate change? You know, that little issue that Americans don’t give a shit about, but is an existential threat to human civilization? Well, it’s only getting worse. The Northern Hemisphere just had its hottest summer ever, 2 degrees above normal. You can expect a new record every year for your lifetime.

           Trump, as expected, has been a disaster for the climate – withdrawing from the Paris Accord, gutting environmental regulations left and right, and basically doing as much damage to the earth as possible. Given that experts say we have 10 years to make major cuts in emissions if we have any hope of avoiding irreversible and catastrophic climate disruption, it’s safe to say that a second Trump term would pretty much be game over for the climate, and for life as we know it. It’s the predictable outcome when you elect an idiot climate denier president of the most powerful country in the world.

           Then there’s the fate of democracy itself, which is in a perilous position around the world. Fascism masquerading as “right-wing parties” has been on the march across Europe for years. Trump has gleefully helped that effort, cozying up to ruthless dictators like Kim-Jong Il and giving his buddy Putin the green light to continue to ratfuck elections, sow chaos, and wage cyber warfare on any country he chooses.

Meanwhile, Trump has given the middle finger to our allies constantly since taking office. Again, completely to be expected from a jingoistic simpleton whose entire understanding of foreign policy boils down to “America First.” Remember his shit-eating smirk while refusing to shake Angela Merkel’s hand in the Oval Office? Trump exemplifies the right’s foaming-mouth hatred of Europe, foreigners, and diplomacy. Just one of their many flavors of bigotry, he and his base believe that the rest of the world basically consists of international elitists determined to destroy America. Not exactly a philosophy conducive to preventing trifling matters like, say, global pandemics or world wars.

The more I write, the more I remember when an absolute sleazebag our president is, and the more astonished I am that this man is our president. This is the guy who 60 million people voted for in 2016. This is the guy who is nothing less than a savior to millions and millions of white Americans. Donald fucking Trump? You would be hard-pressed to find a more loathsome person in all of America. And despite knowing full well how polarized and tribalized we have become, it’s still hard to fathom that so many Americans can look at this vile, morally bankrupt con man and see a great leader, a champion of their values, the greatest president of all time. It just doesn’t compute.

           And yes, many of his voters are well aware of his vices, and yes, white working-class voters have legitimate problems, and on and on. For four years, we’ve discussed and dissected these reasons for Trump’s victory. They are admitted and entered into the record. Now can we please get rid of this menace because he destroys our democracy, wiping out the great experiment that has endured for 244 years?

           Because that’s what’s really on the line on November 3. We’re all deciding if we want to go back to being a democracy – a flawed, messy, imperfect democracy to be sure, but still a democracy at heart – or a dictatorship.  That’s not hyperbole. That’s just the situation.

Trump, aided and abetted by the entire Republican apparatus and 40% of the population, has turned us into a dictatorship. He has put his cronies in positions of power. He has fired anyone who refuses to become his unquestioning flunky, smearing public servants who have spent decades working to help people – a concept completely alien to Trump. He has demonized the media (except for the propaganda outlets who run only pro-Trump news), relentlessly undermining one of the pillars of a liberal democracy, turning people against the very journalists who are trying to expose how Trump is screwing them over. He has conspired with our enemies to compromise our own elections. He came to power by colluding with Russia to his political opponent. He tear-gassed peaceful protestors in front of the White House and painted Black Lives Matter as radical terrorists and applauded right-wing vigilantes who pointed guns at BLM protestors. Hell, he gave them a plum speaking slot at the RNC. Because that’s who calls the shots in Donald Trump’s America – racists and white supremacists.

So, yeah…it’s a rubbish time. And as anyone who remembers the train wreck of Election Night 2016 can understand, I don’t want to get my hopes up. We’ve all been burned one too many times.

Still, it is nice – if only for a moment – to think about a President Biden.

A president who acts like a fucking adult, not a tantrum-throwing toddler or a schoolyard bully.

A president who condemns violence, not one who exploits and encourages it for political gain.

A president who speaks carefully and thoughtfully, knowing his words have real-life consequences. Not one who constantly spews venom and lies, not caring if people die as a result because they’re not his base so screw them.

A president who refuses to legitimize dangerous conspiracy theories. Not one who gleefully seizes on every twisted fairy-tale to emerge from alt-right trolls lurking on 4chan.

A president who accepts the simple fact that our world is interconnected and that diplomacy, respect, and civil discourse are our best tools for making life better for everyone. Not one who embraces the right’s phony-ass “patriotism” and thinks Americans – more specifically, his supporters – are the only people on Earth who matter.

A president who does his fucking job, not one who sits on his ass tweeting and watching Fox News to get his daily ass-kissing. When he’s not golfing or holding white supremacist rallies, that is.

Trump’s awfulness is simply unparalleled, probably in human history. It is an expansive mass so vast and blatant and unashamed that it’s almost a work of art, in a sick way. You could go on forever about the cringe, the iconic moments of incompetence, the garish displays of smirking idiocy and unabashed bigotry that have come to define our time. Sharpie-doctored hurricane maps, Kanye in the Oval Office, calling African countries “shitholes,” telling black and Latina Congresswomen to “go back where they came from,” toilet paper on the shoe, shoving a world leader on stage, soundproof phone booths at the EPA, white supremacists as “very fine people,” caravans, paper towels, upside-down Bibles, covfefe…it has just been a constant, dizzying tornado of hate and evil and stupid. It’s why I stopped watching the news. It’s too much. We weren’t wired to ingest this level of crazy and awful every day. Being a human being is hard enough as it is.

It’s hard to stomach the thought of one more day of this shit, let alone 4 years. Should Trump get reelected, it’s hard to see how anything good will survive. And should his victory come once again come via dirty tricks, be it foreign interference or voter suppression or both, it would appear to confirm that our system has been so hopelessly corrupted by the right that it’s impossible for a Democrat to win. It would suggest that it is now impossible to have a fair presidential election and we’re doomed to have permanent tyrannical rule by a racist, reactionary, science-hating, authoritarian minority. Where we go from there is anyone’s guess.

I hope we can turn it around. I hope there are enough decent people out there who are fed up with this asshole. I hope the myriad GOTV efforts we’ve seen in recent months will motivate people who sat out last time, and maybe some people who have never voted. I hope the collective determination of people who are against Trump is enough to overcome the GOP’s perennial cheating and voter-suppression campaigns. I hope, no matter the outcome, that the whole thing doesn’t devolve into an epic shitshow that makes Florida 2000 look like a calm and orderly affair.

So I have hope. Is it well-founded? Is it anything more than wishful thinking? Hard to say. But when all appears lost, that’s what we have. Hope.  

In closing, if you are dismayed by what America has become these past 4 years, if you want to save the democracy that so many people fought and died for throughout our history, please vote for Biden. Your kids, your grandkids, and the entire world will thank you.

[libertariantaoist]

Oh, it was glorious fun, yielding the kind of satisfaction that us anti-interventionists  rarely get to enjoy: not one but two prominent neoconservatives who have been  wrong about everything for the past decade – yet never held accountable  –  getting  taken down on national television. Tucker Carlson, whose show is a shining light  of reason in a fast-darkening world, has performed a public service by demolishing  both Ralph Peters and Max Boot on successive shows. But these two encounters  with evil weren’t just fun to watch, they’re also highly instructive for what  they tell us about the essential weakness of the War Party and its failing strategy  for winning over the American people.

Tucker’s  first victim was Ralph Peters, an alleged “military expert” who’s been a  fixture on Fox News since before the Iraq war, of which he was a rabid proponent.  Tucker starts out the program by noting that ISIS “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi  may have been killed in a Russian airstrike and that the talk in Washington  is now moving away from defeating ISIS and focusing on Iran as the principal  enemy. He asks why is this? Why not take a moment to celebrate the death of  Baghdadi and acknowledge that we have certain common interests with the Russians?

Peters leaps into overstatement, as is his wont: “We can’t have an alliance  with terrorists, and the Russians are terrorists. They’re not Islamists, but  they are terrorists.” He then alleges that the Russians aren’t really fighting  ISIS, but instead are bombing hospitals, children, and “our allies” (i.e. the  radical Islamist Syrian rebels trained and funded by the CIA and allied with  al-Qaeda and al-Nusra). The Russians “hate the United States,” and “we have  nothing in common with the Russians” –nothing!” The Russians, says Peters, are  paving the way for the Iranians – the real evil in the region – to “build up  an empire from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean.” Ah yes, the “Shia  crescent” which the Israelis and their amen corner in the US have been warning  against since before the Iraq war. Yet Tucker points out that over 3,000 Americans  have been killed by terrorists in the US, and “none of them are Shi’ites: all  of [these terrorists] have been Sunni extremists who are supported by the Saudis  who are supposed to be our allies.” And while we’re on the subject: “Why,” asks  Tucker, “if we’re so afraid of Iran did we kill Saddam Hussein, thereby empowering  Iran?”

“Because we were stupid,” says Peters.

Oh boy! Peters was one  of the most militant advocates of the Iraq war: we were ���stupid,” I suppose,  to listen to him. Yet Tucker lets this ride momentarily, saving his big guns  for the moment when he takes out Peters completely. And Peters walks right into  it when Tucker wonders why we can’t cooperate with Russia, since both countries  are under assault from Sunni terrorists:

“PETERS: You sound like Charles Lindbergh in 1938 saying Hitler hasn’t attacked  us.

“TUCKER: I beg your pardon? You cannot compare me to somebody who makes  apologies for Hitler. And I don’t think Putin is comparable.

“PETERS: I think Putin is.

“TUCKER: I think it is a grotesque overstatement actually. I think it’s  insane.

“PETERS: Fine, you can think it’s insane all you want.”

For the neocons, it’s always 1938. The enemy is always the reincarnation of  Hitler, and anyone who questions the wisdom of war is denounced as an “appeaser”  in the fashion of Neville Chamberlain or Lindbergh. Yet no one ever examines  and challenges the assumption behind this rhetorical trope, which is that war  with the enemy of the moment – whether it be Saddam Hussein, the Iranian ayatollahs,  or Vladimir Putin – is inevitable and imminent. If Putin is Hitler, and Russia  is Nazi Germany, then we must take the analogy all the way and assume that we’ll  be at war with the Kremlin shortly.

After all, Charles Lindbergh’s opponents in the great debate of the 1940s openly  said that Hitler, who posed an existential threat to the West, had to be destroyed,  and that this goal could not be achieved short of war. Of course, Franklin Roosevelt  pretended that this wasn’t so, and pledged repeatedly that we weren’t going  to war, but secretly he manipulated events so that war was practically inevitable.  Meanwhile, the more honest elements of the War Party openly proclaimed that  we had to aid Britain and get into the war.

Is this what Peters and his gaggle of neocons are advocating – that we go to  war with nuclear-armed Russia and annihilate much of the world in a radioactive  Armageddon? It certainly seems that way. The Hitler-Lindbergh trope certainly  does more than merely imply that.

Clearly riled by the attempt to smear him, Tucker, the neocon slayer, then  moves in for the kill:

“I would hate to go back and read your columns assuring America that taking  out Saddam Hussein will make the region calmer, more peaceful, and America safer,  when in fact it has been the opposite and it has empowered Russia and Iran,  the two countries you say you fear most – let’s be totally honest, we don’t  always know the outcomes.    ”They are not entirely predictable so maybe  we should lower that a little bit rather than calling people accommodationist.”

This is what the neocons hate: reminding them of their record is like showing  a vampire a crucifix. Why should we listen to Peters, who’s been wrong about  everything for decades? Peters’ response is the typical neocon riposte to all  honest questions about their policies and record: you’re a traitor, you’re “cheering  on Vladimir Putin!” To which Tucker has the perfect America Firster answer:

“I’m cheering for America as always. Our interests ought to come first and  to the extent that making temporary alliances with other countries serves our  interests, I’m in favor of that. Making sweeping moral claims – grotesque ones  – comparing people to Hitler advances the ball not one inch and blinds us to  reality.”

Peters has no real argument, and so he resorts to the method that’s become  routine in American politics: accuse your opponent of being a foreign agent.  Tucker, says Peters, is an  “apologist” not only for Putin but also for Syrian  President Bashar al-Assad. Again, Tucker answers smears with cold logic:

“So because I’m asking rational questions about what’s best for America  I’m a friend to strongmen and dictators? That is a conversation stopper, not  a beginning of a rational conversation. My only point is when Syria was run  by Assad 10% of the population was Christian and they lived in relative peace.”

And that’s really the whole point: the War Party wants to stop the conversation.  They don’t want a debate – when, really, have we ever had a fair debate in this  country over foreign policy? They depend on fear, innuendo, and ad hominem  “arguments” to drag us into war after war – and Tucker is having none of it.

So why is any of this important? After all, it’s just a TV show, and as amusing  as it is to watch a prominent neocon get creamed, what doe it all mean in the  end? Well, it matters because Tucker didn’t start out talking sense on foreign  policy. He started out, in short, as a conventional conservative, but then something  happened. As he put it to Peters at the end of the segment:

“I want to act in America’s interest and stop making shallow, sweeping claims  about countries we don’t fully understand and hope everything will be fine in  the end. I saw that happen and it didn’t work.”

What’s true isn’t self-evident, at least to those of us who aren’t omniscient.  Many conservatives, as well as the country as a whole, learned something as  they saw the disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria unfold. On the  right, many have rejected the neoconservative “idealism” that destroyed the  Middle East and unleashed ISIS. When Donald Trump stood before the South Carolina  GOP debate and told the assembled mandarins that we were lied into the Iraq  war, the chattering classes declared that he was finished – yet he won that  primary, and went on to win the nomination, precisely because Republican voters  were ready to hear that message.

Indeed, Trump’s “America First” skepticism when it comes to foreign wars made  the crucial difference in the election, as a recent study  shows: communities hard hit by our endless wars put him over the top in  the key states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. This, and not “Russian  meddling,” handed him the White House.

Tucker Carlson’s ideological evolution limns the transformation of the American  right in the age of Trump: while Trump is not, by a long shot, a consistent  anti-interventionist, Tucker comes pretty close. He is, at least, a realist  with a pronounced antipathy for foreign adventurism, and that is a big step  forward from the neoconservative orthodoxy that has bathed much of the world  in blood.

If the demolition of Ralph Peters was the cake, then the  meltdown of neoconservative ideologue Max Boot the next evening was the  frosting, with ice cream on the side.

Perhaps the neocons, having been trounced in round one, thought Boot could  do better: they were mistaken. Tucker took him apart simply by letting him talk:  Boot didn’t answer a single question put to him, and, in the course of it all,  as Boot resorted to the typical ad hominems, Tucker made a cogent point:

“[T]o dismiss people who  disagree with you as immoral  –  which is your habit  –  isn’t a useful form of  debate, it’s a kind of moral preening, and it’s little odd coming from you,  who really has been consistently wrong in the most flagrant and flamboyant way  for over a decade. And so, you have to sort of wonder, like  –      ”BOOT: What have I been wrong about, Tucker?  What have I been wrong about?    ”CARLSON: Well, having watch you carefully  and known you for a long time, I recall vividly when you said that if we were  to topple the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq, the region will be much safer  and the people who took their place would help us in the global war on terror.  Of course it didn’t happen –“

Boot starts to completely melt  down at this point, screeching “You supported the Iraq war!” To which Tucker  trenchantly replies:

“I’ve been wrong about a ton of things,  you try to learn your lesson. But when you get out there in the New  York Times and say, we really should have done more to depose Qaddafi, because  you know, Libya is going to be better when that happens. And then to hear you  say we need to knock off the Assad regime and things will be better in Syria,  he sort of wonder like, well, maybe we should choose another professions. Selling  insurance, something you’re good at. I guess that’s kind of the point. Are there  no sanctions for being as wrong as you have?”

Why oh why should we listen to Peters and Boot and their fellow neocons, who  have been – literally – dead wrong about everything: their crackbrained ideology  has led to untold thousands of deaths since September 11, 2001 alone. And for  what?

In the end, Boot falls back on the usual non-arguments: Tucker is “immoral”  because he denies that Trump is a Russian agent, and persists in asking questions  about our foreign policy of endless intervention in the Middle East. Tucker  keeps asking why Boot thinks Russia is the main threat to the United States,  and Boot finally answers: “Because they are the only country that can destroy  us with a nuclear strike.”

To a rational person, the implications of this are obvious: in that case, shouldn’t  we be trying to reach some sort of détente, or even achieve a degree of cooperation  with Moscow? Oh, but no, because you see the Russians are inherently evil, we  have “nothing” in common with them – in which case, war is inevitable.

At which point, Tucker avers: “Okay. I am beginning to think that your judgment has been  clouded by ideology, I don’t fully understand where it’s coming from but I will  let our viewers decide.”

I know where it’s coming from. Tucker’s  viewers may not know that Boot is a Russian immigrant, who – like so many of  our Russophobic warmongers – arrived on our shores with his hatred of the motherland  packed in his suitcase. There’s a whole platoon of them: Cathy Young, who recently  released her polemic  arguing for a new cold war with Russia in the pages of Reason magazine;  Atlantic writer and tweeter  of anti-Trump obscenities Julia Ioffe, whose visceral hatred for her homeland  is a veritable monomania; Gary Kasparov, the former chess champion who spends  most of his energy plotting revenge against Vladimir Putin and a Russian electorate  that has consistently rejected his hopeless presidential campaigns, and I could  go on but you get the picture.

As the new cold war envelopes the country, wrapping us in its icy embrace and  freezing all rational discussion of foreign policy, a few people stand out as  brave exceptions to the groupthinking mass of the chattering classes: among  the most visible and articulate are Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwald, journalist  Michael Tracey, Prof. Stephen Cohen, and of course our own Ron Paul. I tip my  hat to them, in gratitude and admiration, for they represent the one thing we  need right now: hope. The hope that this madness will pass, that we’ll beat  back this latest War Party offensive, and enjoy a return to what passes these  days for normalcy.

[andrewuttaro]

New Look Sabres: GM 58 - NJD - The Room

Yea, I guess there still in the race even if it is a distant third. The race for the final wildcard spot has felt… hopeless at times. At some point in that game against the Rangers something snapped in me. You can talk yourself into a lot of things in life: putting off the laundry for too long, being lazy on your car registration until the Cop pulls you over, buying a Brian Gionta jersey that won’t even fit you. I was still able to talk myself into the Sabres making the playoffs before Friday night. I’m not so sure anymore. Sure, as of the posting of this blog Buffalo is a full five points back on first team out Carolina while Philadelphia is now breathing down their necks dead even in points while the Sabres have a game in hand. There is a scenario that could unfold here where the Hurricanes make the playoffs and the Flyers are the first team out. I mean Pittsburgh missing the playoffs would be fun but that’s like ordering a garbage plate and getting just the pasta salad: yeah, this isn’t bad, but the nature of this situation had me believing I would get quite a bit more. Yeah, our expectations were inflated by November but I’m not relitigating that again and I think all reasonable observers were placing the Sabres on the bubble back in September. We’re still on that bubble but who would have thought bubbles hurt so much to sit on? Luckily the Playoff Trash talk is out of the way for the Devils because I really don’t have the heart for that. I turned this game off after the Reinhart goal. Yeah, after it because I felt that hopeless. My dad messaged me because we have our cute little Sabres chat with my brother and he, perhaps for not knowing hockey so well (he’s more of a football guy), thought a one goal deficit wasn’t too much to overcome. He messaged me that in the third period and shortly thereafter admitted himself it was time to turn the game off. Get someone in your life who knows when to turn it off.

So, I know last game I said I wasn’t going to do the goal for goal recap and ended up doing it. I mean it for real this time: I just don’t have a recap in me. I was at the last game against the Devils and it wasn’t shit: in fact, Buffalo won 5-1 in a game that kind of felt liberating after the stretch of games before it. Buffalo lost 4-1 tonight and it looked like a different team. Sam Reinhart scored the one Sabres goal in this game, it was a nice rebound tap in when the game was still 2-1. I don’t feel the need to recap any of the Devils goals because they are folks I don’t follow regularly on a team that not only will not be a threat if the Sabres do pull a playoff berth out of their asses, but are likely one of the next teams to be mathematically eliminated from the playoffs after the Senators led the way into that abyss earlier this week. How long until the Sabres join those sad ranks? As recently as last week I thought this group of guys could pull off a tight race going into March and here we are with 24 games left and they don’t even look like they want it anymore. Yeah, once again a lot of stuff was said in the locker room after this game and I will get to that but what is it? What is the thing in the room that is holding them back? They lost to a Cory Schneider in this game who hadn’t won a game in a calendar year up until recently! I could rationalize the recent loss to Winnipeg as a tight game lost by inches. This one looked like a surrender. How is the team that led the whole league in November, however much that was obviously an aberration, coming out in a playoff race game like this? Something isn’t right in the room and apparently this is the only recourse for guys like me who don’t want to throw Jack Eichel and Rasmus Dahlin under the bus. It’s either there is something wrong in the room or we need to discuss our brightest stars not living up to potential. The former is the solution we opted for after last season’s utter shitshow. Botterill shipped Ryan O’Reilly out and if you’re decrying that trade now, you’re missing the forest for the trees. The latter option is too depressing to contemplate when we’re going on eight years without Sabres playoff hockey.

Is Jason Botterill going to do anything about this state of affairs? You know I’m not convinced the playoffs was ever the internal goal for this season. Every professional organization has the external goal which is fixed squarely on winning games, making the playoffs and winning a Stanley Cup. The internal goal is the real shit you get from the insiders like Friedman and McKenzie. We all pegged this team as a bubble team. Did Jason Botterill and the Front Office decide they were going to get Reinhart signed, then Skinner and make minor moves at the Trade Deadline and continue to build at the Draft and over the summer? The lack of movement at this awful moment seems to suggest that and the deadline a week from tomorrow stands to prove it. Yeah, Botts could make a splash and signal he wants this group to make the playoffs now. Frankly I’m desperate for that outcome to the point of not feeling the need to spell out exactly which trades I’m ok with and which ones I’m not. This ship looks to be going down right now but it isn’t below the waterline yet. And oh yes, I am past the point of bandying about around Phil Housley and his strategic decisions. We got our Scandella-less game and you see how well that went! I’m out of answers on the ice but the scarier part is that I am running out of answers in the Front Office now too. Was Housley’s comments about only having what the GM gave him to work with merry conservation starters over wings and Pearl Street? I’m not saying the GM needs to act in spite in response to those comments but what’s going on? What is going on? I really lead myself to believe we were in a hot new smart organization after the wild offseason last year and now I’m not so sure about that either. The jury is still out on that but in terms of the shot at a playoff spot I feel like the deliberations may be coming to an end.

But it isn’t over yet! Let’s get to our handsome ice soldiers in the locker room! What consolation do they have for us? Phil Housley said: “We’re still in this race.” I am not wasting my time dissecting the “we” and “in this race” right now with him. At this point we’re running about a 50/50 chance he’s completely lost the room morale wise. Us fans always make mountains out of mole hills but let’s look and listen to how the players felt. Sam Reinhart, visibly frustrated at being asked “…are you guys just about toast?” responded saying “we in the room don’t feel like we’re out of it at all.” It seems like that question came from media man Donald Trump warned you about Mike Harrington with the News, so I’ll let Samson off on that one. Zach Bogosian, okay yeah why not, let’s go to Zach Bogosian who responds to similar questioning about what makes him think this team can put together a few wins going forward here with: “It’s because of all the guys in this room here. I believe in them.” Okay, even if they’re losing faith in the coach if they can work together as a team that’s something, right? Fuck if I know. If their united there in the room, God bless them: I hope it results in more than just a festive golf trip in April. Captain Jack? I’m sure someone got words from him but I know he’s taking this hard so I’ll sit back and see if he’s going to hoist this group out of it. I won’t be grilling him about why he’s not scoring at the same clip he was in the middle of December. I’m sure he’s lifting twice as hard because of this slump. Three times as hard for the team itself.

There are no matchups over the next two weeks that inspire much of any confidence. If you are expecting to count potential W’s down the stretch here just trust me and don’t for your own mental health. I think we’re past that point now. These guys need to string 3 to 5 wins together now to even look like competitors for that last spot so take it easy now. Take solace in the fact that this less-than-hopeful calculus is happening after Valentine’s Day this season and not before Thanksgiving. There’s progress right there even if it’s not the advancement we wanted. Hey, the Rochester Americans are holding onto a division lead and stand to capture that title for the first time this decade. I’m enjoying that and you can look for this month’s Amerks Angle in the near future celebrating that. The Americans rough stretches last for three maybe four games. You can comfortably speculate about playoff matchups with them and if that’s what you’re looking for I recommend it over looking for rays of lights right now with the Sabres. Like, share and comment and the internet algorithms that curate our lives will cause us to meet again soon for that good time. In the meantime, I think we can take in trade deadline rumors with a not completely unrealistic hope that something may develop to change what we’re going through right now on this crazy roller coaster that is Sabres fandom. Let’s Go Buffalo.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. I can’t believe I got this done tonight. It’s better than starting a Monday off this way, eh?

[sankofaspeaks-blog]

A Letter to Our Youth

what's good my people? I'm hoping and praying that this letter reaches you and finds you and your loved ones in the best of health mentally and physically. this is my first post of the year so you know i had to make it the bomb because of all that has been going on. Trump the president. wow. its unreal but its about to get realer. now, i want this letter to be read by all from the ages of 9 to whatever. I called this one: A letter to the kids. ok. because my brother Shariff Amenhotep told me that he has some kids that he is trying to change their thoughts and wanted me to write something for them so i said ok that's what my first post is going to be on my new blog called: sankofaspeaks.tmblr.com. so go check it out. I'm now here when u want to read anything from me. livefromlockdown is always my first home so a shout out to my brother k.d. word. now here we go.

Date: Feb. 4, 2017 Title: A letter to the Kids..,. By: Al-Tariq Gumbs aka Killa Reek (now known as) King Sankofa Place: Yazoo City-Mississsippi. P.O.Box-5000 USP-Yazoo City Yazoo City, MS 31994

Peace to all of the people who is reading this post. i want you to have a seat and clear your mind because I'm about to talk to these kids and tell them about how no matter what your past or situation is, you are the sole controller of your destiny and even as adults sometimes we have to look back and remember where and what we came from so we can learn from those mistakes and not forget and the kids are the very best way to see what you were. so let's go help our kids. What's up young ones? this is Killa Reek. i don't know if yawl heard of me but i was once one of the baddest kids in Newark, N.j. Now let me tell you a lil bit about me. i was born in Newark, N.j. to a mother who was caught up in the drug life, using, saling, stealing, whatever. she was always a good mother. never abused us and truly cared but the streets got a hold of her like it did almost all of her kids. Me, i took to them with a different passion. my passion was from anger and pain of not truly having her there. i remember watching her do things that had me so angry because i always worshipped the ground she walked on. my father wasn't there until later on. and my anger towards him didn't come until later to. and it took me a long time to get over it. but during all of this i became so angry i took to the streets because it felt like my only outlet to a lot of pain and suffering. i went from taking money from other kids in k-marts and shop rights to stealing bikes, then to stealing cars an food to feed myself. then to saling drugs to robbery, then to jail time. i ended up in jail at the age of 15 1/2 facing 20 years if they waved me up. but ended up doing 2 1.2 years, during that time i never learned anything. was in there acting like i was the toughest youngster there. ask shariff he was there. we called ourselves wild ass juveniles. and any fights that was going on came from us most of the time. then when i came home i didnt know anything but what i used to know so i did what i used to do, back to the streets because my family was still in the streets and i felt that if they can't get it together there's no need for me to get it together either. so i went back to the streets. ended up back in jail seven months later. came home and my son was born. four months later i was back in jail for some things that could have me spend the rest of my life in jail. in jail i became a blood gang member and took to that lifestyle like anything i did in my life. i did it with a passion like no other. i did four years and came home and since i wasn't really learning to better myself only on how to fight and win my case i didn't grow up and learn from that. so when i got home i was right back at it. and two and half months later i was back in jail. and i haven't been home since. That was 15 years and four months ago. and in every sense i allowed what my family was doing and how my conditions were dictating my actions and thoughts. the anger i had for my mother and father and family structure gave me the fire i needed to survive in the streets. i never wanted to be in the streets but how can i fight this pressure by myself? this is how your feeling. you don't want to be in the streets, your just afraid of being left alone. of not having the things you think you should have and I'm here to tell you if your looking for that in the streets then you will not find it. you will find, drugs, anger, pain, liars, thieves, murders, cold nights, lonely nights, death, prison, time away from family and friends. and in some case loyalty, love, honor and respect. see people like to give you all the wrong because they think by scaring you it will get you to listen but i believe in telling all the facts and let you decide. of certain things will be omitted because of your age but for the most part i feel that if i explain it to you right and allow you to use your own mind to think about it then you will figure it out. see us adults think that we have to force our beliefs and feelings on yawl. and that's not right. and i stand on that. let me give you a example. say you have two doors to walk through and the note on the doors tell you that in this door, your life time will mostly be cut short by murder, jail, or a close friend and if you enter this door it'll be more pain than anything in this door. and in this door, yes you will have struggle but you will over come it and with each hurdle you will become stronger. and in time you will find your purpose. what door would you choose? see we are told that those streets isn't where you want to be but the thing is if we want to be there, we will be there, some of us are forced because of our situations. you just need to understand that with all of your pain and anger because your mother may be on drugs, your father may not be there, you may live in a foster home, you may be failing in school, you may not have as many friends as you think you should, whatever your going through you can't allow your situation to dictate your life. you have to be stronger than that pressure. you have to know that you want to be able to grow up and be something better than a person who has done nothing but hurt because you were hurt. you want to be better than that. you want to raise your kids and tell them how you went through this and that and that you made it and have them look at you like you just saved the world. right now you have to know that the adults may keep banging this stay away from the streets thing into your head and you are getting tired of it but you have to know that they aren't just saying it for their health. let me tell you how my day goes in here. i wake up every morning on a mattress that has my back hurting no matter how big one of these mattress are. I'm in a bunk bed on the bottom with another person on top. the room is small and shouldn't have two people in it let alone one. my bed is right next to a wall that stays cold no matter how hot it is out side. i can never stretch all the way out because between my bed and the wall is only room to lay down straight and not stretch. i have lost count on how many times i banged my big head on the wall. they say i left a few dents. lol but i didn't see any. lol then i have to either wait until he does what he needs to do or i have to do mines and get out of his way before the doors open. then when the doors open i have to make sure there is no tension in the air and no wants to kill someone. i have to make sure all my friends are in a good mood so they don't get me into something that may take me from my family and friends in one way or the other. i have to get on this computer and hear how my family, girlfriend, son, friends, lil homies and homegirls miss me. how i haven't no one in my family in almost 5 years. then i have to put myself in a good mood because i have to walk around these guys and give good energy because if i give off that vibe then maybe they will give it off to and the day would start off good. then i have to watch all the madness going on out there and pray none of my family gets caught up in its wave. then i have to wait to go and eat. eat what they feed me. leave when they tell me to leave. i have to then go back to the same tier and wait to be told to move around. this the gist of my day. and I'm telling you this because the other outcome of my life would have been just me in a pine box in a hole with a stone over it. that's it. those are my two choices in those streets. i don't have anything other choices in those streets. don't you want more choices? you could be a doctor, a lawyer, a president, a mayor, a teacher, a rapper, a singer, a dancer, a writer, a father, a mother, a boxer,a actor, actress, a good loyal friend and family member, you can be anything if you choose to live your life with no limits. in here i have a limit placed on me. so, the choice is yours is the moral of the story because we could talk until we are blue in the face but it'll ultimately come down to you and what you want to do with your life. i believe that you enjoy being able to go to the store. able to be with your boyfriend or girlfriend. watch TV and play games when you want. i know you enjoy those things. well in here and in the grave you can't do either. at least in here things will be taken from you and sometimes there is nothing you can do but if your dead, dead is dead. period. no do over's nothing. gone and if you think your the toughest and the baddest trust me there is someone out there tougher and badder. and they have places for you. lock down prisons and the grave. so don't think for a second your smarter then the rest of us because your just starting school of the hard knocks, we been in class. some are now teachers. how you can come to a class and tell the teacher how to teach or that he/she don't know what they are talking about? I'm not saying your not smart enough to understand that the things your doing is bad but to know the future is impossible but if you choose the streets then i can guarantee that those two outcomes will become a reality. i'll bet my life and freedom on it. so with that i leave it in your hands because it is your life. i leave the way i came with love for you and i respect you as the future of our world so i must bow to you and protect you, the problem is will you listen, so you can learn? what do you say we do this together? thank you for listening to me. peace to you and i wish you all the best. I'm here as a teacher and fighter for you and your unknown future.I'm King Sankofa and because i believe black love equals black power! but more better is all love equals, all power! The youth is the truth movement! is who i'm with! it's my new crew!!:)

[samarajournal]

Okay last time...

The thing that really bothers me with LP YouTubers rushing to defend Felix in poorly worded and misinformed responses is that they, along with a majority of their young fan base, do not know how successful activism really works. They do not know how social change is actually enacted, how civil rights has and is currently being fought for. But they are all quick to quote non violence, and everyone should love each other.  Or that we should be nice to our oppressors and have a dialogue with them. 

Let’s unpack that last notion right now. You see just from my personal experience, from my baby years of activism, if I talk to let’s say ten Trump supporters or KKK members, homophobic, or even biphobic individuals even if I talk calmly, politely providing specific examples with scholarly sources, I’ll be lucky if I get one individual to maybe sorta see my side of things. And even then there is no guarantee that they will actively work to dismantle that specific oppression system in the future. Why? Because ultimately, there is no incentive for the group at top of society (AKA white people, especially white straight cisgender males) to destroy a systems that supports and favors their survival and supremacy. If anything, dismantling this systems puts them at a disadvantage. To quote Jane Elloit:

“I was taught how to be racist at birth. I know how to be racist. I hate it.... I’m a racist. I was infected with racism at birth. I want to get over it. It us going to take me rest of my life to get over it, but I can do it, but I have to choose to do it.”

-Jane Elloit, Oprah Winfrey Show, 1992

The United States of America is a racist country. It was built, maintained, and thrived on racists actions and the oppression of a large portion of the population. And people that this country and the society was built for, white people, are taught and socialized to be racist. Racism, prejudice, and discrimination did not disappear with the Civil Right’s Act of 1965, the Stonewall Riots, or the election of former president Barack Obama. It hasn’t even really lessened, if anything hate crime has been on the rise since the 60s, it has only changed. I probably lost a lot of you in those last three sentences. You might feel angry, uncomfortable. Your probably writing sentences in your head to defend yourself. Good. Because confronting your inherent prejudice is not an easy task. Everyone is raised to develop biases, and we all have to fight every day of our lives to overcome them. You do that through your actions, constantly changing your mindsets, and constantly questioning every preconceived thought about people, society, cultures, ect. You will find fault in almost everything you see, you will begin to see stereotypes used in everything especially in the media, and in a lot of ways you won’t be able to guitlessly enjoy many of the things you use to.

Combating internal prejudices is a long, hard, and life long process. It is emotionally and mentally taxing, and you will be uncomfortable a number of times. Now back to my original point, acknowledging your privilege and prejudices is hard, and not everyone is frankly cut out for it. We as humans have evolved to actively avoid discomfort. So no matter how the message is delivered, people of a privileged class who have not have to think about their position and identity have absolutely no incentive or evolutionary drive to actually listen. 

An even just on a logical basis, if a majority of people are so willing to listen and for their minds to be changed. If Nazis, Neo-Nazis, and KKKs (all of which have been on the rise let me remind you) were so open minded, then why haven’t they. Why wasn’t Trevor Noah able to convince Tomi Lahren that BLM is not a terrorist group? Or why Yassmin Abdel-Mageid wasn’t able to persuade Jacqui Lambie away from her support of DJT’s muslim ban or enlighten her on what sharia law actually is? Or why does the comment section of this MTV Decoded video looks like this? If it’s like being in a class with a teacher you don’t like. You might hate them or the way they teach, but you better learn and pay attention if you want to pass the class. It shouldn’t matter how the message is delivered if the message is true. You should want to be a better, decent human, and me or others yelling at your shouldn’t really dissuade you if that were the case.

And quite simply there is a PLETHORA of resources: literature, scholarly research, speeches, think pieces, books, poems, you name it; some of which I listed in this post and can be easily found with a google search. Activists travel to college campuses all the time. They is literally no reason for anyone to go up to any marginalized person and ask them to educate them. NONE. So by that logic, a majority of people should be enlighten. They should understand the ins and outs of systematic oppression. They should be ‘woke’. But they’re not. I wonder why? No I don’t, because they don’t want to listen. And quite frankly I don’t care.

I don’t care what you think of me. I don’t care if you think if I’m abomination, call me a n*gger, think I’m inferior, ratchet, ghetto. All I care about if you are in a position of power to enact policy to enforce your prejudices, how to remove you from that place of power, and how fast you can run cause you will be catching these hands if you say this to my face.

So this brings me, finally, to my main point. What works. What causes change. Well children, there are a number of strategies that you can partake in to enact social change. One of the most popular forms is non violent protest. Is the best method? That’s debatable and quite honestly I don’t think so in certian instances but I digress. Non violent process can be effective when use correctly and without stop. The main power, which even Gandhi, utilized is a concept known as backfire, which is pretty succinctly described in Justice Ignited by Brian Martin. He describes it as “ an action that recoils against its originators. In a backfire, the outcome is not just worse than anticipated — it is negative, namely worse than having done nothing” . In his book he cites both the Rodney King Beatings and the Dili masscare, the latter of which is described in that same page.

“Although Indonesian troops occupying East Timor had committed many massacres in the 15 years before 1991, they received limited attention due to censorship. The Dili massacre, unlike earlier killings, was witnessed by western journalists and recorded in photos and video, and later broadcast internationally... The Dili massacre, rather than discouraging opposition to Indonesian rule over East Timor, instead triggered a massive expansion in international support for East Timor’s independence.”

Corporations, groups, businesses, and governments all have one thing in common: their image is everything and when backfire happens that image in irrevocably damaged. When this happens they trust, capitol, support, MONEY, ect. The is the goal of protest, it is put people of power in positions where they are damned if the do and damned if they don’t. In this case the best case scenario is to give into the prostestors demand or risk looking and brutal. That is what Ganhdi did with is Salt March, which you can find detailed here. 

 It is what Martin Luther King Jr. did. Although for a time he   try to change the hearts and minds of his oppressors, his main focus was uplifting his people, changing laws and policy, and making those laws were enforced. The Civil Rights Movements was the first instance of national civil unrest that was intentionally televised. The images of young Americans being hosed down, attacked by downs, killed, maimed, lynched seriously challenged America’s image as this morally superior, civilized country. And politicians knew it. And it was one of the majors factors that led to so many laws being changed during that era, and many of those unwillingly.

At the end of the day that is all we want. Minorities do not have time to worry about if our oppressors like us or see us as human. We know that answer. We know it all too well. We have bills to pay. Mouths to feed. And making sure our loved ones come home safe. ALL WE WANT IS EQUAL PROTECTION UNDER THE LAW AND THE DISMANTLE OF OPPRESSIVE SYSTEMS THROUGH POLICY CHANGE. That’s it. It would be nice if people saw me as a human being not in-spite of our differences but because of them. But at the end of the day it doesn’t matter. I don’t care. If at the end of day the person changing/writing the law is doing so begrudgingly and only because he doesn't want to seem racist, he is still doing it. And quite honestly, policy and law change is better done when the marganilazed are in power. History shows after law and policy in enacted the culture changes, for good or for worst.

Another strategy for social change is what ‘Punch a Nazi in the Face’basically does. It doesn’t have to be physical, but what this method entails is embarassing, blocking, and preventing problematic people from popularizing and enacting on their beliefs. I mentioned this before. But it is removing racists from political offices. It is making sure horrible people don’t have a platform to voice their opinions and gain support (looking at you CNN, Trevor Noah, and Bill Maher!). It is not fucking engaging them in debate! Basic human rights is not a topic up for debate. Inviting these prejudice ideologies to discourse is giving them the win. It grants them legitimacy. It tells them that you can disagree if people deserve to live or not. It is me saying ‘Climate change exists and their is a mountain of evidence to prove it’ and you saying ‘Well this person said that it was pretty cold last summer so....’. No! Sit down at the kids table and only come back when you have a substantial argument. 

Basically this method is barring prejudicial people are not unafraid to voice their beliefs. It is dragging them on the internet. It is getting racists fired for racist Facebook posts. It is completely and utterly ignoring them when they scream at the top of their lungs for attention. It making sure that they suffer social consequences for voicing their problematic beliefs, jokes, supporting stereotypes. And yes, it is punching Nazis in the face. For now this strategm in conjunctions with others seems to be working.

This is far from a comprehensive review on how to enact social change. But at least it points anyone of interested in the right directions. And I hope that it convinces others that talking, peace, love, and happinees are techiniques for a perfect world, rarely works, and are naive. I hope people stop wasting their time on trying to convince people that are never going to listen or change. I hope you uplift and empower those or are marginalized and vulnerable, instead to trying to convince the powerful that we deserve rights. We know we deserve rights, and we are going to get them when-either you agree or not.

[newyorktheater]

“Going high means unlocking the shackles of lies and mistrust with the only thing that can truly set us free: the cold hard truth…Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us.”

Below a transcript of Michelle Obama’s speech on Day 1 of the first ever virtual Democratic National Convention:

Good evening, everyone. It’s a hard time, and everyone’s feeling it in different ways. And I know a lot of folks are reluctant to tune into a political convention right now or to politics in general. Believe me, I get that. But I am here tonight because I love this country with all my heart, and it pains me to see so many people hurting.

I’ve met so many of you. I’ve heard your stories. And through you, I have seen this country’s promise. And thanks to so many who came before me, thanks to their toil and sweat and blood, I’ve been able to live that promise myself.

That’s the story of America. All those folks who sacrificed and overcame so much in their own times because they wanted something more, something better for their kids.

There’s a lot of beauty in that story. There’s a lot of pain in it, too, a lot of struggle and injustice and work left to do. And who we choose as our president in this election will determine whether or not we honor that struggle and chip away at that injustice and keep alive the very possibility of finishing that work.

I am one of a handful of people living today who have seen firsthand the immense weight and awesome power of the presidency. And let me once again tell you this: the job is hard. It requires clear-headed judgment, a mastery of complex and competing issues, a devotion to facts and history, a moral compass, and an ability to listen—and an abiding belief that each of the 330,000,000 lives in this country has meaning and worth.

A president’s words have the power to move markets. They can start wars or broker peace. They can summon our better angels or awaken our worst instincts. You simply cannot fake your way through this job.

As I’ve said before, being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are. Well, a presidential election can reveal who we are, too. And four years ago, too many people chose to believe that their votes didn’t matter. Maybe they were fed up. Maybe they thought the outcome wouldn’t be close. Maybe the barriers felt too steep. Whatever the reason, in the end, those choices sent someone to the Oval Office who lost the national popular vote by nearly 3,000,000 votes.

In one of the states that determined the outcome, the winning margin averaged out to just two votes per precinct—two votes. And we’ve all been living with the consequences.

When my husband left office with Joe Biden at his side, we had a record-breaking stretch of job creation. We’d secured the right to health care for 20,000,000 people. We were respected around the world, rallying our allies to confront climate change. And our leaders had worked hand-in-hand with scientists to help prevent an Ebola outbreak from becoming a global pandemic.

Four years later, the state of this nation is very different. More than 150,000 people have died, and our economy is in shambles because of a virus that this president downplayed for too long. It has left millions of people jobless. Too many have lost their health care; too many are struggling to take care of basic necessities like food and rent; too many communities have been left in the lurch to grapple with whether and how to open our schools safely. Internationally, we’ve turned our back, not just on agreements forged by my husband, but on alliances championed by presidents like Reagan and Eisenhower.

And here at home, as George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and a never-ending list of innocent people of color continue to be murdered, stating the simple fact that a Black life matters is still met with derision from the nation’s highest office.

Because whenever we look to this White House for some leadership or consolation or any semblance of steadiness, what we get instead is chaos, division, and a total and utter lack of empathy.

Empathy: that’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. The ability to walk in someone else’s shoes; the recognition that someone else’s experience has value, too. Most of us practice this without a second thought. If we see someone suffering or struggling, we don’t stand in judgment. We reach out because, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” It is not a hard concept to grasp. It’s what we teach our children.

And like so many of you, Barack and I have tried our best to instill in our girls a strong moral foundation to carry forward the values that our parents and grandparents poured into us. But right now, kids in this country are seeing what happens when we stop requiring empathy of one another. They’re looking around wondering if we’ve been lying to them this whole time about who we are and what we truly value.

They see people shouting in grocery stores, unwilling to wear a mask to keep us all safe. They see people calling the police on folks minding their own business just because of the color of their skin. They see an entitlement that says only certain people belong here, that greed is good, and winning is everything because as long as you come out on top, it doesn’t matter what happens to everyone else. And they see what happens when that lack of empathy is ginned up into outright disdain.

They see our leaders labeling fellow citizens enemies of the state while emboldening torch-bearing white supremacists. They watch in horror as children are torn from their families and thrown into cages, and pepper spray and rubber bullets are used on peaceful protestors for a photo-op.

Sadly, this is the America that is on display for the next generation. A nation that’s underperforming not simply on matters of policy but on matters of character. And that’s not just disappointing; it’s downright infuriating, because I know the goodness and the grace that is out there in households and neighborhoods all across this nation.

And I know that regardless of our race, age, religion, or politics, when we close out the noise and the fear and truly open our hearts, we know that what’s going on in this country is just not right. This is not who we want to be.

So what do we do now? What’s our strategy? Over the past four years, a lot of people have asked me, “When others are going so low, does going high still really work?” My answer: going high is the only thing that works, because when we go low, when we use those same tactics of degrading and dehumanizing others, we just become part of the ugly noise that’s drowning out everything else. We degrade ourselves. We degrade the very causes for which we fight.

But let’s be clear: going high does not mean putting on a smile and saying nice things when confronted by viciousness and cruelty. Going high means taking the harder path. It means scraping and clawing our way to that mountain top. Going high means standing fierce against hatred while remembering that we are one nation under God, and if we want to survive, we’ve got to find a way to live together and work together across our differences.

And going high means unlocking the shackles of lies and mistrust with the only thing that can truly set us free: the cold hard truth.

So let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can. Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is.

Now, I understand that my message won’t be heard by some people. We live in a nation that is deeply divided, and I am a Black woman speaking at the Democratic Convention. But enough of you know me by now. You know that I tell you exactly what I’m feeling. You know I hate politics. But you also know that I care about this nation. You know how much I care about all of our children.

So if you take one thing from my words tonight, it is this: if you think things cannot possibly get worse, trust me, they can; and they will if we don’t make a change in this election. If we have any hope of ending this chaos, we have got to vote for Joe Biden like our lives depend on it.

I know Joe. He is a profoundly decent man, guided by faith. He was a terrific vice president. He knows what it takes to rescue an economy, beat back a pandemic, and lead our country. And he listens. He will tell the truth and trust science. He will make smart plans and manage a good team. And he will govern as someone who’s lived a life that the rest of us can recognize.

When he was a kid, Joe’s father lost his job. When he was a young senator, Joe lost his wife and his baby daughter. And when he was vice president, he lost his beloved son. So Joe knows the anguish of sitting at a table with an empty chair, which is why he gives his time so freely to grieving parents. Joe knows what it’s like to struggle, which is why he gives his personal phone number to kids overcoming a stutter of their own.

His life is a testament to getting back up, and he is going to channel that same grit and passion to pick us all up, to help us heal and guide us forward.

Now, Joe is not perfect. And he’d be the first to tell you that. But there is no perfect candidate, no perfect president. And his ability to learn and grow—we find in that the kind of humility and maturity that so many of us yearn for right now. Because Joe Biden has served this nation his entire life without ever losing sight of who he is; but more than that, he has never lost sight of who we are, all of us.

Joe Biden wants all of our kids to go to a good school, see a doctor when they’re sick, live on a healthy planet. And he’s got plans to make all of that happen. Joe Biden wants all of our kids, no matter what they look like, to be able to walk out the door without worrying about being harassed or arrested or killed. He wants all of our kids to be able to go to a movie or a math class without being afraid of getting shot. He wants all our kids to grow up with leaders who won’t just serve themselves and their wealthy peers but will provide a safety net for people facing hard times.

And if we want a chance to pursue any of these goals, any of these most basic requirements for a functioning society, we have to vote for Joe Biden in numbers that cannot be ignored. Because right now, folks who know they cannot win fair and square at the ballot box are doing everything they can to stop us from voting. They’re closing down polling places in minority neighborhoods. They’re purging voter rolls. They’re sending people out to intimidate voters, and they’re lying about the security of our ballots. These tactics are not new.

But this is not the time to withhold our votes in protest or play games with candidates who have no chance of winning. We have got to vote like we did in 2008 and 2012. We’ve got to show up with the same level of passion and hope for Joe Biden. We’ve got to vote early, in person if we can. We’ve got to request our mail-in ballots right now, tonight, and send them back immediately and follow-up to make sure they’re received. And then, make sure our friends and families do the same.

We have got to grab our comfortable shoes, put on our masks, pack a brown bag dinner and maybe breakfast too, because we’ve got to be willing to stand in line all night if we have to.

Look, we have already sacrificed so much this year. So many of you are already going that extra mile. Even when you’re exhausted, you’re mustering up unimaginable courage to put on those scrubs and give our loved ones a fighting chance. Even when you’re anxious, you’re delivering those packages, stocking those shelves, and doing all that essential work so that all of us can keep moving forward.

Even when it all feels so overwhelming, working parents are somehow piecing it all together without child care. Teachers are getting creative so that our kids can still learn and grow. Our young people are desperately fighting to pursue their dreams.

And when the horrors of systemic racism shook our country and our consciences, millions of Americans of every age, every background rose up to march for each other, crying out for justice and progress.

This is who we still are: compassionate, resilient, decent people whose fortunes are bound up with one another. And it is well past time for our leaders to once again reflect our truth.

So, it is up to us to add our voices and our votes to the course of history, echoing heroes like John Lewis who said, “When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something.” That is the truest form of empathy: not just feeling, but doing; not just for ourselves or our kids, but for everyone, for all our kids.

And if we want to keep the possibility of progress alive in our time, if we want to be able to look our children in the eye after this election, we have got to reassert our place in American history. And we have got to do everything we can to elect my friend, Joe Biden, as the next president of the United States.

Thank you all. God bless.

  Michelle Obama 2020 Convention Speech Transcript: Still Going High When They Go Low "Going high means unlocking the shackles of lies and mistrust with the only thing that can truly set us free: the cold hard truth...Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country.

[nicholemhearn]

Winning Isn’t Everything

“You, sir, under historic scrutiny, were proven innocent.” Donald Trump to Brett Kavanaugh, Oct. 8, 2018

“The President addressed the comments back during the campaign. We feel strongly that the people of the country also addressed that when they elected Donald Trump president.” Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Donald Trump’s taped comments bragging about groping women, Dec. 7, 2017

“The White House response is that he’s not going to release his tax returns. We litigated this all through the election. People didn’t care. They voted for him.” Kellyanne Conway, Jan. 22, 2017

——

Not for the first time, and probably not for the last, the Trump administration is trying to persuade its audience of a deeply pernicious version of “might makes right:” that a political victory counts as moral vindication. The case at hand is the idea that now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation by the Senate somehow disproves the allegations of sexual assault against him. Trump was unusually explicit about this on Monday, but expect to hear variations of it from him, other members of his administration, and the talking-points-reciting apologists in Congress and elsewhere for a long time to come.

No one actually, consciously believes that a political victory can prove the victor innocent of charges that were under dispute at the time. In any dispute about whom to elect or appoint to a public office, many different issues are in play and the decision-makers (voters, senators, etc.) might decide that a particular charge is true, or probably true, and yet outweighed by other considerations. Or the decision-makers might think the charge is false and be wrong about that, since the election or the confirmation hearing wasn’t a criminal trial and didn’t involve the careful presentation of all the evidence. (And even a not-guilty verdict at a criminal trial doesn’t prove innocence; it only says that proof beyond a reasonable doubt hasn’t been provided to the satisfaction of these jurors and/or this judge.) Stated generally, there’s surely nothing controversial about any of this. Treating an election or a confirmation vote as proof of innocence is an updated version of the superstition associated with trial by combat: If I were guilty, the gods wouldn’t have let me win.

And yet the repeated use of this kind of might-makes-right argument by the Trump administration doesn’t strike their audience as jarringly absurd. It resonates, and lends itself to easy repetition. Why?

Part of the answer, of course, is simply that this is the kind of thing Trump does, and does well. Big, absurd lies have their own value as demonstrations of power. The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent has been emphasizing since Sean Spicer’s term-opening lies about inaugural crowd size that the administration relies on a strategy of clouding the existence of a shared reality based on shared facts (remember Conway’s “alternative facts” or Rudy Giuliani’s repeated variations on Pontius Pilate’s shrugging question, “What is truth?”), with the effect of solidifying the Republican base’s resistance to any evidence of wrongdoing. That such nonsense “triggers the libs” is a bonus.

But some nonsense works better than others, and this nonsense both rhymes with some truths and rests on a very widespread kind of mistaken belief.

Trial by combat was an absurd method for discovering the truth, except insofar as the participants believed in it and guilty parties therefore didn’t see it through. I have no view on how widespread such belief was, but in at least some eras it probably resulted in better-than-random outcomes: The innocent were more likely than the guilty to use it, and half the time or so they were therefore acquitted. But its social value probably survived the loss of the associated superstition, and that value was to settle the matter. The ability to reach a conclusion is a key virtue in a legal system; the endless spiral of the blood feud can be replaced with a procedure that people can coordinate around as an end point.

The prohibition on double jeopardy in criminal trials provides a modern kind of closure and conclusion. The important doctrine of res judicata does the same in civil trials, preventing the same dispute from getting refought over and over again by losing parties seeking out new courts. There’s a real value to these rules, and res judicata has been metaphorically extended beyond the courtroom with the increased adoption of the word “relitigate” in political contexts — always as something that one should not do.

The metaphorical extension has something to be said for it. Max Weber cautioned us against treating political disputes — including war — as an excuse to assign guilt or to wallow in old feuds. “Everything else is unworthy and will enact its own retribution… Every new document that comes to light after decades have passed will revive undignified quarrels and stir up all the hatred and anger once more…”

He wrote these words while the Treaty of Versailles was being negotiated, and their warning not to compound the injury of loss with the insult of punishment looks wise in that context. The end of the next World War, though, teaches us that this wisdom has limits, and sometimes guilt is very important to determine indeed. And if this is true for wars — which, like trials, must be allowed to really conclude — it’s that much more true for ordinary political life that just always goes on happening.

The inchoate idea that election results reveal some kind of truth that can’t be revisited finds explicit defense in Rousseau: The losers of a vote learn that they were mistaken even about what they themselves wanted. But it neither began nor ended with him; the saying vox populi, vox Dei is well over a thousand years old. And when we remember that ancient Greek democracies relied on lottery rather than election (which was considered the tool of aristocrats), and that introducing an element of chance has a traditional association with a moment of letting the gods decide for us, we can see something similar to the superstition of the trial by combat at work.

There is an upsurge of interest in selection by lottery in contemporary political theory. I don’t really know what to think about that overall, but the part of it that appeals to me is that we don’t think about random chance the way the ancients did. Maybe we’d have a harder time mistaking the outcome of a coin flip for the vox Dei.

What I hope is that we can instead learn to see elections, referenda, confirmations, and similar moments in politics as just moments: contingent, filled with accident and chance, settling one question for the moment — who will take office? — but not drawing a curtain over the disagreements that preceded it. In a particularly important passage of his essay “Realism and Moralism in Political Theory” the late Bernard Williams wrote:

“A very important reason for thinking in terms of the political is that a political decision — the conclusion of a political deliberation which brings all sorts of considerations, considerations of principle along with others, to one focus of decision — is that such a decision does not in itself announce that the other party was morally wrong or, indeed, wrong at all. What it immediately announces is that they have lost.” This is precisely the victor’s modesty that was absent in, for example, Trump’s remarks on Kavanaugh. The opponents of Kavanaugh’s confirmation have lost. And that’s all that we should say for sure. Does it follow that relitigation can continue forever in politics, that there can be no closure? Not quite. We’re never done arguing about the political past: What caused this era of economic growth or that of slowdown? Was the war entered into too slowly, teaching us the dangers of appeasement, or too rashly, teaching us the dangers of warmongering? What groups have suffered which injustices that call for remedies today? Those questions of historical interpretation are always with us in current politics, and should be.

But in the normal course of healthy politics, criminal charges shouldn’t hang over everyone’s head. The urge to criminalize ordinary political disagreement is another species of the toxic belief that the democratic people naturally forms a united whole, a belief that the Founders struggled with in the era of the Alien and Sedition Acts but gradually overcame with the development of permanent party competition. Such ordinary political disagreement should normally be forward-looking: what each party proposes to do, informed by historical judgments about what programs have worked well in the past.

The problem is that preventing the criminalization of ordinary political disagreement must not be a barrier to the prosecution of actual criminal activity, whether it be sexual assault or tax evasion or perjury or the obstruction of justice. Nor may it interfere with retrospective judgments of misconduct in office of the sort that rightly generate impeachments, such as violations of the emoluments clauses of the Constitution. The idea that ordinary politics does not include the threat of criminal prosecution rests on the background thought that ordinary politicians are not credibly chargeable with criminal activity or abuse of office for such aims as personal enrichment. Matters are necessarily different when when procedural victors may also be, in their personal capacities, guilty of crimes. In such cases the reason for provisional settlement in ordinary political disagreement doesn’t apply (we’re not criminalizing disagreement); neither does the reason for provisional settlement after a trial apply (the question at hand hasn’t ever been squarely addressed by a competent body; it hasn’t been litigated the first time.) The reasons for provisional settlement provided by either trials or ordinary political disagreement don’t apply

Of course, claims that elections or procedures have stood in the place of vox Dei are that much more absurd when elections are won through technically legitimate rules that nonetheless endorse the second-place candidate in terms of vox populi, or when confirmations are provided by senators who represent a much less than a popular majority of the country as a whole. I believe they are absurd in any case — a nomination by a popular-majority president followed by confirmation by a popular-majority Senate still would not stand for vox Dei and would not constitute proof of innocence —  but the absurdity is multiplied when what has taken place is really the equivalent of a series of coin tosses.

The boundaries to draw here are matters of judgment, not of bright-line rules. There is a genuine danger of procedural victors engaging in prosecutorial overreach to punish those who have only lost, and to create a veneer of criminal prosecutability to cover for it. But still, procedure is not substance, politics is not law or morality, and victory is not vindication. When the winners treat winning as res judicata, when the powerful proclaim that their gained-by-the-flip-of-a-coin power constitutes judgment from the heavens of their innocence, when they treat their might as making right, then we know we’re being lied to.

——

Jacob T. Levy is Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory and Director of the Yan P. Lin Centre for the Study of Freedom and Global Orders in the Ancient and Modern Worlds at McGill University; author of Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom and scholarly articles including, most recently,”Contra Politanism” and “Political Libertarianism;” and a Niskanen Center Senior Fellow and Advisory Board Member.

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from nicholemhearn digest https://niskanencenter.org/blog/winning-isnt-everything/

[exfrenchdorsl4p0a1]

Maxine Waters' Political Career Makes Her Uniquely Suited To Take On Donald Trump

Maxine Waters spends her weekends at home. For most people, this is not an unusual habit. But for Waters, it requires extra effort: Each Monday Congress has been in session over the past 26 years, she has embarked on a 2,300-mile commute from her home in Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., where she currently serves as one of the most powerful Democrats in the House of Representatives.

A pre-dawn, cross-country flight to head to work in D.C. is irritating business. Former staffers say the six-hour journey suits the 78-year-old congresswoman just about as well as you’d expect. Her 5 p.m. Monday meetings are notoriously abusive. Aides who have spent the weekend gathering Capitol Hill intelligence, studying the intricacies of securities law and trying to win new political allies report to the full staff in front of a one-woman firing squad.

“It’s definitely a situation that can be slightly intimidating,” said one former staffer, comparing the grillings to the Trump administration’s televised press conferences. “She interrupts, doesn’t let them finish, scolds them. These are people who are just trying to get her up to speed on what’s happening.”

Waters yells at staffers for things like making eye contact with other aides. She unceremoniously fires people who give presentations that don’t live up to her standards.

The scene, at first, might clash with the image of Waters that has taken off on the internet since the election of Donald Trump. The meme-ified image of “Auntie Maxine” ― a fearless, quirky black woman who may not be related to you, but whom you love and respect for her straight talk just the same ― has become a favorite of millennials and brought Waters’ Twitter account up to hundreds of thousands of followers. But, at a closer look, her staff meetings actually fit with her internet persona: Auntie Maxine, like many black women when it’s time to buckle down at work, isn’t about to play with you.

“There’s a genuineness,” said R. Eric Thomas, a columnist for Elle.com who has written several viral articles with headlines like “You Will Never, In Your Entire Life, Get The Best Of Maxine Waters.” 

“With Maxine, she’s talking like everyone you respect in your life talks, but whom you wouldn’t expect to be in Washington,” he said. “If my mom and my aunt were running Washington, everyone would straighten up and fly right. I think a lot of people feel that way.”

And Waters’ comments about Trump have fit that bill.

“I think that he is disrespectful of most people,” Waters told The Huffington Post. “He has no respect for other human beings. He lies, he cannot be trusted, I don’t know what it means to sit down with someone like that who you cannot believe one word that they say once you get up by talking to them. I have no trust and no faith in him whatsoever.”

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) said he helped coax Waters to come to Georgia for an upcoming event, given her overwhelming popularity in the black community. “She’s hard-edged, hard-nosed, hard-driving, firm in her beliefs, and she is an institution unto herself. African Americans adore her,” Johnson said.

Waters’ experience as a black woman in America gives the rage in her voice an added dose of authenticity. Waters has come about that anger honestly: Black people, particularly women, have generally been treated horribly throughout American history. Black men began serving as sheriffs, congressmen and senators as early as 1870, and black women often did a bulk of the work necessary to advance men into those positions and support them while in office. But it wasn’t until 1968 ― when Maxine Waters was 30 ― that Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to Congress.

When Trump or his surrogates take on Waters, as they have since she began speaking out against his policies, the attacks come with a barely sheathed racist edge. Fox News host Bill O’Reilly recently mocked her “James Brown wig,” saying he wouldn’t listen to her concerns about Trump’s politics because of it.

In a viral response, Waters made clear who she is. “I’m a strong black woman, and I cannot be intimidated,” she said. “I cannot be thought to be afraid of Bill O’Reilly or anybody. And I’d like to say to women out there everywhere: Don’t allow these right-wing talking heads, these dishonorable people, to intimidate you or scare you. Be who you are. Do what you do. And let us get on with discussing the real issues of this country.”

The O’Reillys of the world see Waters as nothing but an angry black woman. And she is, indeed, an angry black woman ― rightfully and unapologetically so.

“It’s not good advice to get in a fight with Maxine Waters,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, a former LA county supervisor who has known Waters for decades and who noted that O’Reilly apologized with uncharacteristic speed. “What’s the ‘Man of La Mancha’ quote? ‘Whether the stone hits the pitcher or the pitcher hits the stone, it’s going to be bad for the pitcher.’”  

Waters’ anger wards off rivals. It enhances her moral authority. And it comforts and amplifies her often equally angry constituents.

“She can sometimes be animated, and I think people might think that that is evidence of lack of control,” said Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), who has long served with Waters on the Financial Services Committee. “But it is not. It is quite calculated, and most of the time, it is very effective.”

*   *   *

Maxine Waters, one of 13 children, was born in 1938 in St. Louis, a city that was a capital of black culture and politics at the time. Waters’ high school yearbook predicted she’d become speaker of the House ― an impressively optimistic prediction, given that she graduated a decade before the Voting Rights Act mandated African Americans’ right to vote.

Waters started her family at a young age and had two children before moving west to LA and finding a gig as a service representative for Pacific Telephone, while working her way slowly toward a sociology degree. She later became a supervisor for a head start program in Watts, a black working-class neighborhood in South Los Angeles ― her first foray into professional public service.

One night in August 1965, cops pulled over an African-American motorist in Watts and beat him badly. Then, as now, police violence was a not-unheard-of occurrence. But there’s no telling when a single moment becomes a spark that lights a fire, and this one lit up Watts. The neighborhood erupted in protest, leading to what became known as the Watts Rebellion — or, to white America, the Watts Riots.

Following the rebellion, a small group of black politicians and organizers came together at a crucial meeting in Bakersfield in 1966. Waters, whose activism in the community was becoming increasingly high profile, was among them. From that meeting came a long-term, statewide wave of black politicians from California, focused on improving conditions for communities of color.

“Anybody who became ‘somebody’ was there,” James Richardson, a Sacramento Bee reporter who covered much of Waters’ early career, said of the Bakersfield summit. “They plotted over how to gain electoral power and it was a watershed moment that wasn’t really seen.”

Waters’ work in the community eventually led to a gig that would define her approach to politics the rest of her life: serving as a top aide to LA Councilman David Cunningham Jr. When she’s been asked since why she continues flying cross-country every single week, despite facing no political threat to her seat, she recalls what she learned as a chief deputy to Cunningham: the importance of constituent service. In 1976, Waters ran for and won a seat in the California State Assembly. She has been in elected office ever since.

“It’s as if she never left the public housing projects in Watts in all of her life,” said her longtime ally Willie Brown, a speaker of the Assembly who went on to become mayor of San Francisco.

*   *   *

Waters has been in political life long enough to see the Democratic Party transform several times over. She is, in many ways, a holdover from another time. But the world seems to be coming full circle. Today, nearly every Democrat identifies as “progressive,” but decades ago the word had a specific meaning and referred to a movement launched in opposition to urban machine politicians who relied on transactional politics and constituent service to consolidate power.

Progressives prioritized anti-corruption and the integrity of the political process. The penny-ante palm greasing of the city machine gave way to the sanitized, large-scale corruption of national politics by corporate money. With government watchdogs on the prowl, politicians lost the ability to bestow jobs and other benefits on supporters in the community. It was all well-intentioned, but as the power to better the community moved to the private sector and out of politicians’ hands, quality of life in the community steadily declined.

Waters is not a good-government progressive. She is an old-school liberal, one who believes that outcomes matter more than process. She prides herself on constituent service. And she often wins.

“It is hard to think of any single member of Congress who has done more than Maxine to protect the financial reforms and prevent another financial crisis,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). “Her work touches every family in America. She’s really been good.”

*   *   *

Waters’ keen sense of public opinion is as strong as that of any member of Congress. She has leaned right into the Auntie Maxine persona as yet another method of relating to constituents. At a private meeting of her House colleagues earlier this year, Democrats were debating the stunning level of grassroots energy around the country — and how it could be harnessed to regain power. Waters rose to address her colleagues, stressing the importance of learning the language the kids use today — and explained the meaning of the phrase “stay woke.” (The phrase originated as a way for black activists to remind each other of systemic inequality; it has since evolved to describe anybody who professes concern for social justice ― up to and including ride-share companies.)

Waters’ grassroots touch — combined with her grueling work ethic and endless frequent flyer miles — is what allowed Waters to know long before national groups, and before federal regulators, that big banks were engaging in rampant mortgage servicing fraud and foreclosure scams. It has helped her stay far ahead of the national curve on issues such as mass incarceration, the drug war and police brutality. And by sensing — and leaping to satiate — a tremendous hunger among the Democratic base to not only delegitimize and de-normalize Trump, but to actually impeach him, she’s fueled her latest star turn.

“Maxine is a grassroots person,” said Yaroslavsky, the former LA county supervisor. “She’s as comfortable in the district as she is in the committee. ... You learn to take care of the people who pay your salary. And sometimes she steps on toes doing that, but usually she takes the populist position because that’s what she thinks is her role.”

“Maxine was a tough person. You didn’t cross her. She could give a fiery speech on the floor and send your bill to the dumper. Some nicknamed her ‘Mad Max’ behind her back,” Richardson said of her state Assembly years. “She would represent [Assembly Speaker Willie Brown] in budget meetings, so everyone knew that Maxine was to be taken seriously because she was speaking for him. And for herself.”

Waters’ crowning achievement in the Assembly was a bill she co-authored with Brown, who’d also been at the Bakersfield meeting, and convinced Republican Gov. George Deukmejian to sign. It divested California’s mammoth pension system from South African interests in protest of apartheid. Convincing the governor was difficult, Brown reported, but Waters got to work, demonstrating an interest in issues that Deukmejian cared about, such as farming regulations in California’s Central Valley, coastline and water resources in Los Angeles. She was able to demonstrate her commitment to his issues enough to engender the goodwill necessary to receive his support, Brown said. It was in stark contrast to the image of the blustering demagogue, and it’s one colleagues said they’ve seen over and over in the years since. The coastal and farming policy insights she picked up in pursuit of Nelson Mandela’s freedom, indeed, would become handy as she helped shape a flood insurance bill 30 years later.

(Brown is selling himself a bit short, as he always played a major role. Richardson notes that the speaker effectively appealed to Deukmejian’s family history. The governor, who was of Armenian descent, lost family in the Armenian genocide.)

California blocked its huge pension fund from investing in South African interests in 1986. It was a watershed moment in the anti-apartheid movement, and Mandela was released in 1990. Brown said Mandela traveled to California during his first United States tour following his release to thank Waters for her part in freeing him. “Maxine’s history is replete with successes, but none greater than freeing Nelson Mandela,” Brown said.

That may sound like too much credit for a collective action, but Brown says Waters’ move set off a chain reaction ― as she hoped it would ― that led to his release. “Nelson Mandela was freed because Maxine Waters orchestrated a process in the legislature to divest our pension fund on the basis of apartheid,” Brown said. “This was quickly followed by Congress and other municipalities and it led clearly to the ultimate freedom of Nelson Mandela.”

Indeed, Waters’ dominance of the Assembly in the 1980s is hard to overstate. Nobody who saw the authority the diminutive young woman wielded in the chamber is surprised at what she has become today. “The things going on in California in the ‘80s make DC look like nothing,” Richardson said. “We’d go months without a government, everything shut down, over pensions and benefits for teachers and the poor.”

 Waters withstood all of that. Persisted, even, you could say.

“That’s her style. She will not be intimidated,” Richardson said, echoing language Waters used in response to O’Reilly’s recent racist attack on her.

Although Waters worked the inside game in the Assembly, she held on to her outsider status throughout the 1980s, twice going against the party establishment in backing Jesse Jackson’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. When he fell short, she floated the possibility that black voters should support a third party if Democrats remained unresponsive to their concerns. And so when she ran for Congress in 1990, the party endorsed her primary opponent ― but Waters won anyway.

She has been fighting established power ever since, and her natural impulse with Trump taking the White House this year was to charge right at him. Immediately after the election, the Democratic Party was caught in a debate over how to approach a Trump presidency. Would they try to work with him where possible, or resist his agenda across the board? Waters, who boycotted his inauguration, seems to see the answer as simple and has promised a full-blown rejection of Trump.

“As I said earlier to someone I was talking to,” Waters told HuffPost, “I became very offended by him during his campaign the way he mocked disabled journalists, the way he talked about grabbing women by their private parts ... the way he stalked Hillary Clinton at the debate that I attended in Missouri where he circled her as she was standing trying to give her petition on the issues. The way he has praised [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and talked about the great leader he was. And the way that he pushed back even on Bill O’Reilly on the Fox show when Bill O’Reilly said in so many words, ‘Why are you so supportive of Putin? He’s a killer.’ And he said, ‘so what,’ in so many words, ‘[it’s] the United States, people get killed here all the time’ or something like that.”

“I think that for the future, we have to deal with this administration and organizing to try and take back the House and the White House,” she continued.

Mikael Moore, Waters’ grandson who served as a longtime aide to her in Congress, put it succinctly: “She runs toward the fight.”

I never ever contemplated attending the inauguration or any activities associated w/ @realDonaldTrump. I wouldn't waste my time.

— Maxine Waters (@MaxineWaters) January 15, 2017

“She is operating no differently than she did prior to Trump’s arrival,” Brown said. “She generated just as much attention during the Bush years. [During Obama’s and Clinton’s terms] she had the great joy of not having to do that.”

During the 2016 election, Waters clashed with Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders when she backed Hillary Clinton in the primary instead. Some of her staffers were frustrated by Waters’ early enthusiasm for Clinton, whom they saw as much weaker on Waters’ signature issue of bank reform. When Sanders was invited to address the Democratic caucus in July 2016 — after the primary was effectively over, but while Sanders was continuing to campaign — some members of the Congressional Black Caucus, of which Waters is a member, heckled him.

The CBC has a long, fraught relationship with Wall Street, often allying with big banks for fundraising purposes (much like the rest of the party). And since 2013, Waters had been the banks’ chief adversary in leadership, warning members of the caucus that helping Wall Street could result in a lot of pain for their black constituents a few years down the line. But at the Sanders address, Waters gave her colleagues cover by taking on Sanders.

“Basically her question was, ‘Why do you keep talking about breaking up the banks when we already fixed this with Dodd-Frank?’” recalls one Democratic staffer who witnessed the confrontation.

This fed a narrative the Clinton campaign was trying to foster — Bernie was a dreamer who didn’t understand policy. Most members of Congress, of course, do not understand financial policy ― they defer to leaders on the Financial Services Committee. Here was the top Democrat on that committee saying Sanders didn’t get it. It was powerful. But Waters’ own staffers knew their boss was twisting the policy. “Too big to fail” is alive and well in American banking.

Dodd-Frank gave regulators the tools to fix the problem, but they haven’t used them, and Sanders wanted to force their hands. “It was pretty deflating,” one former Waters staffer says.

*   *   *

Waters combined her fierce nature with her constituent savvy after the 1992 LA riots, with a response that would come to define her career: She took a hard line with colleagues, but used a soft touch with her those who would vote for her.

In April 1992, communities across South Los Angeles, enraged by the acquittals of four white police officers in the beating of Rodney King, launched what locals still refer to as an uprising — known nationally as the LA riots.

In the wake of the chaos, Waters, who was then in her first term in Congress, showed up uninvited to a meeting President George H.W. Bush had called to discuss “urban problems,” according to a New York Times report.

“I’ve been out here trying to define these issues,” she told Speaker Thomas S. Foley. “I don’t intend to be excluded or dismissed. We have an awful lot to say.”

Back home, she struck a more poetic note, addressing constituents in a letter reprinted by the Los Angeles Times. In it, she employed a canny understanding of the zeitgeist and the language of the moment:

My dear children, my friends, my brothers, life is sometimes cold-blooded and rotten. And it seems nobody, nobody cares.

But there are the good times, the happy moments.

I’m talking about the special times when a baby is born and when gospel music sounds good on Sunday morning. When Cube is kickin’ and Public Enemy is runnin’ it. When peach cobbler and ice cream tastes too good, the down-home blues makes you sing and shout, and someone simply saying, ‘I love you’ makes you want to cry.

Her letter went on to condemn police brutality, predatory lending in communities of color, for-profit schools and a racist justice system. Save a few names, it could have been written today.

In 1994, Republicans won control of Congress and Waters immediately joined the resistance. When activists from the affordable housing group ACORN..

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2oKtPbP

[rtawngs20815]

Maxine Waters' Political Career Makes Her Uniquely Suited To Take On Donald Trump

Maxine Waters spends her weekends at home. For most people, this is not an unusual habit. But for Waters, it requires extra effort: Each Monday Congress has been in session over the past 26 years, she has embarked on a 2,300-mile commute from her home in Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., where she currently serves as one of the most powerful Democrats in the House of Representatives.

A pre-dawn, cross-country flight to head to work in D.C. is irritating business. Former staffers say the six-hour journey suits the 78-year-old congresswoman just about as well as you’d expect. Her 5 p.m. Monday meetings are notoriously abusive. Aides who have spent the weekend gathering Capitol Hill intelligence, studying the intricacies of securities law and trying to win new political allies report to the full staff in front of a one-woman firing squad.

“It’s definitely a situation that can be slightly intimidating,” said one former staffer, comparing the grillings to the Trump administration’s televised press conferences. “She interrupts, doesn’t let them finish, scolds them. These are people who are just trying to get her up to speed on what’s happening.”

Waters yells at staffers for things like making eye contact with other aides. She unceremoniously fires people who give presentations that don’t live up to her standards.

The scene, at first, might clash with the image of Waters that has taken off on the internet since the election of Donald Trump. The meme-ified image of “Auntie Maxine” ― a fearless, quirky black woman who may not be related to you, but whom you love and respect for her straight talk just the same ― has become a favorite of millennials and brought Waters’ Twitter account up to hundreds of thousands of followers. But, at a closer look, her staff meetings actually fit with her internet persona: Auntie Maxine, like many black women when it’s time to buckle down at work, isn’t about to play with you.

“There’s a genuineness,” said R. Eric Thomas, a columnist for Elle.com who has written several viral articles with headlines like “You Will Never, In Your Entire Life, Get The Best Of Maxine Waters.” 

“With Maxine, she’s talking like everyone you respect in your life talks, but whom you wouldn’t expect to be in Washington,” he said. “If my mom and my aunt were running Washington, everyone would straighten up and fly right. I think a lot of people feel that way.”

And Waters’ comments about Trump have fit that bill.

“I think that he is disrespectful of most people,” Waters told The Huffington Post. “He has no respect for other human beings. He lies, he cannot be trusted, I don’t know what it means to sit down with someone like that who you cannot believe one word that they say once you get up by talking to them. I have no trust and no faith in him whatsoever.”

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) said he helped coax Waters to come to Georgia for an upcoming event, given her overwhelming popularity in the black community. “She’s hard-edged, hard-nosed, hard-driving, firm in her beliefs, and she is an institution unto herself. African Americans adore her,” Johnson said.

Waters’ experience as a black woman in America gives the rage in her voice an added dose of authenticity. Waters has come about that anger honestly: Black people, particularly women, have generally been treated horribly throughout American history. Black men began serving as sheriffs, congressmen and senators as early as 1870, and black women often did a bulk of the work necessary to advance men into those positions and support them while in office. But it wasn’t until 1968 ― when Maxine Waters was 30 ― that Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to Congress.

When Trump or his surrogates take on Waters, as they have since she began speaking out against his policies, the attacks come with a barely sheathed racist edge. Fox News host Bill O’Reilly recently mocked her “James Brown wig,” saying he wouldn’t listen to her concerns about Trump’s politics because of it.

In a viral response, Waters made clear who she is. “I’m a strong black woman, and I cannot be intimidated,” she said. “I cannot be thought to be afraid of Bill O’Reilly or anybody. And I’d like to say to women out there everywhere: Don’t allow these right-wing talking heads, these dishonorable people, to intimidate you or scare you. Be who you are. Do what you do. And let us get on with discussing the real issues of this country.”

The O’Reillys of the world see Waters as nothing but an angry black woman. And she is, indeed, an angry black woman ― rightfully and unapologetically so.

“It’s not good advice to get in a fight with Maxine Waters,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, a former LA county supervisor who has known Waters for decades and who noted that O’Reilly apologized with uncharacteristic speed. “What’s the ‘Man of La Mancha’ quote? ‘Whether the stone hits the pitcher or the pitcher hits the stone, it’s going to be bad for the pitcher.’”  

Waters’ anger wards off rivals. It enhances her moral authority. And it comforts and amplifies her often equally angry constituents.

“She can sometimes be animated, and I think people might think that that is evidence of lack of control,” said Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), who has long served with Waters on the Financial Services Committee. “But it is not. It is quite calculated, and most of the time, it is very effective.”

*   *   *

Maxine Waters, one of 13 children, was born in 1938 in St. Louis, a city that was a capital of black culture and politics at the time. Waters’ high school yearbook predicted she’d become speaker of the House ― an impressively optimistic prediction, given that she graduated a decade before the Voting Rights Act mandated African Americans’ right to vote.

Waters started her family at a young age and had two children before moving west to LA and finding a gig as a service representative for Pacific Telephone, while working her way slowly toward a sociology degree. She later became a supervisor for a head start program in Watts, a black working-class neighborhood in South Los Angeles ― her first foray into professional public service.

One night in August 1965, cops pulled over an African-American motorist in Watts and beat him badly. Then, as now, police violence was a not-unheard-of occurrence. But there’s no telling when a single moment becomes a spark that lights a fire, and this one lit up Watts. The neighborhood erupted in protest, leading to what became known as the Watts Rebellion — or, to white America, the Watts Riots.

Following the rebellion, a small group of black politicians and organizers came together at a crucial meeting in Bakersfield in 1966. Waters, whose activism in the community was becoming increasingly high profile, was among them. From that meeting came a long-term, statewide wave of black politicians from California, focused on improving conditions for communities of color.

“Anybody who became ‘somebody’ was there,” James Richardson, a Sacramento Bee reporter who covered much of Waters’ early career, said of the Bakersfield summit. “They plotted over how to gain electoral power and it was a watershed moment that wasn’t really seen.”

Waters’ work in the community eventually led to a gig that would define her approach to politics the rest of her life: serving as a top aide to LA Councilman David Cunningham Jr. When she’s been asked since why she continues flying cross-country every single week, despite facing no political threat to her seat, she recalls what she learned as a chief deputy to Cunningham: the importance of constituent service. In 1976, Waters ran for and won a seat in the California State Assembly. She has been in elected office ever since.

“It’s as if she never left the public housing projects in Watts in all of her life,” said her longtime ally Willie Brown, a speaker of the Assembly who went on to become mayor of San Francisco.

*   *   *

Waters has been in political life long enough to see the Democratic Party transform several times over. She is, in many ways, a holdover from another time. But the world seems to be coming full circle. Today, nearly every Democrat identifies as “progressive,” but decades ago the word had a specific meaning and referred to a movement launched in opposition to urban machine politicians who relied on transactional politics and constituent service to consolidate power.

Progressives prioritized anti-corruption and the integrity of the political process. The penny-ante palm greasing of the city machine gave way to the sanitized, large-scale corruption of national politics by corporate money. With government watchdogs on the prowl, politicians lost the ability to bestow jobs and other benefits on supporters in the community. It was all well-intentioned, but as the power to better the community moved to the private sector and out of politicians’ hands, quality of life in the community steadily declined.

Waters is not a good-government progressive. She is an old-school liberal, one who believes that outcomes matter more than process. She prides herself on constituent service. And she often wins.

“It is hard to think of any single member of Congress who has done more than Maxine to protect the financial reforms and prevent another financial crisis,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). “Her work touches every family in America. She’s really been good.”

*   *   *

Waters’ keen sense of public opinion is as strong as that of any member of Congress. She has leaned right into the Auntie Maxine persona as yet another method of relating to constituents. At a private meeting of her House colleagues earlier this year, Democrats were debating the stunning level of grassroots energy around the country — and how it could be harnessed to regain power. Waters rose to address her colleagues, stressing the importance of learning the language the kids use today — and explained the meaning of the phrase “stay woke.” (The phrase originated as a way for black activists to remind each other of systemic inequality; it has since evolved to describe anybody who professes concern for social justice ― up to and including ride-share companies.)

Waters’ grassroots touch — combined with her grueling work ethic and endless frequent flyer miles — is what allowed Waters to know long before national groups, and before federal regulators, that big banks were engaging in rampant mortgage servicing fraud and foreclosure scams. It has helped her stay far ahead of the national curve on issues such as mass incarceration, the drug war and police brutality. And by sensing — and leaping to satiate — a tremendous hunger among the Democratic base to not only delegitimize and de-normalize Trump, but to actually impeach him, she’s fueled her latest star turn.

“Maxine is a grassroots person,” said Yaroslavsky, the former LA county supervisor. “She’s as comfortable in the district as she is in the committee. ... You learn to take care of the people who pay your salary. And sometimes she steps on toes doing that, but usually she takes the populist position because that’s what she thinks is her role.”

“Maxine was a tough person. You didn’t cross her. She could give a fiery speech on the floor and send your bill to the dumper. Some nicknamed her ‘Mad Max’ behind her back,” Richardson said of her state Assembly years. “She would represent [Assembly Speaker Willie Brown] in budget meetings, so everyone knew that Maxine was to be taken seriously because she was speaking for him. And for herself.”

Waters’ crowning achievement in the Assembly was a bill she co-authored with Brown, who’d also been at the Bakersfield meeting, and convinced Republican Gov. George Deukmejian to sign. It divested California’s mammoth pension system from South African interests in protest of apartheid. Convincing the governor was difficult, Brown reported, but Waters got to work, demonstrating an interest in issues that Deukmejian cared about, such as farming regulations in California’s Central Valley, coastline and water resources in Los Angeles. She was able to demonstrate her commitment to his issues enough to engender the goodwill necessary to receive his support, Brown said. It was in stark contrast to the image of the blustering demagogue, and it’s one colleagues said they’ve seen over and over in the years since. The coastal and farming policy insights she picked up in pursuit of Nelson Mandela’s freedom, indeed, would become handy as she helped shape a flood insurance bill 30 years later.

(Brown is selling himself a bit short, as he always played a major role. Richardson notes that the speaker effectively appealed to Deukmejian’s family history. The governor, who was of Armenian descent, lost family in the Armenian genocide.)

California blocked its huge pension fund from investing in South African interests in 1986. It was a watershed moment in the anti-apartheid movement, and Mandela was released in 1990. Brown said Mandela traveled to California during his first United States tour following his release to thank Waters for her part in freeing him. “Maxine’s history is replete with successes, but none greater than freeing Nelson Mandela,” Brown said.

That may sound like too much credit for a collective action, but Brown says Waters’ move set off a chain reaction ― as she hoped it would ― that led to his release. “Nelson Mandela was freed because Maxine Waters orchestrated a process in the legislature to divest our pension fund on the basis of apartheid,” Brown said. “This was quickly followed by Congress and other municipalities and it led clearly to the ultimate freedom of Nelson Mandela.”

Indeed, Waters’ dominance of the Assembly in the 1980s is hard to overstate. Nobody who saw the authority the diminutive young woman wielded in the chamber is surprised at what she has become today. “The things going on in California in the ‘80s make DC look like nothing,” Richardson said. “We’d go months without a government, everything shut down, over pensions and benefits for teachers and the poor.”

 Waters withstood all of that. Persisted, even, you could say.

“That’s her style. She will not be intimidated,” Richardson said, echoing language Waters used in response to O’Reilly’s recent racist attack on her.

Although Waters worked the inside game in the Assembly, she held on to her outsider status throughout the 1980s, twice going against the party establishment in backing Jesse Jackson’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. When he fell short, she floated the possibility that black voters should support a third party if Democrats remained unresponsive to their concerns. And so when she ran for Congress in 1990, the party endorsed her primary opponent ― but Waters won anyway.

She has been fighting established power ever since, and her natural impulse with Trump taking the White House this year was to charge right at him. Immediately after the election, the Democratic Party was caught in a debate over how to approach a Trump presidency. Would they try to work with him where possible, or resist his agenda across the board? Waters, who boycotted his inauguration, seems to see the answer as simple and has promised a full-blown rejection of Trump.

“As I said earlier to someone I was talking to,” Waters told HuffPost, “I became very offended by him during his campaign the way he mocked disabled journalists, the way he talked about grabbing women by their private parts ... the way he stalked Hillary Clinton at the debate that I attended in Missouri where he circled her as she was standing trying to give her petition on the issues. The way he has praised [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and talked about the great leader he was. And the way that he pushed back even on Bill O’Reilly on the Fox show when Bill O’Reilly said in so many words, ‘Why are you so supportive of Putin? He’s a killer.’ And he said, ‘so what,’ in so many words, ‘[it’s] the United States, people get killed here all the time’ or something like that.”

“I think that for the future, we have to deal with this administration and organizing to try and take back the House and the White House,” she continued.

Mikael Moore, Waters’ grandson who served as a longtime aide to her in Congress, put it succinctly: “She runs toward the fight.”

I never ever contemplated attending the inauguration or any activities associated w/ @realDonaldTrump. I wouldn't waste my time.

— Maxine Waters (@MaxineWaters) January 15, 2017

“She is operating no differently than she did prior to Trump’s arrival,” Brown said. “She generated just as much attention during the Bush years. [During Obama’s and Clinton’s terms] she had the great joy of not having to do that.”

During the 2016 election, Waters clashed with Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders when she backed Hillary Clinton in the primary instead. Some of her staffers were frustrated by Waters’ early enthusiasm for Clinton, whom they saw as much weaker on Waters’ signature issue of bank reform. When Sanders was invited to address the Democratic caucus in July 2016 — after the primary was effectively over, but while Sanders was continuing to campaign — some members of the Congressional Black Caucus, of which Waters is a member, heckled him.

The CBC has a long, fraught relationship with Wall Street, often allying with big banks for fundraising purposes (much like the rest of the party). And since 2013, Waters had been the banks’ chief adversary in leadership, warning members of the caucus that helping Wall Street could result in a lot of pain for their black constituents a few years down the line. But at the Sanders address, Waters gave her colleagues cover by taking on Sanders.

“Basically her question was, ‘Why do you keep talking about breaking up the banks when we already fixed this with Dodd-Frank?’” recalls one Democratic staffer who witnessed the confrontation.

This fed a narrative the Clinton campaign was trying to foster — Bernie was a dreamer who didn’t understand policy. Most members of Congress, of course, do not understand financial policy ― they defer to leaders on the Financial Services Committee. Here was the top Democrat on that committee saying Sanders didn’t get it. It was powerful. But Waters’ own staffers knew their boss was twisting the policy. “Too big to fail” is alive and well in American banking.

Dodd-Frank gave regulators the tools to fix the problem, but they haven’t used them, and Sanders wanted to force their hands. “It was pretty deflating,” one former Waters staffer says.

*   *   *

Waters combined her fierce nature with her constituent savvy after the 1992 LA riots, with a response that would come to define her career: She took a hard line with colleagues, but used a soft touch with her those who would vote for her.

In April 1992, communities across South Los Angeles, enraged by the acquittals of four white police officers in the beating of Rodney King, launched what locals still refer to as an uprising — known nationally as the LA riots.

In the wake of the chaos, Waters, who was then in her first term in Congress, showed up uninvited to a meeting President George H.W. Bush had called to discuss “urban problems,” according to a New York Times report.

“I’ve been out here trying to define these issues,” she told Speaker Thomas S. Foley. “I don’t intend to be excluded or dismissed. We have an awful lot to say.”

Back home, she struck a more poetic note, addressing constituents in a letter reprinted by the Los Angeles Times. In it, she employed a canny understanding of the zeitgeist and the language of the moment:

My dear children, my friends, my brothers, life is sometimes cold-blooded and rotten. And it seems nobody, nobody cares.

But there are the good times, the happy moments.

I’m talking about the special times when a baby is born and when gospel music sounds good on Sunday morning. When Cube is kickin’ and Public Enemy is runnin’ it. When peach cobbler and ice cream tastes too good, the down-home blues makes you sing and shout, and someone simply saying, ‘I love you’ makes you want to cry.

Her letter went on to condemn police brutality, predatory lending in communities of color, for-profit schools and a racist justice system. Save a few names, it could have been written today.

In 1994, Republicans won control of Congress and Waters immediately joined the resistance. When activists from the affordable housing group ACORN..

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2oKtPbP