#how hard is it to make a post about why opposing Trump is important without being condescending and offensive

[floppergostic]

I get the point they're trying to make, but posts calling being unsure and concerned about voting for someone who is currently committing genocide "having a tantrum" are not only grating but condescending and offensive to his victims. And why yes I'm also concerned about signalling to the rest of the world that Genocide Is Okay Actually, Even If You Do That Americams Will Just Vote You Right Back Into Office.

[greatwyrmgold]

I want to make it clear that I'm not shaming anyone for voting Democrat. I've always considered harm reduction a valid political goal, even when I debated about whether it's better to focus on that or trying to promote radical left-wing candidates.

Also, with that recent Supreme Court ruling declaring that the President can't be punished for anything illegal if the overwhelmingly conservative Supreme Court decides it's a valid official act, keeping Donald "Avoided direct culpability for the insurrection" Trump and his ilk out of office became a lot more important.

That said, I have absolutely zero faith that re-electing Biden is going to improve anything. For the past decade or so, the Democrats' response to Republicans doing whatever they like has been to—to paraphrase Ian Danskin—seize the moral high ground while the Republicans seize the Supreme Court.

They don't seem to have a plan for opposing reactionaries beyond "never lose an election," assuming they want to oppose reactionaries at all, an assumption not everyone is willing to make. And sure, there are worse strategies. Republicans can't do much without the White House, and the Democrats have only lost one presidential election since the Berlin Wall fell...if we go by the popular vote, anyways.

Bad news! Republicans have already taken enough offices to fuck with democracy. Even if we ignore how Republicans can sometimes obtain enough popular support to win the election fair and square, they are demonstrably capable of stacking the deck in their favor. This whole post started by bitching about how they seized the Supreme Court, for fuck's sake. And there's not much we can do about that! Even if all the conservatives on the bench dropped dead while Biden was in office, there's no reason to think that conservatives wouldn't fuck with the appointment process again.

Even if Biden wins the election—and if I was still a Christian I would be praying for that outcome with all the fervor I could muster—the Sword of Damocles is still hanging over our head. If nothing changes, Trump could win in 2028. Or someone worse than Trump. Or someone less bad than Trump, but bad in the same ways, and empowered by the Supreme Court's stamp of approval to do whatever it takes to shape the USA in his image. And why should I expect things to change? The writing has been on the wall since Trump's presidency, and it's had a spotlight on it since January 6th, 2021, and what has Biden done about it?

I don't like being a doomer, but it's hard to maintain any kind of hope for the future when the Supreme Court gave itself an Exonerate The President for Illegal Atrocities button it can spam as soon as a president it likes is in office. What would actually stop Trump from instituting a reign of terror to fuel his ego and greed? The conscience and progressive sentiments of the soldiers doing his bidding? There's no shortage of evidence that the US government can find enough soldiers obedient and callous enough to do any atrocities they want, plus some that they don't care about much one way or the other.

Just what the fuck can we do? Vote for blue no matter who? Fuck. I dunno about you, That strategy makes me blue. If just once we miss our cue, This whole country turns to poo.

[salvadorbonaparte]

(You don’t have to reply or anything in case you’d rather not publicly carry out this conversation BUT) the replies on your “people should try to seek more knowledge, especially on social media platforms like tumblr where Mis and disinformation can happen” post is driving me up the wall! I was kind of similar to those reply-ees at one point when confronted about US support of trump.

I argued that hey, while I vehemently oppose this you can’t really blame people (especially young people) brought up in a small little bubble without much education beyond essentially state-sponsored propaganda!

And my friend (not from the US) was like ok, well when DOES it become their responsibility. When do we start blaming people for being willing to post online and not fact check? When do we blame people for being hateful and stop letting ignorance absolve them of any responsibility?

And I really think that perspective ties hand in hand with what you said and a broader issue: people SHOULD seek self improvement and knowledge, and yes it IS exceedingly hard for people, especially those who don’t have access to any kind of quality education. BUT if you are posting and engaging with things online—you have access to the internet and you are able to read and Google etc—you have a responsibility to not spread misinformation. Like we all will do it inadvertently, but by god your first instinct when you see something you don’t know online should be to fact check it. We can put this into our curriculums for children but the fact is most of the internet is out of school, and needs to take this responsibility on themselves to not, idk, allow for a Donald trump type to win the White House or Brexit to happen, or any other number of horrible things that have occurred in whole or in part due to disinformation online

Sorry this was so long! You’re excellent!

Thank you for this ask. While I'm trying to be chill rn I find it very important to publish this because you're actually absolutely correct and you understand exactly what I meant.

Propaganda is incredibly effective when you're young. Parents and teachers are authority figures and children are like sponges eating up information, true or not, and I bet if you told an entire school class over and over again that the sky is green they'd end up believing it (I mean my little cousin believes in Santa which is not exactly harmful but a good example of how children work in this regard). And the reason I brought my great grandma into this is because when she went to school propaganda was everywhere and incredibly insidious. We read excerpts from school books from that time in history classes and there's even math problems discussing eugenics. Does that make it okay that people believed this ideology? No, of course not. But it explains why it is so difficult to get rid of these ideologies.

Propaganda explains why people are ignorant about things but it doesn't really excuse people choosing to continue being ignorant when they have the opportunity to grow out of it. No matter your education level or social class or other background you can always, especially now on the Internet, find ways to educate yourself, to fact check things, to take some responsibility.

No one is asking people to become experts on everything at once.

[movedkagen]

hey so before i get to working on replies again i do want to analyze gojo  ( what’s new )  and discuss some aspects of his healing process.     tbh i could never properly analyze the stages of thinking that gojo underwent during geto’s defection and afterwards in one post,   but i ranted about it a bit on discord and I’m hoping to get it to make sense here.

what namely sparked this analysis was me finding two different translations of the same panel,   which is a flashback from when gojo approaches megumi and takes him in.     at one point, megumi asks if he’ll have to become a sorcerer  ( in order to keep tsumiki happy ), and gojo said yes,   but the translation is wildly different depending on which you read.

GIGANTIC  ANALYSIS  OF  GOJO’S  GRIEF  POST  STAR  VESSEL  ARC / GETO’S  DEFECTION  UNDER  THE  CUT.

the first is close to the gojo we've been seeing all throughout this past arc,   the gojo that doesn't really care for people weaker than him:   it continues to frame gojo as this unreachable glass sealing,   this limitless individual who believes only the strongest will survive.

however,   the second has a far  different  meaning,   and is closer to the gojo we met initially:

the second is close to the gojo we see now,   who is faithful and even  hopeful  in the next generation's ability to surpass him.      the second translation is also really important not just to how gojo in general is characterized,   but also in the way that i perceive gojo's healing process and what him seeking out megumi meant to his character.

in order to take that apart,   i first have to address how i view the famous kfc breakup scene:   i  don’t  think  it  was  the  moment  gojo  and  geto  realized  they  had  opposing  ideals.      i  think,   purely  because  geto  didn’t  clue  him  into  why  he  felt  the  way  he  did,   gojo  was  forced  to  get  ideals  of  his  own.

gojo was in ethical limbo after geto left.     geto was,   according to gege,   gojo's moral compass.   and geto just walked off a ledge that he himself pulled gojo back from just the year before.   in essence,   it's not an opposition of ideals at all,   because honestly,   at that point, gojo doesn't  have  any ideals of his own.      call it coping,   call it neurodivergency,   call it the fact that this is the only type of life he ever expected to live having come from a powerful sorcerer clan,   but gojo never seemed to  care  much about the purpose in his work or what it meant to himself or others.     it was just something he did because he had the ability to,    and because at that point in time it was simply what sorcerers like him  did.

there's a BIT of delinquency before the star vessel arc,   but it's more in him wanting to do things HIS way because he's been under his family's control all his life before coming to tokyo tech.   however,   at the end of the day,   gojo completes his jobs and his tasks without much second thought to it.     he doesn’t question why he does jobs,   and almost treats them like a game to show his own strength.     geto even tries to convince him there's purpose in what they do and gojo laughs it off and says that sort of philosophy is for the weak and that he thinks it’s a load of self - righteous  crap.

fast forward to when geto leaves.     he's been following either the school or geto's lead in terms of  intent  for years now and he's been comfortable that way.   so when geto leaves,   gojo can’t understand why.   he says things like "you can't" and "that's crazy talk" but he has no other reasoning to support that:

he just says it because what geto is doing is so  outside  of what the normal duties are,   which is why geto pretty easily argues against it and gojo has no rebuttal.   geto very easily turns that entire argument upside down,   and shakes gojo’s  entire  sense  of  self  with  a  single  counter:

and gojo can’t understand it.     he can’t argue it.     gojo is less arguing because he opposes his ideals and more arguing that he can't break away from the system because  he's  never  thought  to  himself.     it's like a child refusing to accept something simply because they don't understand it,    like if they deny it entirely then it isn't real and can't bother them.

this is  also  why i think he made the motion to attack him;   he was never  going  to fight him,   it was more about doing whatever was possible / in his power to try and force geto to stay because he didn't want to accept he was leaving.   and if geto  had  stayed, gojo would have found a way to absolve him of his crimes because at the end of the day,   it  wasn't  that  he  was  opposed  to  geto's  mindset.      he  was  opposed  to  geto  leaving.

geto was the single person who  ever  made him think about his motives and stopped him from doing things he knew he was capable of.     with geto gone,    gojo is totally lost and he is not coping effectively.      he wouldn't empty out geto's room at all because that would mean he really left,   so he didn't. not for weeks, or months, or even a  year  after it happened.     he refused to do it and he threw a tantrum if anyone else tried to go near the room at all.     there was a surplus of rooms,   so that room was left alone almost like a grave for a long time.

during that intermediate period,   gojo wasn't even sure where he stood anymore.     he really questioned if he even  wanted  to be a sorcerer because if geto didn't do it anymore,   why  should  he?     he's never had compassion for non - shamans like geto did.     what was he doing it for at all,    then?    

gojo was at a crossroads where he was between being a weapon for the higher ups that he didn't even like to begin with or following someone he  did  care about and respect,   down a path that he knew to be wrong but realized he'd never once asked himself why.     

gojo was moody.     sometimes he'd be too reckless on jobs,   and other times he would rebel and outright refuse to go on missions because he was lashing out at the control he let them have over him.     he was a loose cannon and while he had yet to start actively being an enemy to the higher ups  ( at this time i hc he never really threatened them or demanded to know their every move ),   he was still powerful enough where they knew if they  couldn’t  get him under their control, they might lose everything  ------  and frankly, if geto  and  gojo defected,   they'd never be able to recover from that.   at that point if they had a way to kill him, i truly believe they would have and i'm sure there was at least an attempt,   which i have a separate headcanon for.

but healing has to start somewhere.     he clearly  does  have a shift in mentality where he  does  care about protecting those weaker than him,   and that's the first step.     it's gojo accepting he can't go geto's route because he doesn't hate the world like geto does.     he hates the people who oppress it.     the next step is accepting geto left,   which is hard.   after about 2 years he and shouko clean out geto's room and it's really hard on him,   it's a very emotional event and it's a very delayed acceptance that he is gone.

the final step in his decision to heal   ( heal being a strong word since the man never gets therapy and is clearly still traumatized )   is investigating those final words toji left him with,   that  "do what you want"  regarding his child.

i have said that i don't hc he went there to get megumi,   but he just went there to see him and see what the big deal was.      but then he found out about the deal and something compelled him to go and investigate,    and when he met megumi,    he didn't find toji's  "trump card"  or some secret weapon.     he found a child.     a child that was abandoned and destined to turn out like himself or geto or toji and he  very  impulsively decided to take him and tsumiki in and stop the deal entirely.

that  was the first time he opposed the higher ups for real.     that  was the first time he said  "i'm getting in the way of this and if you try and stop me i WILL attack you and kill you all"  and while he's an outsider with seemingly  nothing  to gain from that,   they have no choice but to let him because no one can stop him.    

that second translation of  "become strong enough to leave me behind"  speaks volumes about the way i perceive gojo's shift in perception over one of the hardest segments of his life ... how i view the process in which he went from not caring about the weak at all to becoming a man who "won't forgive anyone who takes another person's youth",    which would have happened to megumi and tsumiki if toji's deal went through.   

maybe he didn't understand protecting the weak out of a sense of nobility,   but protecting one's youth?     one's right to be happy?     he DOES get that.     and that is what guides him towards compassion.     it's a really good line in what i saw as the  "final step"  in him moving on from the events of the star vessel arc and moving towards becoming the person and teacher he is now, and of course his road there is neither linear nor perfect,   but this is his turning point.

[songtoyou]

Mr. Evans and the Congresswoman - Part 2

Paring: Chris Evans x Politician Reader

Rating: PG

Word Count: 1,858

Warnings: Political topics such as Biden, Harris, our current White House occupant and the current administration. 

Description:  It is the week of the DNC and Chris is once again interviewing you for A Starting Point. 

A/N: The DNC inspired me to write a second part for this story.  This is pure fiction as I do not know what Chris believes when it comes to politics and policy issues. This is a complete work of fiction.

I do not permit my work to be to be posted on any other site without my permission.

Note: Updated for grammar and punctuation edits.

"Hi, Congresswoman Y/L/N?" Chris Evans asked with a smile.

He was once again interviewing you for ASP. This time it was during the week of the Democratic National Convention. Chris and Mark had already talked to other politicians such as Senator Cory Booker and Representatives Ro Khanna and Alma Adams. You were the last elected official he was slated to interview to wrap up the DNC week.

Truthfully, Chris was happy to get the chance to talk with you again. Your previous interview for ASP was such a hit that it garnered a lot of attention from fans and the media. However, it was not because you helped bring more legitimacy and attention for ASP, but instead, Chris found himself genuinely admiring you.

"Hi," you said to Chris, giving a small wave through the Zoom screen. "I told you to call me by my first name."

"I know, but I still want to show respect," Chris responded with a teasing smile. Was he mildly flirting with the congresswoman? Yes, but he had no shame in doing so. "How are you? You are looking well."

"I am doing well. Thank you. How about you?"

"Same. Just trying to stay sane through everything. I'm actually currently in London. Working on a project." Chris admitted.

"Uh oh. You better be staying safe and following the right procedures and protocols," you lightly reprimanded him.

"My fans ratted me out. They found where I was just by the hotel door. Can you believe that? That is some FBI-level investigating, right there. I'd be impressed if I weren't also terrified of the lengths some of these fans will go to scout my location," Chris ranted. He did not understand why he was sharing this with you, but a part of him felt comfortable doing so.

"That…is quite impressive, I must say. Creepy. Scary. But impressive. You need to learn how to put in a Zoom background. It would solve all of your problems," you suggested to him.

"I would, but I'm technology deficient. Maybe I should look up some Zoom tutorials on how to do it. Give it a try."

"There is no try…only do," you advised cheekily.

"Now you're quoting Yoda. A woman after my own heart," Chris replied. He knew he needed to refocus. "So, as you can tell, Mark won't be joining us for this interview. I'm going to hit record if that is okay?"

"Okay. I'm ready when you are," you said.

When the record notification appeared on screen, Chris introduced you and immediately went into the first question.

"How do you think the DNC is going so far, particularly how this year is more of a virtual setting rather than in-person due to COVID-19?"

"Despite not having the big in-person celebration/gathering, I think the virtual setting is working very well. Better than I expected, actually. It gives off a more inclusive and intimate vibe to the DNC that we haven't felt before. I like the whole documentary approach and feel to it," you replied honestly.

"Were you excited that Joe Biden chose Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate?" asked Chris.

"Oh my God! I was so happy that Vice President Biden chose Senator Harris as his running mate. Like, my staff and I were beyond ecstatic. There is no one better to be Biden's running mate than Harris. She is amazing. Such an inspiration. I'm not going to lie, but I'm really excited for the debate between her and Pence."

That made Chris laugh. "Yeah, me too. Senator Harris really knows how to pull all the punches. Her nomination as VP has been met with overall positive response. The Trump Administration and Republican pundits appear to have a hard time painting a negative image of Harris. Why do you think Trump and Fox News are struggling to provide a negative image for her?"

"That is an excellent question. The public's overwhelming response to Harris' nomination is because 1.) she is the first black and south Asian woman to be on a major presidential ticket, and 2.) she is likable and charming. She has this exuberant energy that attracts people to her. You know, black and brown women and girls finally have someone that looks like them running for the second-highest office in the land. That is huge!

"I also have to wonder if people have smartened up in the last four years and won't tolerate the…hypocrisy, sexism, and misogyny…in this case misogynoir that is thrown towards Senator Harris from the media, political pundits, social media bots, etc. So, what we are seeing with Trump and Fox News struggling to attack her is because…well…they just aren't smart. All we have seen from Trump in his attacks against her is that she was mean to Kavanaugh when questioning him during his nomination process. But none of what Trump says holds up because we all know that smart, confident women intimidate him," you finished off your point.

"There is also the left…or more of the progressive left who are unhappy with Biden choosing Harris," Chris spoke up and continued, "They say she is a cop and put people away for weed. That she took kids away from parents when the kid didn't show up for school. That Harris is too conservative. What do you say to that?"

"All of that is…you know…. Senator Harris one of the most policy progressive senators we have. Her voting record is more progressive than Bernie Sanders. All people have to do is research her time as a district attorney and Attorney General for California to find out what she actually did concerning policy. But as we both know, people nowadays don't know how to critically think, which scares me. Progressives need to look at the overall big picture. This election in November is crucial. We are in the fight for our democracy, for our country, and for our lives…literally."

"I talk with my brother, Scott, all the time about certain political issues," mentioned Chris. "He is a tad more progressive than I am. I can admit that I tend to be more centrist. The district you represent is a mix of blue and red areas; how do you balance opposing views from your constituents?" 

You took in a deep breath before you answered. That was a loaded question. Representing a district that was not solely red, or blue could be difficult from time to time. You wanted to be respectful of the different viewpoints from constituents, but maintaining a neutral balance was hard and frustrating at times. 

"The majority of Americans are centrist/moderates. You need a balance of both liberal and conservative policies. Bipartisanship is crucially important when developing and passing laws. We are currently seeing an overt of one-sidedness while sabotaging the other side, which is detrimental to our country's growth. It is important to reach across the aisle to talk with those who may have opposing views than you. At the end of the day, people just want to feel that their concerns are heard and valued. We all want to feel that way. So, as an elected official, I make sure to take the time to talk with those in rural areas, along with urban areas, about their issues and concerns," you shared.

"Do you ever get any pushback from Trump supporters in the red areas?" Chris inquired.

"Well, it is important to note that not all residents in rural areas are Trump supporters. They just tend to keep that to themselves. I have actually talked to Trump supporters in blue areas. We can never and should never assume that one area has this type of person and vice versa. I learned that the hard way when I was campaigning for city council early in my career," you revealed to Chris with a small chuckle. "But overall, my constituents will talk with me and have been respectful. Some of the concerns that have been shared with me do fall under the QAnon conspiracy theories, which do disturb me, I'll be honest. Um…when being confronted with someone who has that extreme of ideals, it is important to remain calm and not to come off combative. Meaning that I have to remind myself that I am not quite dealing with a rational person. The only thing that I can do is calmly talk to the person and respond back with facts. Either they listen or brush me off and call me a radical lefty."

"The majority of people are good, like you said," Chris reminded you.

"That's right. It's a good mantra to live by. I think the American people are tired and have been tired for the past four years with this Administration. We need a sense of normalcy and decency. Compassion and empathy, which were two of the big themes during the DNC. This week was a nice reminder that we, as a country, can have that again."

"I agree. Very well said. You always end on a positive. I appreciate that. Thank you, Congresswoman Y/L/N, for taking the time to talk with me. You always provide great insight into the world of politics and your experience as an elected official," said Chris and ended the recording. "That was really great, Y/N. I know Mark, and I really appreciate you taken the time to do these interviews for ASP," Chris added.

"Oh, it is no problem. Like I said before, I like what you both are doing with the site. Are you happy with how everything turned out?" you asked him.

"Yeah… it's…it took a while to just get the website up and running. I know there is still work that needs to be done. Some areas need to be fixed, but with a project like this, we can adjust. There is more room for improvement and growth," Chris communicated to you.

You nodded in agreement. "Politics is a whole different ballgame. Not many people are willing to venture into the field. It can cause a lot of annoyances and headaches. So, hats off to you, my friend," you said, giving Chris a salute.

"Thank you. Well, I better let you go. I know you must have a million things on your plate."

"Ah yes, I have to go and save the United States Postal Service from corruption. Talk to you later, Chris. Take care," you waved goodbye and signed off.

Chris had to admit, he was in awe of you. There was something about you that fascinated him. None of the elected officials he and Mark talked to for ASP had the liveliness you had. You were not jaded or defeated by the system, at least not yet, since you were still considered a junior member of congress. Chris hoped that the energy and enthusiasm you had for politics and helping people would not diminish. When his Uncle Mike was still a congressman, he shared with Chris that D.C. can cause a lot of strain on a person's values and beliefs. "I have seen too many of my colleagues succumb to the pressures of dirty politics," Uncle Mike once said.

Chris just hoped that you would not succumb to those pressures.

[greekedtext]

if you live in America and are not on Twitter, you probably have a distorted view of what’s going on here right now

The situation is chaotic, so it’s hard to get an accurate picture. I’ve been sifting through... A LOT of different sources, checking who’s saying what, reviewing footage to see if it shows what I’m being told it shows.

Most protesters are peaceful. Most protesters are peaceful.

They turned out last week to protest racist violence and the fact that police engage in violence with impunity. The police are not out there for crowd control, public safety, or even protecting storefronts. They are counterprotesters demonstrating their perceived right to engage in violence with impunity.

Over the past days, I have watched so many videos from across the country showing over and over that the police are using unnecessary, indiscriminate violence to turn peaceful situations tense and tense situations violent. Their actions range from mild (shoving people with riot control shields) to concerning (spraying tear gas, an agent that causes coughing, in the midst of a pandemic that affects the respiratory system) to wanton (accelerating their SUVs into crowds) to gratuitously cruel (yanking down a teen’s face mask in order to pepper spray him right in the eyes even though he was simply standing there with his hands up).

Police have maced and tear gassed children at protests, like the nine year-old girl in Seattle. They’ve done the same to uninvolved bystanders who were just trying to walk home. In Salt Lake City, an old man at a bus stop couldn’t hobble away fast enough, so they knocked him down. In Minneapolis after curfew, troops fired rubber bullets / teargas at people who were on their own porches and balconies, because curfew. In another city, they stopped a civilian car, tased the people of color inside, and dragged them out for arrest on live news camera. Oh, also on live camera in Minneapolis they arrested a CNN correspondent and his crew, and many other journalists have been targeted with rubber bullets.

Rubber bullets sound kind of cute and cartoony, don’t they?

There’s no such thing as a non-lethal weapon, just less-lethal weapons. Rubber bullets are big hunks of metal jacketed in rubber. They’re supposed to be fired at the ground so that most of a bullet’s momentum can be harmlessly absorbed before it ricochets up and hits you in the legs. Used this way, they still bruise. They’re meant to hurt you enough to get you moving in the direction police want you to go. And you’d think that police are only supposed to use them when a crowd is already out of control or refusing to move, but that’s not what’s happening here.

Remember that CNN correspondent? His name is Omar Jimenez, and you can Google this: The police surrounded him and his crew. He very politely and deferentially asked them where they would like his crew to go. They didn’t respond despite Jimenez asking several times. Then they arrested them and led them away; all the while, Jimenez and the crew cooperated and calmly asked why they were being arrested, to which they initially received no answer. The police informed CNN that the arrest was made because Jimenez and his crew “refused to move.”

Surround. Give no directions, or make it impossible to follow directions. Arrest for failure to follow directions.

This is the same tactic that they’re using against crowds. They raise bridges or bring in barriers (”kettling”) to ensure protesters can’t leave. Then they arrest people for refusing to leave. Sometimes they fire teargas and/or rubber bullets at a crowd to drive them into a kettling situation. Sometimes they do it after the crowd is already kettled. The curfews? An excuse to arrest everybody on the street. Pay attention to when they’re announcing a curfew with little or no lead time. My city keeps claiming that essential workers are allowed to go to and from work even when a curfew is on, but would you bet cash money that no workers are getting swept up and arrested?

Journalists then report this as “protests turned violent” or “protesters clash with police.” Local authorities claim that the protesters are all or almost all outside agitators, from out of state, and journalists repeat this without (it seems) even asking themselves if that sounds plausible.

This is why Americans don’t know what’s going on.

(We should be skeptical of claims about outside agitators because it has a racist history. It is used to deny African-Americans of their agency in their own efforts to liberate themselves from white supremacy. On the other hand, to some unknown degree the protests are actually getting infiltrated by a) plainclothes LEOs possibly acting as agents provocateurs, b) white "allies” who mainly want to vandalize shit or start fights and don’t listen to the Black protesters who try to stop that crap, c) looters*, and d) white supremacists and other political opportunists**.)

All of the above is only a spoon-sized sample of what’s going on. You want more instances of police violence, you can find it. And all of these things have been happening for years, decades, generations. It’s not just Trump, though he certainly does bring out the worst in people, and his administration does like to loosen standards to enable the worst in people.

Yesterday morning (June 1, 2020), Trump called Putin. Then he called the governors of the states and basically told them to go to war against the American people. In the afternoon, he made a tough guy speech, calling himself the “law and order president,” promising he could fix it, promising to send the U.S. military into the states to establish order if the governors didn’t do it. While he was talking, you could hear people being teargassed and fired at with rubber bullets in the background. These were peaceful protesters in and near Lafayette Square. There was a water and medical station set up on the porch of St. John’s Episcopal church. The protesters and medics were driven away (again: with teargas, which causes coughing, in the middle of a pandemic) so that Trump could be seen posing in front of the church, holding up a Bible.

That church had no idea Trump was going to do that. Some of their clergy were at the medical station and got teargassed.

Please, please go read historian Heather Cox Richardson’s summary of yesterday, because there was more fuckery than I can summarize here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-1-2020

Law and order. “One law, one beautiful law.” I alone can fix it. We’ll use the military if the governors refuse to take action, “to protect the rights of law abiding Americans, including your second amendment rights.” Bible-waving. He fucking teargassed people for a photo-op.

In the middle of the night, the police herded hundreds of Washington, D.C. protesters into a residential neighborhood. The residents opened their doors for the protesters to take shelter. The police camped outside for hours, arresting anyone who came out. You may see accusations that protesters invaded people’s homes, but they didn’t -- they were invited. Some people are claiming police invaded people’s homes to get the protesters out, but I’m still looking for more information to substantiate that.

There are reliable reports that in addition to the National Guard and the regular military, ICE and CBP are being mobilized to “help.”

What they’ve done to D.C., they’re going to try to do in every city that has protests. What they’ve done to suspected undocumented immigrants, they’re going to try to do to all “rioters, looters, and antifa” -- which means anyone who opposes them.

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WHAT CAN WE DO?

1. Support #BlackLivesMatter. The bail funds have actually received a lot of money lately, which is great; if you can give, and if you know of a bail fund close to you that needs money for protesters, go ahead and give, but the next thing we need is money for mutual aid organizations, because in the next 5-21 days, a lot of people are going to get sick.

2. Look to experienced organizers for guidance. Follow African-American anti-racist activists, and if you’re white make sure you stay humble, don’t talk over them, listen to their ideas and directions, and do what they fucking say. If you’re white and you go out to protest, your job is to stay calm and be a human shield. Your whiteness can actually reduce police violence [note: it’s a risk -- you might be beaten or otherwise hurt and you could be arrested too]. If you start violence or vandalism, African-Americans are more likely to suffer for it.

3. There’s a lot to do if you can’t go out. Again, there’s a lot of organizing going on. For example, the Indivisibles are still organizing people to contact their elected representatives, and this is good and important work even though it may feel less direct than hitting the streets.

4. Make common cause with organizations that have beliefs different from yours. 

This takes a bit of discernment. Maybe you’re ready to swear you’ll never call the police again; maybe you want to end incarceration (we do have the largest imprisoned population in the world and the highest per-capita incarceration rate.) Or maybe you’re concerned about police brutality and racism in our justice system but you can’t imagine a world without policing and prisons. If you’re in the latter group, make sure that the policing reforms you support are in alignment with the general goal of reducing budgets for police departments and shrinking our prison system.

We need a big movement. That means you can’t refuse to work with other organizations just because they aren’t in complete lockstep with you.

3. Reblog posts like these with your own ideas / information / good sources of trustworthy information.

When you’re deciding which suggestions to follow and which posts to reblog, make sure the information is coming from someone who knows what they’re talking about. I’m not a veteran of many protests, so I can’t give you good advice about how to stay safe out there. I could probably (in an abundance of confidence) fake up something that sounds plausible based on what I’ve read. That kind of thing is dangerous. Don’t write shit that doesn’t either come from your experience or that you can’t back up with links to folks who really know.

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* "Looters.” Yeah, remember when Congress promised to help with the economic crisis and then decided all we need is a one-time $1200 check and mmmmaybe some extra unemployment insurance? And remember when the House passed some more bills to help, but Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said they weren’t going to be doing any more of that and the important thing for the Senate to do right now was confirm more of Trump’s nominees for federal judicial appointments? You say “looters,” I say, “desperate angry people.”

** We all need to learn how to recognize Boogaloos, Neo-Nazis, and other far-right extremists on sight, because journalists are not always aware of who they’re talking to.

Boogaloos: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/far-right-hawaiian-print-shirts-why-protesters-boogaloo-racist-a9539776.html

Anti-Defamation League’s Hate Symbols Database: https://www.adl.org/hate-symbols

[whitehotharlots]

Elizabeth Warren is a weak candidate

It’s hard to believe it’s already been a year.

Last October, prospective presidential candidate Liz Warren stopped by the ur-#Resistance podcast Pod Save America, a program in which several former Obama staffers named John talk about which Gryffindor house Trump administration members belong to, and helpfully explain why Andrew Cuomo is actually way more progressive than Cynthia Nixon. They talked about how Trump had taunted Senator Warren by referring to her as Pocahontas, a cruel play on her claim to Native American heritage. Why, they asked, don’t you try and shut that bully up? Why not take this test from our eugenicist friends at 23 and Me? 

“By golly,” said Liz. “That sounds like a real dandy of an idea!”

Now… this is actually stupider than the mainstream narrative suggests. Because even though it turned out Liz had a smaller percentage of Native American DNA than basically every other American white person, simply taking the test reified an offensive precedent of blood quantum, which is more or less universally rejected among actual Native Americans. Even if it turned out she was 50% Cherokee and had little feathers floating in her piss, the entire spectacle still would have made a mockery of the intense, material struggles faced by Native Americans to this day. 

Now, normally on this blog, I’d go on for several paragraphs about how I don’t actually care about Warren’s heritage (I don’t), how it’s more important to note that she and the rest of the Democratic establishment only care about Native issues to the extent to which they can exploit them, how her refusal to take a stand against DAPL was not just concerning but disgusting, how she can write as many “Pow Wow” recipes as she pleases but at the end of the day she’ll just be another shitty Democrat who expresses solidarity with oppressed people but does nothing to prevent their water being poisoned or their land befouled. But that’s jumping the gun. We’ll only have to worry about being gravely disappointed by Warren if she manages to beat Trump in general election. And I’m sorry to tell you, but she doesn’t have what it takes to get that done.

Warren is a goon. I’m sorry, but she is. She can’t answer softball questions about her recent political history without coming across like a teen who was just caught shoplifting and has been asked why there’s Playstation-sized bulge beneath his shirt. (“D-did I support gay marriage? Well, umm, jeeze louise who can remember something like that? Uhhh. There might be notes? Maybe? But there isn’t. So, I… I guess, well, who can say, really?”)

Warren isn’t nearly as a self-certain as Hillary was, and that’s a problem. It wouldn't be a problem if she actually were a leftist and actually did plan on proffering material solutions to the material problems facing nearly every American. But she’s not. Policy-wise, she is somewhat better than Hillary or Biden. That’s fine. But that’s not enough. She’s already spent too much time courting the Democratic establishment and their corporate base. She knows, therefore, that when a dying cancer patient asks her if she supports Medicare For All, that she has no choice but to lie to his face, that she’s prioritizing corporate cash over helping suffering people, but she lacks Hillary’s soulless cruelty and so she can’t simply laugh away the man’s concerns as naive bro stuff. This causes her to stutter and panic, which makes her (rightfully) appear disingenuous. 

Warren’s plans are likewise a degree or two more progressive than what was being offered by Hillary in 2016. But they’re not straightforward. They are cloaked in the maddening layers of equivocations, loopholes, and means testing that have infected every Democratic proposal since the early 90’s. This is the unavoidable consequence of party seeking to appease two diametrically opposed interests. You can’t satisfy the profligacy of capital while helping everyday people. It cannot be done. And so Democrats rely on Rube Goldberg-style labyrinth policies to obscure this fact, to make it look like they’re trying to help when actually they’re not, they are at best attempting to add a little sugar to the arsenic so that we won’t fight back so much when they pour it down our throats.

Obama could pull this off. We all knew Obama was lying in 2012, but he was appealing enough to make us rationalize away his lies. Same thing with Bill Clinton. If you’re not old enough to remember, check out this debate clip. The man looked like he was going to crawl through your TV and fuck you, and most of us were cool with that. Hillary lacked this appeal. Warren lacks it even moreso. And, yes, I guess this is essentially affective and subjective--just my opinion and whatfor. But any soberheaded person should be troubled by the fact that Warren’s campaign as already absorbed the most viscerally annoying people from the Hillary campaign, and is already aping HRC’s most repulsive and alienating tactics.  

These are people like Sady Doyle and Amanda Marcotte: neurotic, celibate scolds who engage with politics primarily as a way to actualize their petty grievances and insecurities. These people are incredibly unappealing to everyone who isn’t immediately inclined to like them, which is about 90% of the American electorate. And this unappealingness has nothing to do with their gender or their physical appearance. It’s because they are liars who are running a manifestly cynical grift, and they don’t have enough charm or intelligence to trick voters into thinking they’re doing something else.  They are electoral poison, and their outsize presence with the Democrat establishment is a big reason why the Democrats get their asses beat so consistently even though they are supported unanimously by the American media and cultural classes. 

Their grossness was encapsulated very succinctly yesterday, in the misadventures of Ms. Ashlee Preston. Preston is a large black trans woman who works as an official Warren campaign surrogate. She took to twitter to do what these people do: lie about Bernie Sanders and his supporters. They need to lie, because they are working for a candidate who is manifestly more regressive and less electable than him, but they still want to position themselves as the most radical in the field. So she lied. She said that Sanders hadn’t done anything to support gay rights since the 70’s, and that therefore it was actually good that Warren voted for Reagan twice during the AIDS crisis, because that means she grew into her present woke state.

This was all par for the course. Liars lie. Preston is paid to lie. So she lied. 

Also par for the course: Bernie supporters asking her what on earth she was talking about, and doing so politely. And then, once again par for the course, the liar claiming to have been viciously harassed by Bernie Bros, which is meant to validate the lies that warranted the response--which actually wasn’t a lie since it was just, like, sarcasm that y’all folx was too hateful to understand. 

This process has been going on pretty much non-stop since the middle of 2015. Anyone who pays cursory attention to it knows what’s happening, but the weird rules of political decorum make it so we all have to pretend to take it seriously. But yesterday there was a twist. Preston, apparently, had a bunch of semi-coherent tweets in which she said all kinds of neat stuff about Mexicans and Asians. These got posted. She reacted by saying she was kinda sorry but also still right and that it was harassment to bring up that stuff. And… that was it. Cancel Culture’s denizens applauded her apology (a courtesy often provided to those who are willing to lie about leftists). She is still employed by the Warren campaign. The incident wasn’t discussed in any mainstream news sources. The outrage over her old tweets was actually co-opted to smear those who unearthed them. 

The simple observation here was made by hundreds of people online: if this were a Sanders surrogate, they would have been fired immediately, the affair would have been discussed on cable news, and it would have been held up as proof that Sanders should drop out immediately. And when I say hundreds of people posted something along these lines, I might be understating this. The duplicity on display here is manifest to everyone who isn’t on the take. Everyone can see how rotten this is. There’s no question about it. No argument to be had. I’m sorry to say, but this kind of brazen cynicism does not go over well with most voters. It is, in fact, incredibly alienating. The people who claim universal healthcare is inherently racist and attempt to ruin people’s lives for using imprecise language can’t just turn around and demand immediate ablution for their own hateful acts. Or… I guess they can, since that’s what just happened. But they shouldn’t be able to. And the fact that she was able to, so completely and so easily, proves just how much of a shitty fucking grift this whole thing is. You don’t need to be a genius to realize that. You don’t even need to be well-read. You just need to pay a little attention and possess a little bit of self-respect. And that’s why Warren is going to lose.

[thelawyerthatwaspromised]

Hi! I'm a jonerys shipper but I find your theories very interesting. I wonder though, how will you feel about the show/Asoiaf if Political!Jon is debunked with season 8? Do you think it will change your opinion on Jon? And will you still ship Jonsa if he truly bent the knee because he is in love with Dany? I suppose I'm wondering how a post S8 Jonsa faction will look.

Hello! I really appreciate the question because it’s not a bad one: what if political!Jon isn’t a thing? First, I guess I’ll explain what I think has to be true for political!Jon to not be true.

Jon has to have total faith in Dany’s ruling ability; not just her capacity as a conqueror. Jon has to have thought it was acceptable to give away the Stark ancestral home without consulting anyone about it. Jon has to have actually been unable to lie to Cersei at the Dragonpit. Jon has to actually believe that the stuff he warned Dany about earlier in the season (about northerners not wanting to follow a southern ruler) is either not true anymore - or - at least not as important as the urgency to give away his crown before he could even talk to them about it.

All of these have terrible, terrible implications on Jon’s character.

Because it will mean a number of things…

1) It would mean that Jon really didn’t learn anything from Robb and Ned and their respective downfalls. That’s tragic in itself. When it comes to Robb, sure he made mistakes that cost him his life - but he was also way too young and thrust into a position he should never have been forced to undertake. The same is somewhat true for Jon, except he’s now been in leadership and he knows his family’s mistakes. 

I don’t want “aww shucks” stupid heroes. I don’t enjoy that type of storytelling. I don’t think it’s something I can suspend my disbelief while I’m watching if I actively think “he is a complete and total idiot” and he’s supposed to be un-ironically a hero of the story. Beyond that, I think that’s the opposite of the point of Jon’s arc, most especially in the books but also on the show. 

Robb and Ned are there to be cautionary tales for good people who are struggling with the intricacies of dangerous political games. Jon being as dopey as not learning anything from their decisions cheapens Robb’s story, it cheapens Ned’s story, and it makes Jon simply a lucky idiot if he somehow survives.

Jon is also taking a gigantic risk throwing all his eggs in Dany’s basket even if he thinks she’s the most wonderful person. He has no idea what she’s like as a ruler. He didn’t know anything about her other than she’s come to Westeros and has three dragons. He doesn’t know anything about her tenure in Essos - or that it concluded with her very responsibly have Daario Naharis overlooking the biggest political transition in thousands of years over there. No big deal.

In the best case scenario, Jon would have been detained on the island, been “asked” to bend the knee to Dany on multiple occasions, and agreed to go on a mission that he otherwise wouldn’t have gone on (since he asked Dany multiple times to come North without regard to Cersei’s intentions) and almost died on that mission only to have seen Dany take another big risk by flying her dragons up North to try to save him.

That’s not even close to enough information for Jon to know whether Dany is in any way a good ruler. Flying dragons and ruling are two different things. He took a huge gamble whether it’s political!Jon or not; but at least with political!Jon it was because he felt he HAD to do it to ensure her commitment. The alternative is Jon handing that over without any clue as to whether she can do the mundane things like administer land dispute decisions or responsibly manage the treasuries of Westeros. 

2)  It would mean that Jon governs and makes decisions based solely on his own emotional impulses which would really suck. It’s practically inexcusable for Jon to behave this way. It’s irresponsible as a ruler for him to just hand Dany power like he did at face value without talking to anyone from the North about it first. You could have made an argument to me that Jon could legitimately think Dany should rule the North and it might be a plausible explanation without making Jon a terrible rule IF Jon had actually waited until he returned North to tell the lords in person that he planned to give away the crown for her.

By not doing so, it tells me that either Jon is inconsiderate and impulsive enough to give away something as sacred as an entire country (on the macro) and his childhood home (on the micro level) - OR - there’s something else in play for why he felt it absolutely necessary to “bend the knee” with the timing as it occurred. If there’s some 3rd explanation that I haven’t thought of - I’d actually be willing to read it first before I decided whether it’s an idea willing to entertain.

I don’t talk politics thaaaat much on here, but the analogy really would be that, after being elected, Donald Trump literally believed he had the authority and moral high ground to hand his presidency over to Putin. Not only would everyone hate him, but he literally does not have the authority to act like that and would be removed from his position before it happened.

[to be clear Jon =/= Trump and Dany =/= Putin. It’s an analogy on political leaders behaving in another context. If you want, you can imagine the PM of Canada and the the King of Wakanda as substitutes behaving the same way.]

By going solo in that process - Jon almost guaranteed at the very least a gigantic amount of political turmoil in the North…but it’s something I think he’s aware of and has anticipated. If he hasn’t - he has no business ruling anything ever. 

There is no reasonable explanation for the timing of Jon bending the knee (before consulting with anyone in the North let alone his very own travel companion Davos) other than political!Jon and realizing the exact moment was right because Dany had just promised to help fight the Night King and Jon wanted to cement her commitment as much as he could.

3) It would mean that Jon genuinely valued everyone knowing openly that he planned to fight Cersei in the war after the Night King over actually getting the truce to allow them to fight the NK. If Jon did what he did at the Dragonpit - then he proved himself a liar when he said just before that “there is only one war that matters” because he immediately (again, in the absence of political!Jon) affirmed his position in the war for the Iron Throne at the expense of the war to save the Realm. 

Beyond the silliness of the idea that Jon Snow is incapable of lying to Cersei - it really is highlighted perfectly in Jon’s scene with Theon:

“You risked everything just to tell an enemy the truth.”

I mean…is telling the truth generally good? Yes.

Is telling the truth still good if….

SCENARIO: Bad Guy has their finger on the button to launch a nuclear weapon on a Sunday and they say, “oh wait, these nuclear codes were only good until Sunday and now it’s after midnight so it’s Monday!” 

Bad Guy is momentarily confused. “Or is it still Sunday? Say! You, Honest Fellow! If it’s really after 12:00 AM, I’ll have to leave here and try to grab more launch codes, is it really after midnight? I don’t have my watch.”

Honest Fellow: “I’d like to tell you it’s 12:04….but alas, I cannot. It is 11:58-…”

*KABOOM*

Well…you’d rightfully be displeased with Honest Fellow. But, then again, I think Jon Snow would hate this honest fellow as well. How stupid is that if it’s the same story we heard at face value? 

“I just can’t lie!” 

That’s irredeemably stupid. It KNOWINGLY put everyone at risk and actually is LUCKY that Cersei planned all along to accept a truce so she could have time to replenish her forces with the Golden Company. 

I’d recommend that the Honest Fellow version of Jon Snow climb up that 700 foot Wall he’s supposedly been working so hard to protect and fling himself off. They could call it Lord Commander’s Landing.

4) It would completely upend the part of Jon’s story where he has yearned to truly be a part of House Stark, his residual guilt about not being there to help Robb when the fighting began, and his close relationship with Sansa after their reunion. 

I could say plenty of shippy things about how the absence of political!Jon would completely ruin the relationship with Sansa that Jon’s built since they reunited but I don’t even have to go there. Simply as a close companion and trusted adviser and family member, Jon would have spat right in her face.

People seem to misinterpret Jon feeling like an outsider with the rest of the Starks with Jon never feeling welcome and never wanting to be a member of House Stark. The exact opposite is true. Jon’s detachment was due specifically to his wanting very much to be Jon Stark but feeling like it was an impossibility because of his birth. Jon loved the Starks. He wanted to be known as Ned’s son. He craved acceptance from Catelyn but never received it. It’s caused him to feel unworthy of that. 

When they found the direwolf pups, Jon wanted each Stark to have a wolf first. It was essentially a gift of the gods that Jon “heard” Ghost (who is famously silent) after his noble self-denial in favor of the trueborn Starks. 

Immediately after winning the BotB, Jon makes sure Sansa takes up residence in the Lord’s chambers. He didn’t do that because he doesn’t care. He cares very deeply. He wanted Sansa to know that she is House Stark’s true representative. He doesn’t feel like he deserves that, hence the sadness in his voice as he says “I’m not a Stark.” He reiterates that Sansa is the Lady of Winterfell. Being the Lord or Lady (as opposed to “acting” Lord or Lady) means that Sansa has hereditary rights over Winterfell - something they both fought like hell to re-take.

Now I’m supposed to believe that the guy who didn’t even want a simple puppy before the other Starks, who fought like hell to re-take Winterfell, who tried to desert the Night’s Watch once and arguably did a second time to fight for the Starks, who very intentionally placed Sansa as the head of House Stark rather than himself, who then passed to her specifically ruling authority over the North while he was away - THAT GUY - is now supposed to think it’s fine and necessary and RIGHT to give ruling authority and his crown over to a woman before she ever even stepped foot in the North.  (The Gift, which is the territory along the Wall is owned by the Night’s Watch independent of the North. Even if you count the top of Eastwatch as Dany stepping foot up there, she’s still not in the political North)

All of this, too, without ever talking to a single person about the decision beforehand. 

That’s a Jon Snow I cannot root for or reconcile with the rest of his story. In my mind, it’s character assassination.

It would make me wonder what the point was of Jon Snow even coming back from the dead.

Thank you for the ask. Hope this answers your question sufficiently. You’re welcome to ask more anytime. 

[canchewread]

Editor’s note: a few months ago on this blog, I wrote a short essay that used a quote from Matt Taibbi’s “Insane Clown President” as a vehicle to explore structural similarities between establishment power in the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, as it pertained to the ability to hold off an internal insurgency during their respective nomination processes. Today, I’d like to return to that argument and discuss why there are even more structural reasons to believe Bernie Sanders will eventually emerge as the Democratic candidate in 2020; but first, let’s look at our quote.

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A Brief Look at Listen Liberal:

Today’s quoted passage comes from the 2017 updated paperback edition of Thomas Frank’s “Listen Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People” - a book about which I have many complicated feelings and opinions.

First and foremost I should say that this book is quite frankly an excellent study of the how and why behind the US Democratic Party’s abandonment of the labor class and subsequent marriage to the far more affluent and influential professional class. As those of you who read my theory work are no doubt aware, this is a subject near and dear to my heart and as such I’m inclined to view Frank’s illuminating tome in a very favorable light.

As the author himself notes, “Listen, Liberal” is primarily an autopsy of the Democratic Party’s historic failure to reconnect with the labor class in the post Bush era, despite the existence of optimal conditions for success in doing so and the obvious tangible benefits that strategy would have presented. Frank also devotes multiple chapters to exposing how the idiosyncrasies, arrogant assumptions and open blind spots inherent to the rarely-discussed professional class - which now represents the “soul” of the Democratic Party (such as it is) - have acted as a driving force behind this failure. This identification and discussion of what Frank calls “the professional class” is to my knowledge, wholly unique in current mainstream literature and after reading “Listen, Liberal” I found it impossible to ignore the connections between the dominant beliefs of this professional class and the disastrous campaign run by Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US election.

On both of these fronts, it is unreasonable to regard this book as anything less than a smashing success and within the confines of those two discussions, this is quite literally “must read” material. Indeed, if America had anything resembling a “free and democratic press“ Frank would probably be lauded as a brilliant soothsayer who effectively predicted Clinton’s 2016 election loss in March of that year - before she’d even sew up the Democratic Party nomination.

So, what’s the problem? Fundamentally, Thomas Frank is himself a professional class liberal; albeit a reformist - but certainly not a radical. While this naturally makes his analysis of what’s wrong with the liberal professional class more incisive and accurate, it has the downside of clouding his understanding of the very working/labor class people he’s arguing the Dem Party needs to return to representing.

In fact, I’d go so far as to argue that the author’s very conception of class is rendered at least somewhat inaccurate by the sheer number of comfortable mainstream “truths” he adopts without question in “Listen, Liberal” - things like the standard (and incorrect) North American conception of “the middle class” or his belief and insistence that the Democratic Party has a long history of supporting and representing this same “middle class.”

Truthfully, the so-called “New Dealers” that came to power in the post-war, anticommunist era after the death of FDR (who himself represented a desperate compromise by elite liberals to retain power in the face of a labor class revolt) were just as married to capital and the professional class as the corporate, center-right party Frank derides today. Even if you ignore the Democratic Party’s violent, authoritarian attempts to shatter labor on behalf of American capital from the end of the Civil War, all the way up to Woodrow Wilson’s “Red Scare” - there is almost no historical record of the Party as a whole supporting labor over capital, with the exception of FDR’s four term Presidency. Whereas Frank identifies the betrayal of the working class as something that largely begun under Bill Clinton, any history student worth their salt will tell you that Truman’s post-war, anti-Communist crusade effectively destroyed organized labor in America and eventually ushered in the modern neoliberal era the author correctly identifies as being toxic for the labor class.

In short, while Frank does a magnificent job of identifying what’s wrong with the Democratic Party today - his ideas about how to address those problems are fundamentally rooted in a reformist fantasy that at some point in the past, the Democratic Party ever stood with labor when the working class didn’t have a knife at their throat. This is simply not accurate, and as such it distorts some of Frank’s theories about where we go from here; after all, if you can’t even properly identify the “labor class” it’s hard to see how you’re going to restore political power to them. This problem isn’t big enough to seriously impact the value of “Listen, Liberal” for those looking to understand the professional class or why the modern Democratic Party is completely out of touch, but it also makes it impossible to recommend the work to readers without noting that Frank’s reformist tendencies and nostalgia for a party that probably never existed, occasionally cause him to get the wrong answer. In the final analysis this makes “Listen, Liberal” an unquestionably important, if imperfect addition to “the discourse.”

Bernie, Biden and the 2020 Democratic Party Nomination

So, if Frank is right and the Democratic Party has not only abandoned the labor class, but actually no longer even has any real contact with the roughly eighty-nine percent of the population who ultimately comprise the labor class - what does this mean for the 2020 Democratic Party nomination contest currently being waged across America? What does it mean if the Democratic Party establishment has lost touch with most of its base? Good things, if you’re a fan of Vermont’s democratic socialist Senator, Bernie Sanders.

In my February article, we examined the eerie similarities between the quietly shattered mainstream Republican leadership in the wake of losing the 2012 election, and their counterparts in the Democratic Party after their shameful elevation of, and eventually defeat to, a reality TV host, billionaire fascist. The crux of my argument then was that the leadership of both parties had expended all of their political capital to force through an unpopular (and ultimately unsuccessful) candidate against the wishes of growing insurgent forces within their own base. When these candidates then failed to deliver victory, the power structure behind these failures was left shattered, and wholly inadequate for the purposes of opposing those same insurgent forces during the next election cycle.

In the case of the Republicans, we already know how that story ends because Trump was indeed propelled to the nomination by a revanchist, reactionary base he easily pried away from mainstream GOP candidates, simply by being a better fascist than anyone else up on the stage. Whether or not that effect will be repeated on the Democratic side of the equation with a wholly different type of insurgency, is a question we won’t be able to answer until the end of the 2020 nomination contest - but as you can read, I’m betting that answer is “yes.”

Now that the nomination race has more fully shaken out, let’s take a look at the structural similarities between the nomination races themselves. How does the 2016 GOP contest that ultimately served up Donald Trump resemble the crowded 2020 Dem nomination race and what can that tell us about who will eventually emerge to run against the swine emperor?     

The first and most obvious similarity between the two nomination contests is the sheer size of the field; the 2016 Republican nomination fight began as a seventeen candidate “clown car” battle while there are currently twenty-two officially declared candidates (Rolling Stone forgot to count Mike Gravel) for the 2020 Democratic Party nomination. Furthermore, although Biden’s supporters would undoubtedly deny it, there are a number of strong similarities between Palooka Joe and presumed 2016 Republican front-runner Jeb Bush - neither is a particularly strong campaigner, neither of them has met a banker or wealthy donor they didn’t love and both men advocate for policies and positions that are fundamentally out of step with their own party’s base. Finally of course, there’s the breakdown of the field into the various “lanes” that you would expect in each primary. In both cases, there is really only one viable insurgent candidate and very little tangible policy differences between the rest of the field - with apologies to Tulsi Gabbard (not viable) and Liz Warren (not insurgent enough.)

For perhaps the first time in his life, being left of and therefore outside of, the mainstream liberal orthodoxy is working in Bernie’s favor here - just as Trump’s open fascist tendencies worked to differentiate Herr Donald from the rest of the 2016  GOP field, and galvanize insurgent support around him for a revolt against the mainstream GOP leadership and their chosen candidate. More to the point however, the ace up Bernie’s sleeve is the fact that his policy platform and long-held public positions actually cleave far, far closer to those of the voting public than those of Joe Biden or the rest of the neoliberal passengers on the 2020 Dem Nomination fail-bus do.

Why does this matter? There’s a clue if you remember that when the 2016 GOP nomination began, the vast majority of the Republican establishment (and their candidates) were united in their opposition to Trump - mainstream “conservative media” in particular regarded him as a crude, hopeless outsider who would be dispatched quickly; even Fox News opposed Trump until it was clear he’d win the nomination for example. Of course, that’s not what happened is it? Why?

To put it simply, establishment Republicans either forgot about, or simply had no real connection anymore, to their own base. After a solid three decades of pushing the party further right, employing revanchist ideas to consolidate power and openly inviting extremist elements into the party, GOP leadership found itself facing down a voting base that agreed with and admired Trump’s open fascism, more than they agreed with anything Jeb Bush or the other fifteen candidates in the race had to offer. Republican primary voters wanted a crude, bigoted, anti-establishment candidate; they wanted to punish liberals and leftists, they did in fact like fascism, they did in fact like racism, etc. This in turn made Downmarket Mussolini largely unassailable because attacking the things that made Trump different from the rest of the field, also explicitly meant attacking the voting base and the ideas or values they shared with Trump!

Well, all of that took basically one primary contest for GOP mainstream candidates and their campaign advisors to figure out. Once they could no longer afford to attack Trump, the rest of the candidates predictably turned their attention on Jeb Bush (and each other) - resulting in a truly spectacular level of chaos, carnage and cannibalism. At various points the mainstream Republican leadership tried to rally the party around a single, “Trump-slayer” candidate (Bush, Rubio, Kasich and eventually Cruz) but because the party was no longer strong enough to force candidates out of the field, the result was always the same - the candidates who weren’t favored by the establishment at that moment would largely ignore Trump and tear down the presumed “unity” candidate, just to stay alive in the race.

Frankly, if you think about it from the perspective of the candidates, such behavior was perfectly rational - after all, attacking Trump not only brought the ire of the base, but also helped someone else get closer to the nomination; at that point you might as well just drop out unless you’re prepared to wrestle away the title of chosen unity candidate from whichever stiff the GOP establishment picked to rally behind at that time. The rest is as they say, “history.”

Turning our attention back to the 2020 Democratic Party nomination race, it’s impossible not to notice how similar the contest appears to the one that ultimately destroyed the RNC and surrendered control of the party to an insurgent candidate more in line with their own voting base; namely Donald Trump.

Although the issues that drive the democratic socialist movement behind Sanders are entirely different than the issues that drive Trump Nation, the dynamics of the struggle that propelled the swine emperor to victory are clearly being replicated on the Democratic side, with Bernie Sanders (and to a lesser degree, perhaps Elizabeth Warren.) Any policy or ideology based attack on Sanders, is effectively going to be an attack on the base - and in the meantime, every vote a candidate can snatch away from Sanders is going to help Joe Biden as much, or more, than any other candidate on the stage.

In light of all this, I believe there’s really only one more question you have to ask yourself - do you believe that the roughly nineteen other mainstream neoliberal candidates are in this race to make Creepy Uncle Joe Biden the President of the United States?

Before you answer I want you to think about who these people really are for a moment; Senators, members of Congress, government officials - many of whom have never lost an election in their entire lives. They each have their own donors, their own campaign war-chests, their own in-pocket media minions and supporters. These are people from the right families, and the right educational background who believe they have been overachieving their entire lives. They’re the success stories of capitalism, the best and the brightest; valedictorians, doctorate holders, egomaniacs who think they’re “the smartest people in the room” no matter what room they walk into.

Do you believe that these folks are going to lay down for the oldest, slowest, fattest antelope on the plains, in Palooka Joe - just because Tom f*cking Perez says so? If the Democratic Party establishment actually had the power and influence necessary to force them out of the race to prop-up an anti-Sanders coalition, don’t you think it would have happened already? The polls have pointed to a Biden versus Sanders race for months and months now, with no variation whatsoever on that front - shouldn’t neoliberals be dropping out and supporting Biden already if there is to be a united anti-Sanders resistance from the party?

When the rubber hits the road, do you sincerely think the other nineteen candidates are going to help the Democratic Party take out Bernie, even if it helps Joe Biden get further out in front of the rest of the pack?

Yeah, neither do I.

All of this is actually kind of ironic because the Democratic Party establishment has spent the past three years constantly attacking Bernie by saying he’s like Trump. This is of course balderdash; Sanders is nothing like Downmarket Mussolini and even ignoring the vast gap in their stated ideologies, their campaign styles aren’t even remotely similar either. But in the wake of their disastrous failure in the 2016 election, the Democratic Party establishment has found itself in absolutely the same position their Republican brethren faced in the wake of their 2012 loss with Mitt Romney. That is the real similarity, and in the end I believe that’s why Bernie Sanders will win the 2020 Democratic Party nomination.

That is, unless they shoot him.

- nina illingworth

[freedom-of-fanfic]

Hi, I have a question! What exactly would intersectional feminism look like? I ask because I see a lot of lip service but not a lot of action, and I'd like to know what I can actually do to help out.

good question.

first I want to point you to the roots of intersectional feminism as an idea, theory, and practice: a theory of feminism specifically about the experiences of Black women in the US. 

While the theory of being intersectional with your feminism is practicable/applicable in terms of any intersection of negative effects of patriarchy & other types of marginalization, the specific conceptualization of intersectional feminism was developed by Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw in response to observing & experiencing the intersection of anti-black racism and misogyny and how that changed the experience with both. In her words: “The basic term came out of a case where I was looking at black women who were being discriminated against, not just as black people and not just as women, but as black women.” (x) That is: it’s not as simple as experiencing both anti-black racism and misogyny: where they intersect, anti-black racism & misogyny compound, forming a new, specific type of oppression that’s unique from each of its parts. a form of oppression only experienced by/inflicted on black women (and sometimes inflicted on those incorrectly perceived as black women).

so I’d check out what she has to say on it before anything I have to say on it. And on that note:

Here’s Professor Crenshaw giving a TED talk about intersectional feminism

Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color by Professor Crenshaw

An interview with Professor Crenshaw contextualizing violence against Black communities (women particularly) & defending against that violence

In building her theory of intersections of oppression, Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term ‘intersectionality’ as a holistic look at how a form of systemic marginalization hurts any one person. and in this way, intersectionality in our feminism is applicable to other intersections of hurt. For example: a burka-wearing person in a wheelchair experiences marginalization in a way that only another burka-wearing person in a wheelchair could, and demanding/advocating better treatment, respect, and recognition for people who wear burkas and people who use wheelchairs at the same time is going to do good for all burka-wearing people who regularly use wheelchairs.

What that ‘looks like’ is going to really depend on the situation, imho, and I think it’s different on a personal vs macro level. my (very rough, very simplified) take on how to practice intersectionality in your feminism is:

on an individual level: 

setting aside your assumptions or judgement about a person’s* situation, lifestyle, and experiences - particularly in places where they are ‘less’ accommodated or consideredat a societal scale than you (or also unaccommodated/unconsidered at a societal scale, but in a different way than you are.

listening closely to what a person says about themselves: what they experience, what they already have, and what (if anything) they request from you.

acting in accordance with what that person’s wants & requests rather than in accordance with what you think that person wants or needs.

respecting others as individuals by drawing on experience and education to inform your responses to them, but always remembering that previous information is a guideline, not a rulebook. 

This example by @star-anise of how intersectionality would have made the work at a women’s shelter much more effective is, imho, a good example of what intersectional feminism would target if put into practice at an individual level.

on a broad level:

particularly in areas where society treats you as ‘default’**, and therefore ‘normal’, consistently make an effort to be aware of your trained, subconscious assumptions about other people who deviate from the ‘default’.

particularly in situations where society treats you as ‘default’, and therefore you rarely encounter difficulties or discrimination in your daily life, consistently make an effort to be sensitive to how you may not notice inconveniences or outright harm other people experience in the same situations.

make a specific effort to broaden your sources of information by drawing on work from people of many demographics, experiences, and educational backgrounds. listen with particular care to people whose voices are usually ignored or drowned out - frequently people who are marginalized / marginalized in more than one way.

make a specific, ongoing effort to promote and signal boost the voices of people who have traditionally been ignored, pushed to the side, or ‘spoken over’ - frequently people who are marginalized / marginalized in more than one way.

(at the same time: don’t expect any one marginalized person to be a ‘spokesperson’ for all other similarly marginalized people. treat individuals as individuals. recognize that the experiences and opinions of any two people can be wildly different, even if their demographics are the same.)

take appropriate action on behalf of people in the ways you are asked to by those people, as opposed to taking action based on what you think is best for them.

when it’s appropriate***, help teach others. it can be hard to balance this, imho, between not speaking over other people who have disadvantages you don’t and also not demanding that disadvantaged people constantly educate everyone else about their difficulties, but I think it’s important.

recognize that inaction benefits/perpetuates the status quo, which is in favor of the current ‘default’ and hurts anyone who isn’t ‘default’. 

on a political level: 

where you can, use your privilege (or the intersection of privilege & lack thereof!) to protect others who don’t share your privilege. take action you’re safe to take on behalf of people who wouldn’t be safe to take that same action.

vote for people who pledge to protect & improve life for people in all kinds of disadvantaged situations. Make voting for those people a priority.

attend or support protests on behalf of people who have disadvantages you don’t have.

make donations to advocacy groups made up of the people they represent.

volunteer in fundraising, helping, supporting, etc people who have different disadvantages than you.

I’m sure there’s lots of stuff I didn’t mention that people can think of. but the long and short of it is: respect other people. listen to them. act in their best interest - not your assumption of what would be their best interest.

here’s some more links to stuff I’ve read about this & that might give you more food for thought:

what is intersectional feminism? in USAToday

academic study of intersectional feminism from a student of Denison

video about intersectional feminism on Braless

intersectional feminism vs white feminism in the Chicago Tribune

notes below the cut.

I used a lot of vague language about ‘marginalization other people have that you don’t’ in this post because that goes a lot of ways, and none of those experiences are necessarily comparable as ‘better’ or ‘worse’. they are each unique, though, and each person experiences them uniquely. that’s why the emphasis of intersectional feminism falls on listening to marginalized people, promoting their voices to others, and acting according to what they are saying rather than according to your own wishes or beliefs.

*I used ‘person’ instead of ‘woman’ because there’s a huge variety of people who might be in a situation where they are perceived as a woman or treated as a woman while not being a woman, or treated or perceived as a man while being a woman, and there’s nonbinary people and intersex people and just … a lot being covered here. I feel ‘person’ is insufficient to the meaning but I don’t know what else would be appropriately inclusive and quick.

**in america, some examples of the ‘default’, where deviation (especially in more than one way) creates disadvantages, oppression, and violence: white, male, cissex, perisex, straight & heteronormative, able-bodied, mentally healthy, of average intelligence, neurotypical, monogamous, protestant Christian/agnostic/’rationalist’, English as first/only language, etc.

***’where appropriate’ - imho: this is wherever the marginalized person speaking on their own behalf a) asks you to do it, b) the marginalized person would be endangered (but someone else - you - aren’t), or c) a place where the marginalized person isn’t and/or won’t be respected in speaking for themselves. 

for instance: a member of my family voted for Trump. He wouldn’t listen to me about Trump being a rapist & why that’s a reason to distrust him: as a perceived woman, he thought I was speaking based on my own biases.  but another cis male member of the family was able to make that family member understand the seriousness and horror I feel about Trump’s treatment of women. (Trump voter has since apologized to me, but it first needed to come from someone he respected already before he could start to respect me.)

and meanwhile, cis white women overwhelmingly voted for Trump - despite all the evidence he never respected women, white or not, and without any regard for - perhaps even because of - his xenophobic and racist platform. (that’s what you get when ‘feminism’ isn’t intersectional.)

[patriotsnet]

What Did The Radical Republicans Do

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/what-did-the-radical-republicans-do/

What Did The Radical Republicans Do

What Was The Difference Between Lincolns And Johnsons Reconstruction Plans

Panel: Republicans Are Still Trying To Convince The Public Biden Is Radical

Johnsons plan wasnt as willing to give as much freedom to newly free slaves as Lincolns was. Johnson wanted to give the land back to the south unlike the RR. Johnsons plan gave less protection to freed slaves then the Radical Republicans plan. Unlike the 10% plan, the plan they had wanted to punish the south.

Making Black Demands Known

For now, the only leverage blacks could apply in making their demands was the threat of the continued presence of federal troops and agentsespecially of the Freedmen’s Bureau, which whites particularly hatedin the South. These demands included, first and foremost, the right to vote, to serve on juries, and to obtain education. Although economic issuesparticularly that of landownership, and whether the federal government would compensate the former slaves with free landwere of great concern to blacks, they generally avoided making demands in this area because they did not want to alarm whites. Their statements were sprinkled with the references to such popular nineteenth-century values as hard work, honesty, thrift, neatness, morality, and Christianity. They asked for civil and political rights but not for “social” equality with whites, emphasizing that they did not wish to socialize with whites if whites did not desire such contact.

What Are The Four Powers Of The President As Outlined In Article 2

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all

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Why Did Radical Republicans Disagree With Lincoln

The Radical Republicans opposed Lincolns plan because they thought it too lenient toward the South. Radical Republicans believed that Lincolns plan for Reconstruction was not harsh enough because, from their point of view, the South was guilty of starting the war and deserved to be punished as such.

Why Did The Radical Republicans Eventually Abandon Reconstruction

Slaves had little rights or opportunities, such as the freedom of assembly or the right to an education. Why did the Radical Republicans eventually abandon Reconstruction? Reconstruction was no longer progressing as they had hoped. Northerners were outraged at the Souths secret attempt to expand slavery.

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Radical Republican Reconstruction Plan

The postwar Radical Republicans were motivated by three main factors:

Revenge a desire among some to punish the South for causing the war

Concern for the freedmen some believed that the federal government had a role to play in the transition of freedmen from slavery to freedom

Political concerns the Radicals wanted to keep the Republican Party in power in both the North and the South.

Liberal land policies for settlers

Federal aid for railroad development

Brought to you by Online Highways © 2021

The Civil Service Half

Although the factions of Republicans can be found from Civil War to the end of Reconstruction, the;heyday of the above factions was during the Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, and;Ulysses S. Grant administrations.

Here we see two types of Republicans, one who wants social justice and one who is pro-business .

Simply, as the argument of Reconstruction ended key voter issues switched and the debate;became more about stances on Gilded-Age business policy and less about reforming the south .

Reconstruction ultimately ended in a corrupt bargain or;Compromise of 1877, which was struck by Republicans over the 1877 election.;In the bargain Republicans traded the end of Reconstruction for the Presidency, and from then on we get an awkward 100 year lull. First we get Plessy v. Ferguson, and then black codes and Jim Crowe.

It isnt until;LBJ finally signed Civil Rights 1964 and Voting Rights 1965 that the battle the radical Republicans started saw real progress again.

It was Civil Rights that;marked the true victory that had been fought for since;the 1860s, and perhaps it isnt surprising that this resulted in many of the Southern Conservative faction of the Democratic party becoming Republicans over time. The full story is way more complex, but we tell it here.

TIP: Radical is an insult used;by ;as far back as the late 1700s and is still used today. It is a less friendly way to say .

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Grant Is Elected President

The 1868 presidential election would be the first in which African Americans would participate, and they would play an important role in the election of the next president, Ulysses S. Grant . A career army officer and a hero of the Civil War, during which he had helped carry out such presidential orders as the Emancipation Proclamation, Grant had shown no previous interest in politics. His stance as a moderate made him an attractive candidate for the Republican Party, which wanted to put forth an individual who would represent stability during a troubled period in the nation’s history. To oppose Grant, the Democrats nominated a rather colorless figure, former New York governor Horatio Seymour . Their campaign centered on the theme of maintaining white supremacy at a time when, racists maintained, blacks were threatening to take over the country.

The sight of black people voting in the 1867 elections to choose convention delegates had been difficult for many

The Radical Republicans After The Death Of Thaddeus Stevens

KKK Democrats Lynching Killing Black & White ‘Radical Republicans’

Thaddeus Stevens died on August 11, 1868. After lying in the state in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, he was buried in a cemetery in Pennsylvania he had chosen as it allowed burials of both White and Black people.

The faction of Congress he had led continued, though without his fiery temperament much of the fury of the Radical Republicans subsided. Plus, they tended to support the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, who took office in March 1869.

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What Was The Radical Republicans Plan

The Radical Republicans reconstruction offered all kinds of new opportunities to African Americans, including the vote , property ownership, education, legal rights, and even the possibility of holding political office. By the beginning of 1868, about 700,000 African Americans were registered voters.

What Brought Reconstruction To An End

Compromise of 1877: The End of Reconstruction The Compromise of 1876 effectively ended the Reconstruction era. Southern Democrats promises to protect civil and political rights of blacks were not kept, and the end of federal interference in southern affairs led to widespread disenfranchisement of blacks voters.

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What Laws Were Passed In The South After The Civil War

Jim Crow Laws After the end of Reconstruction, racial segregation laws were enacted. These laws became popularly known as Jim Crow laws. They remained in force from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 until 1965. The laws mandated racial segregation as policy in all public facilities in the southern states.

The National Endowment For The Humanities

Stevens carried the resolutely determined spirit of a fighter with him throughout his life.

Illustration adapted from Matthew Brady photograph / The Granger Collection, New York

In 1813, a young Thaddeus Stevens was attending a small college in Vermont. This was well before the time when good fences made good neighbors. Free-roaming cows often strayed onto campus. Manure piled up. Odors lingered. Resentment among students festered. One spring ;day, Stevens ;and ;a friend borrowed an ax from another students room and killed one of the cows, and then slipped the bloody ;weapon back into the unsuspecting classmates room.;

When the farmer ;complained, the school refused to let the wrongly accused man graduate. Stevens, unable to stomach this injustice, contacted the farmer on his own, fessed up, and ;made arrangements to pay damages. The farmer ;withdrew his complaint, and, within a few years, Stevens paid the farmer back. In gratitude, the farmer sent Stevens a hogshead of cider.

The anecdote demonstrates early on in his life Stevenss basic characterhis rashness, his inconsistencies, his convictions, and his tenacity.

Future president James Buchanan worked with Stevens on a case being tried in York. During a break, Buchanan attempted to persuade the rising attorney to get involved in politicson the side of the Jacksonian Democrats. Stevens declined, as he was still in search of the political party that best matched his beliefs.

Steve Moyer is managing editor of Humanities.

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What Was The Radical Plan Of Reconstruction

After the election of November 6, 1866, Congress imposes its own Reconstruction policies, referred to by historians as Radical Reconstruction. This re-empowers the Freedmans Bureau and sets reform efforts in motion that will lead to the 14th and 15th Amendments, which, respectively, grant citizenship to all

The Union League: Helping Blacks To Mobilize

The Union League was a political organization that gave many African Americans their first exposure to the mechanics of politics and voting. Spawned during the Civil War as a Northern white organization supporting the Union war effort, the Union League originally comprised both the elite Union League Clubs as well as gatherings with more diverse membership. Meetings tended to be secret, an aspect its leaders considered a benefit when they decided to extend the Union League into the South during the Reconstruction era.

Whites who had supported the Union during the war were the first Southerners to join the Union League. As the Reconstruction program engineered by the Radicals in Congress got underway, the Republicans realized they could use the Union League to enable the political mobilization of the nearly four million former slaves living in the South. They organized a campaign employing paid speakers, both black and white, who traveled through the South giving speeches and informal talks about the importance of voting and of exercising political rights.

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Why Did Radical Republicans Oppose Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan

4.8/5Radical Republicans opposed Lincoln’s planRadical RepublicansLincoln’s planexplained here

Radical Republicans opposed Lincoln’s Reconstruction Plan because it did not ensure equal civil rights for freed slaves. After the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865, the new president, Andrew Johnson, issued his own Reconstruction Plan.

what happened to Lincoln’s 10 percent plan? Lincoln’s blueprint for Reconstruction included the Ten–Percent Plan,which specified that a southern state could be readmitted into the Union once 10 percent of its voters swore an oath of allegiance to the Union. Lincoln wanted to end the war quickly.

In respect to this, who opposed the 10 percent plan?

Congress, however, refused to seat the Senators and Representatives elected from these ‘Ten percent‘ states. Many people in the North were opposed to the Ten percent plan and President Lincoln and Congress had reached a stalemate. Then the unthinkable happened. President Lincoln was assassinated by James Wilkes Booth.

What was Congress’s counter proposal to Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan?

Congress passed this bill in 1864 to counter Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan for Reconstruction. The bill required that a majority of a former Confederate state’s white male population take a loyalty oath and guarantee equality for African Americans.

Reconstruction Of The South

THE RADICAL REPUBLICANS SATURDAY NIGHT SPECIAL JAZZ LOUNGE LIVE SHOW

During Reconstruction, Radical Republicans increasingly took control, led by Sumner and Stevens. They demanded harsher measures in the South, more protection for the Freedmen and more guarantees that the Confederate nationalism was totally eliminated. Following Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, Andrew Johnson, a former War Democrat, became President.

The Radicals at first admired Johnson’s hard-line talk. When they discovered his ambivalence on key issues by his veto of Civil Rights Act of 1866, they overrode his veto. This was the first time that Congress had overridden a president on an important bill. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 made African Americans United States citizens, forbade discrimination against them and it was to be enforced in Federal courts. The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution of 1868 was the work of a coalition formed of both moderate and Radical Republicans.

The Radicals were opposed by former slaveowners and white supremacists in the rebel states. Radicals were targeted by the Ku Klux Klan, who shot to death one Radical Congressman from Arkansas, James M. Hinds.

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What Did The Radical Republicans Stand For

Radical RepublicansRepublican

The Radical Republicans believed blacks were entitled to the same political rights and opportunities as whites. They also believed that the Confederate leaders should be punished for their roles in the Civil War.

Additionally, what were three policies that the Radical Republicans proposed for reconstruction? On the political front, the Republicans wanted to maintain their wartime agenda, which included support for:

Protective tariffs.

Liberal land policies for settlers.

Federal aid for railroad development.

Thereof, what was the Radical Republicans plan?

The Radical Republicans‘ reconstruction offered all kinds of new opportunities to African Americans, including the vote , property ownership, education, legal rights, and even the possibility of holding political office. By the beginning of 1868, about 700,000 African Americans were registered voters.

Did the radical Republicans favored emancipation?

Radical Republican. Radical Republican, during and after the American Civil War, a member of the Republican Party committed to emancipation of the slaves and later to the equal treatment and enfranchisement of the freed blacks.

Which Republican President Inspired The Teddy Bear

Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican U.S. president from 1901 to 1909, inspired the teddy bear when he refused to shoot a tied-up bear on a hunting trip. The story reached toy maker Morris Michtom, who decided to make stuffed bears as a dedication to Roosevelt. The name comes from Roosevelts nickname, Teddy.

Republican Party, byname Grand Old Party , in the United States, one of the two major political parties, the other being the Democratic Party. During the 19th century the Republican Party stood against the extension of slavery to the countrys new territories and, ultimately, for slaverys complete abolition. During the 20th and 21st centuries the party came to be associated with laissez-fairecapitalism, low taxes, and conservative social policies. The party acquired the acronym GOP, widely understood as Grand Old Party, in the 1870s. The partys official logo, the elephant, is derived from a cartoon by Thomas Nast and also dates from the 1870s.

What does RADICAL REPUBLICAN mean?

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An African American Majority In The South Carolina Legislature

Because blacks in South Carolina vastly outnumbered whites, the newly-enfranchised voters were able to send so many African American representatives to the state assembly that they outnumbered the whites. Many were able legislators who worked to rewrite the state constitution and pass laws ensuring aid to public education, universal male franchise, and civil rights for all.

Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/african-american-odyssey/reconstruction.html#obj12

What Were The Goals Of Reconstruction For Radical Republicans

They wanted to prevent the leaders of the confederacy from returning to power after the war, they wanted the republican party to become a powerful institution in the south, and they wanted the federal government to help african americans achieve political equality by guaranteeing their rights to vote in the south.

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How Did Congress Take Control Of Reconstruction

In early 1866, Congressional Republicans, appalled by mass killing of ex-slaves and adoption of restrictive black codes, seized control of Reconstruction from President Johnson. The 14th Amendment also reduced representation in Congress of any southern state that deprived African Americans of the vote.

Two Different Plans For Reconstruction

During the months following the April 1865 conclusion of the Civil War, the U.S. Congress was the stage for another kind of battle. A group of senators and representatives known as the Radical Republicans opposed the Reconstruction program put forth by President Andrew Johnson . Having gained that office unexpectedly when Abraham Lincoln was assassinatedonly days after the war’s endby an enraged Southerner, Johnson had surprised everyone with a plan that allowed white Southerners to virtually recreate the days of slavery. The Republicans had managed to win public support for their own vision of a reconstructed South, which they saw as a place where free labor and industry would thrive and where, most importantly, access to equal civil and political rights would allow African Americans to become full, responsible U.S. citizens.

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What Was The Key Difference Between The Lincoln And Johnson Plans For Reconstruction Quizlet

What was the key difference between the Lincoln and Johnson plans for Reconstruction? Unlike Lincolns plan, Johnsons plan barred from political participation any ex-Confederate with taxable property worth $20,000 or more. How did the Thirteenth Amendment change the Constitution? It abolished slavery.

A Cross Section Of Black People

Radical Policies Do Not Unite | Nick Adams | Open Mic

Nevertheless, a broad cross section of blacks made it to the Freedmen’s Conventions. There were many uniformed veterans of the Union army, who had fought against the Confederacy to win their people’s freedom. There were ministers, teachers, and tradesmen as well as plantation workers. The earliest conventions were dominated by free blacks , but as time went on an increasing number of former slaves took part. African Americans took considerable pride in the sight of black people meeting in such numbers, for such a serious purpose. Commenting on a convention held in New Orleans, Louisiana, in early 1865, a black newspaper editor, as quoted in Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery, called it “a great spectacle, and one which will be remembered for generations to come.”

Among the most prominent black leaders at the conventions, some were Northern blacks who had come South to work as agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau , including Tunis G. Campbell and Martin R. Delany . South Carolina native Francis L. Cardozo had escaped slavery to become a minister in Connecticut. Leaders from among the ranks of the former slaves include such notable figures as Robert Smalls , whose bravery during the Civil War had made him famous, and Prince Rivers , a former coachman who had served as a sergeant in the Union army.

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[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

After President Trump won the 2016 election, there was a big debate over the role “identity politics” played in his victory. Some scholars argued that many white voters without a college degree — a group that proved pivotal in that election — jumped from supporting then-President Barack Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016 largely because they liked Trump’s framing of identity issues, such as immigration, more than Hillary Clinton’s.1 After the election, some (usually white) liberal and Democratic-leaning voices said that Democrats needed to abandon “identity politics” or face more defeats like Clinton’s. Other liberal voices (often Black) said that Trump had successfully tapped into the racist views of many white Americans. Both of those perspectives implied that debating issues of identity and race was bad for Clinton and good for Trump, and in the future it would be good for the GOP and bad for Democrats.

Never mind all that, at least for now. America is talking about identity and race, and so are both presidential candidates. And all that racial talk seems to be helping Democrats, not Republicans. Joe Biden led Trump by about 6 percentage points in national polls on May 25, the day a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd. Biden leads Trump by an average of nearly 10 points now, after weeks of race and racism dominating the national discussion.

Obviously a lot of factors could explain Trump’s decline in the polls, most notably the coronavirus outbreak and the president’s failure to come up with any real plan to limit the virus’s spread.

But it’s worth exploring this question: Why aren’t identity politics backfiring on Biden and helping Trump? It’s hard to say for sure, but here are five theories, ordered roughly from strongest to weakest.

Trump is in the White House now

Some political science research suggests that public opinion on major issues tends to move against the sitting president. So if President John Doe says he hates Granny Smith apples, Americans will begin consuming them by the bushel. And that pattern has already played out with Trump, with Americans becoming more supportive of immigrants and Obamacare, likely in reaction to the president’s attempts to limit immigration and repeal the health care law.

Current polling — and even polls from earlier in the Trump presidency — has shown Americans expressing more liberal views on racial issues. Those numbers might suggest real change in racial attitudes among Americans. (More on that in a bit.)

But what looks right now like increasing racial liberalism may really just be anti-Trump sentiment. If Americans, particularly Democratic-leaning Americans, perceive that Trump is opposed to the Floyd protests and to racial justice causes more broadly, they might become more supportive of such causes, consciously or unconsciously, simply as a reaction to the president’s sentiments.

So in terms of identity politics and their role in presidential elections, it may have been that a racialized discourse was electorally bad for Democrats when their party controlled the White House, like in 2016. But this kind of discourse is fine and perhaps even electorally beneficial for Democrats with a Republican president in office.

Also, the story here could simply be that Trump is a flawed candidate who was going to struggle in 2020 no matter what issues were dominating the news at the time. After all, he was viewed unfavorably by 60 percent of voters on Election Day in 2016, according to exit polls, and he has remained fairly unpopular throughout his presidency. In 2019 and earlier this year, Democrats spent a lot of time debating which of their potential presidential candidates was most “electable.” But Biden’s almost-10-point lead suggests that basically any of the other 2020 Democratic presidential candidates would likely be leading Trump right now if he or she were the presumptive Democratic nominee.

2016 was a fluke and identity politics don’t always hurt Democrats

Part of the focus on identity issues as an electoral liability stems from the current makeup of swing states and the Electoral College. White voters without degrees have become increasingly Republican-leaning and represent a disproportionate share of the electorate in key swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin. So Democrats need to worry more about appealing to white voters without degrees to win an Electoral College majority than they would if presidential elections were decided by a simple national plurality vote. Thus, a lot of post-2016 coverage started from the assumption that Democrats have an identity and race problem because they must appeal to white voters without degrees and that voting bloc — at least based on the 2016 results — seemed to be put off by Democrats’ approach to identity issues.

But that framing might be wrong, or at least a bit overstated. Why? First, there’s an alternate reading of the 2016 results that suggests race wasn’t an unusually important factor in motivating the white voters who switched to Trump. Second, the overall racial dynamics of American politics are not that bad for Democrats and perhaps even favorable to them.

Zoom out beyond 2016 and take the long view: The last seven presidential elections have featured four Democratic victories in both the popular vote and the Electoral College (1992, 1996, 2008, 2012); one instance where the GOP won the popular vote and Electoral College (2004); and two kind of fluky GOP wins in which Republicans lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College (2000, 2016).

That long view doesn’t look great for Republicans, and identity and race help explain why. Democrats have been handily winning the vote among Asian, Black and Hispanic Americans, who combined are growing as a share of the electorate. (The share of nonwhite U.S. voters was about 26 percent in 2016, compared to about 13 percent in 1980.) Democrats’ status as the party of minorities helps them in some ways, requiring the GOP to consolidate an increasingly high percentage of the country’s white voters to win elections.

But it isn’t easy or necessarily guaranteed that the Republicans will overwhelmingly win the white vote overall or the white non-college vote specifically — even in an election that’s centered on race. The 2017-2018 period was full of racialized political debate, most notably on immigration policy, but the exit polls suggest Democrats lost white voters without a college degree by 24 percentage points in 2018, compared to 37 points in 2016. So far in 2020, polls show Biden losing white voters without a degree by a margin closer to 20 points.

Meanwhile, Biden might carry white voters with a college degree by a large margin, in part because those voters have been turned off by Trump’s approach to racial issues. Indeed, white voters with a college degree or postgraduate education have been trending Democratic for years, and the GOP approach to race and ethnicity is likely a factor.

In short, the evidence suggests that Trump’s approach on racial issues never really appealed to people of color in the first place and, outside of November 2016, it has also been really off-putting to white voters with degrees and not that appealing to white voters without degrees.

It’s harder to use Biden as a wedge

On policy issues, including those around identity and race, Biden’s positions are clearly to the left of the ones Obama ran on in 2008 and arguably to the left of Clinton’s in 2016. In explicitly promising to pick a woman as vice president and a Black woman as Supreme Court justice, Biden has gone beyond Clinton or Obama in terms of allocating very important government posts based on gender and race. And Biden’s rhetoric on racial issues is similar to Clinton’s in 2016. After Floyd’s death, while Trump largely dismissed the protests, Biden called for “an era of action to reverse systemic racism.”

But Biden is an older white man. So his identity likely makes it harder for Trump to run an identity-based campaign against Biden than against Clinton and, to some extent, incumbent president Obama. (The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer made this argument explicitly in a recent piece.) Biden does not visually symbolize a changing America the way President Obama did and the way a President Hillary Clinton would have.

Also, Biden has self-consciously positioned himself as a more moderate Democrat and has distanced himself from more liberal elements of the party, including the causes favored by more liberal Black Americans, like defunding the police.

The electorate has really shifted on racial issues

It’s possible that Trump’s identity politics are less effective in 2020 than they were in 2016 because the events of the last four years have resulted in a real leftward shift on racial issues among Americans. And that shift is fundamental and real, not just about partisanship or anti-Trump sentiment, as I suggested above. After all, in interviews with reporters, more liberal-leaning people and even some former Trump voters are suggesting that they understand racial inequality more deeply now than ever before.

Institutions are aligned with Biden on these issues

Major U.S. businesses, corporations and other elite institutions are typically wary of being perceived as partisan. But in the wake of Floyd’s death, corporate America seems to have decided, for whatever reason, that support for Black Lives Matter and comprehensive, aggressive efforts to reduce racial inequality are either not that partisan or that they’re stances worth taking even if they annoy some Republicans.

So at least right now, it’s not really Biden and Democrats versus Trump and Republicans on issues of identity and race in America; rather, it’s Biden, Democrats, Facebook, Merck, JPMorgan Chase, Netflix, Nike, Stanford and lots of other major institutions versus Trump and Republicans.

This dynamic is not totally unique to the spring and summer of 2020. Major companies in America are often aligned with liberal cultural values — for example, supporting gay marriage even before the 2015 Supreme Court ruling that invalidated any remaining bans on same-sex unions.

But even if corporate America’s recent posture on racial issues isn’t that surprising, it’s still important. With a lot of major institutions in America echoing his general message, it’s not surprising that Biden’s identity politics are resonating more than Trump’s.

I’m writing this article at a particular moment in time. Perhaps there will be a backlash to the Floyd protests and public opinion will shift. Maybe Trump will benefit from that. If Biden picks a female vice presidential nominee, particularly one who is also a person of color, perhaps Trump’s identity tactics will resonate more with voters because he’ll then have a foil who is more like Clinton and Obama. Alternatively, Trump could make up ground in the polls due to unrelated issues and factors.

And even if Biden wins, that won’t totally answer the question of whether identity politics is bad or good for Democrats. LIke I said, perhaps basically any Democratic candidate would beat Trump amid a viral outbreak the president mishandled.

All that said, it appears right now that the identity politics of 2020 are a net plus for Democrats — and perhaps they weren’t too big a problem for Democrats in the first place. It’s hard to prove any of this, but it’s an important discussion to have. In 2008, it seemed like Democrats won a presidential contest that was largely about race. But even though the presidential nominees were white in 2016 and 2020, those may have been more racialized campaigns. And if the current polls hold up, Democrats, after losing a very racialized campaign, may show that they can win one.

[donewithcapitalistfrayers]

Interview transcript posted on podur.org on April 29, 2017.

In this episode of The Ossington Circle, academic, activist, and editor at Jadaliyya Max Ajl discusses the destruction of Syria and the vitriol directed at leftists and Palestine activists who have opposed intervention in Syria.

Justin Podur: Hello and welcome to the Ossington Circle. Today I’m here with Max Ajl, PhD student at Cornell University, and editor at Jadaliyya and a Palestinian solidarity activist. We’re going to talk today about Palestine a little bit, but mainly about Syria. Max, thank you for joining me.

Max Ajl: Thank you very much for having me.

JP: So Max, when Trump launched those cruise missiles at the Syrian air base, I saw a Facebook post that you wrote – it was circulating on Twitter and other places – and you said:

“Six years of Qatari and Saudi propaganda has given a great gift to the US regime, making those who oppose the violent dictatorship of US capital feel sometimes guilty, muted, fumbling, silenced about doing so, and making those who support it feel right and righteous in so doing.”

And I think that feeling is something that I have personally been feeling for a really long time – guilty, muted, fumbling, silenced – about opposing imperialism, especially in Syria, and it’s been really confusing for me. And so for you to write that…I felt a lot of relief reading that somebody else felt that way. And that’s a big part of why I wanted to have you on this show. So can you just elaborate on this idea of…what is this Qatari and Saudi propaganda, because – I think as people who know Palestine, we’re familiar with the way the pro-Israeli lobby works and the way Israeli media and PR operations work – but the idea that there could be similar operations coming from the monarchies in the Gulf is fairly new, for me anyway.

MA: Yeah, so I think that you can trace this back to the founding of Al Jazeera and then the founding of Al Jazeera English, which is owned basically by the Qatari government. And since that time, the Gulf states, in consort with the US government and US ruling class, have really built up their capacity substantially – both their overall economies and specifically their media systems, and have created a large apparatus that has played an interesting and complex role in terms its overall service to the US ruling class. And it’s important to break these systems apart so we see how each system, how each component of the system, is playing a unique role.

Like, in the same way that we see that the Israeli lobby’s primary role is to attack critics of Israel, but also to make sure that Israel stays separate – and that the Palestine case stays separate – from other progressive movements. And this isn’t to absolve the rest of the propaganda system or the elites more broadly; it’s just to identify the specific roles each conglomerate, or each set of conglomerates plays in the larger system.

So one portion of this has been that US media consumers grew to….first of all, we were like: “Ok, we want to centre Arab voices”; second of all, we were like: “Anyone who supports Palestine is being transgressive, so we can take that as a valuable point of reference on other regional affairs. So this kind of made newscasts like Al Jazeera English and more recently the New Arab, and Middle East Eye uniquely suited to use their occasional and usually decent support on Palestine to cover up for the larger US/Qatari/Saudi regressive agenda in the region more broadly.

And so, what we can see since 2011, are a variety of almost formulaic attacks on the left in Syria: “the left isn’t doing this on Syria”; “the left is all Putinites”; “the left is supporting genocide”; “the left has a double standard”; “the left should supply the same standard of Palestine to the Syrian conflict”; “the left is inadequately supporting the revolution”. And at the same time, we have so-called news coverage saying that whatever is occurring in Syria has no foreign help, is not getting support from the US government, there are no sectarian elements, and so forth.

So it’s been kind of a one-two punch, and the result has been – and it’s not them alone that’s been doing it, of course; there’s lots of other organizations that are doing it and we can discuss them further on, but these groups and these media platforms have played a really effective role unfortunately, in confusing Anglophone media consumers about what exactly has been going on in Syria, and more specifically, about the negative role played by Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and of course behind and largely coordinating them, the United States.

JP: I just want to start with Al Jazeera, because Al Jazeera was a big story in 2003 during the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. And we were all watching Al Jazeera, fascinated by the whole idea that a US war would no longer enjoy the kind of monopoly of information that it had previously. And so it was this incredibly refreshing thing, like, here are people from the region with their own powerful media organization that has a way of breaking through that propaganda wall. And I think that is a big part of why we’re having a hard time mapping that opening on to what’s going on in Syria now, because we’re expecting that same level of opposition to power that we saw Al Jazeera do in 2003, but it doesn’t seem to be working the same way.

MA: Yeah, absolutely not, and this is really the fruit of what the Gulf media and the US media have insisted on calling the Arab Spring. Without entering into divisive polemics about what has occurred there, I think we can say one good thing: there were people who were expressing legitimate discontent about the prevailing orders in most of the region, but with very different levels of mobilization in different countries…Yemen has had the largest per capita mobilizations, and it’s gotten some of the least coverage, especially in comparison to most mobilizations in the region.

The reverse is the case in Syria. So there was that aspect. And then it was also the occasion for Saudi Arabia and Qatar – sometimes in coordination, sometimes backing various sorts of regressive groups – to kind of recompose the governing system and to battle for a recomposition of regional hegemony. And Qatar has powerfully deployed Al Jazeera in the service of this broader goal. And one of the crucial things is that in 2011, many people were observing that Al Jazeera was basically silent about what was happening in Bahrain. Whereas it was recording and publicizing in a wildly disproportionate manner – compared to the scale of the protests – what was occurring in Libya and Syria, both of which were, not at all coincidentally, on the US target list.

And here we can see that, within the most basic parameters, we can see that who they chose to target, which protests they chose to ignore, basically were in concordance with the framework and the agenda of the United States.

JP: And then, another point that you raise, and you raised it earlier, but also in your (twitter) feed, where you say:

“My feed is filled with folks ripping into an imaginary left that has been silent on the Obama regime’s bombing campaigns against Syria…Well, find me an organized anti-war formation that’s been silent on these bombing runs and tell me how many are silent versus speaking up.”

So the fact that the target all this is always the left – often when it’s leftists even making these speeches…people who call themselves leftists and identify as leftists that say: “The left is pro-Assad” and “The left is pro-Putin”…

And it strikes me that, on the one hand, some of these people that are saying this are leftists, but a lot of them are not, and I think we get confused because we see…again, we’re looking back and we are saying: “These are people that are pro-Palestine”, or “These are people that were against the invasion of Iraq in 2003” – I covered the invasion of Iraq in 2003 – but they’re not leftists. They actually hate leftists. They hate the secularism, they hate the equality, they hate the republicanism that leftists express, especially leftists from the region. But from the west we think, “Oh, they’re pro-Palestine, they’re anti-invasion of Iraq/2003, they must be leftists.”

MA: Yeah, it’s been a remarkable phenomenon. It should all be traced further back. The need to express rhetorical or symbolic support – rising to political, monetary or material support – for Palestine has been what the political scientist Mike Hudson called “an all-Arab legitimating issue”. So every Arab government of any kind has had to support Palestine as part of its moves towards domestic legitimacy. And some governments have taken that quite far, such as the Gaddafi government’s support for the PFLP for example in the 70s, and the Syrian government has had ongoing relations with Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front; whereas the regressive Arab regimes – you know, Saudi Arabia and Qatar – have mostly kept this support at the symbolic level and have offered some material support, for example, to the Hamas movement in Gaza, but this has been more in the measure of trying to co-opt and contain them to a very marked degree. So we need to understand it all occurring within this broader framework in order to be understood in the US context. So that’s the first thing.

The second thing is that Iraq was a long time ago. If you take 2011 it was eight years ago, and by now it was fourteen years ago. And there is a tendency among most people to shift to the right. So they were opposing the war on Iraq and they may have even been leftists then, and they would often have ceased being leftists now. And that’s a fundamental shift and there are lots of these people who have shifted very markedly. Furthermore, part of how they’ve represented Syria itself has allowed some of them to retain the credibility as whatever this very difficult and confusing umbrella term “leftist” means…they’ve been allowed to maintain credibility and that credibility in turn relies on them pushing forward this narrative of a revolution that they support and that we oppose because we’re not committed to human emancipation, we’re just committed to geopolitics, those of us on the anti-imperialist left which is another target of smears.

By itself, this framework is actually vicious in the first place, because geopolitics is not a term I hear all that many anti-imperialists using; it’s about things like state sovereignty – that’s the entire framework of the post-Nazi international juridical order and it’s meant to actually prevent wars of aggression and to allow states to be sovereign, and for political movements to feel that that state sovereignty has social and political meaning. Once you collapse that, basically you have carte blanche for anyone to intervene for any reason whatsoever, which is a very old imperial agenda…to go in and save people from themselves. So this entire discourse has been topsy-turvy from the beginning.

And in a sense it reflects the power of intervention discourse, that even people calling for intervention, such as calling for lifting the US arms embargo – they actually have to say is that what they’re against is intervention. They say that the US has been blocking anti-aircraft weapons from flowing in over the Jordanian and Turkish borders, and that we should be against US intervention and that therefore we should be against the US blocking those shipments from going in. We can go a little further into that argument and what has actually been going on in terms of the logistics of arms transfers. But what’s significant is that they actually have to justify it with references to (inaudible…)

JP: Yeah, I was struck by that argument. I was actually going to bring that up with you. I saw an article after the Tomahawk missile strikes on the Syrian airfield mentioning this. It was comparing Syria to Palestine of course, as they always do, and they were saying “How could you oppose what Israel’s doing to the Palestinians and not oppose what Assad is doing to the Syrian people?” and “Don’t you know that the US has blocked these advanced anti-aircraft missiles from getting into the hands of the Syrian revolutionaries?” And I just thought: it’s so inconsistent…I can’t imagine these people – or any people – complaining that the US is blocking advanced anti-aircraft weapons from getting to Hamas, for example, or to the Palestinians that are trying to fight Israel. That’s way outside of anything anyone could imagine saying publicly. But they make comparisons with Palestine and then talk about the blocking of these missiles as if anybody could ever say that the USA should supply Hamas with missiles.

MA: Yeah, it’s quite absurd on a number of levels…I mean, the absurdity of the article you actually refer to – which was in Jacobin and the author was Bashir Abu-Manneh – the absurdity starts even with the personnel itself. This individual – who I used to be on relatively good terms with and I would publish his stuff in Jacobin on Palestine when I was editing the middle east content there – kept on pestering me for years to be publishing Gilbert Achcar, who took a rather tortuous approach to ensuring that the US dissidents did not mobilize against the US intervention in Libya. He refused to call this supporting the Libyan intervention; Achcar just said, well he didn’t want anyone…..

JP: Yes, I remember this…

MA: …he said he didn’t want anyone opposing it, which comes to the same thing. The only way to stop something that the US is…

JP: He was not for intervention….

MA: He was neither for nor against, and urged that we be able to counsel interventionists once they had done so. So this very much put him on the opposite side of what I considered a fairly non-controversial red line. But Bashir kept on writing to me. I was civil to him because I think he has some interesting things to say on Palestine – he’s Palestinian from ’48…

JP: Yeah, and he’s done a great book, a really good book on literature, right?

MA: Yeah, it’s a nice book although he feels the need to rouse up support for the US destruction of Syria at the end of the book, unfortunately.

He was quite insistent about this and I didn’t really have time for it, so Bashir…the long and short of it was that Bashir helped orchestrate a kind of soft coup d’etat against me at Jacobin. And since then, the Jacobin content on Palestine has had nothing on political prisoners, scarcely mentions right of return, has not really had a consistent anti-imperialist stance on geopolitics. But even on the Palestinian case in my opinion, the coverage has been much worse. And as for what it’s done for Syria, it’s not like anyone on the editorial board shifted their position.

It’s obviously just much more convenient, and you get banner ads from the New Arab, which is a Qatari enterprise; you get banner ads when you support the war on Syria. So it’s totally cynical. Bashir wrote this article comparing the post-colonial state of Syria to Israel which is quite disturbing. It almost beggars belief, because for one thing the US supported and created Israel whereas the post-colonial Syrian state emerged out of resistance to French colonial sovereignty. So these aren’t really units that one should intelligibly compare. This struck me as intellectually and morally bankrupt. But maybe it was convincing to some other people, especially those who support the destruction of Syria.

JP: Yeah, I doubt it changed anybody’s mind. It probably reinforced what people already thought. I did want to go back to Achcar, because I remember when he was saying one shouldn’t oppose the bombing of Libya, one shouldn’t support the bombing of Libya. If we call for a no-fly-zone over Libya now in 2011, next time Israel bombs Gaza, we can go out there and have a very powerful case for arguing for a no-fly-zone over Israel. And after that happened, when Israel bombed Gaza in 2012 and 2014, and I don’t know if you saw any of these demonstrations calling for a no-fly-zone over Israel, but I certainly don’t remember seeing them.

MA: Yeah, what it does is it completely confuses and saps any clarity around a consistent anti-imperialist position. Part of what we oppose about Israel and what the Palestinian left has historically opposed, why it has such regional and international appeal, is because it’s such a crushing example – if not a condensation – of US global racism. And now we’re going to call for a no-fly-zone? It just confuses people beyond belief and it’s the most disingenuous argument. You can use as many words as one likes to cover up the basic line of argument being taken, but I don’t find it particularly convincing and it only serves to sow confusion. That’s the only political agenda.

JP: Another intra-left line of reasoning – and all these roads lead to why we need to support the bombing of Syria and they’re all different constructions – one of them I’ve seen is: anti-imperialists follow Chomsky in saying “We have a primary responsibility for trying to stop our governments from doing bad things in the world because that’s where we can have the most effect.” And it goes back to some of what you were saying about the idea of sovereign states and the sovereign state being the unit in which people can exercise their democratic rights and develop their capacities. But then the counterargument I’ve seen is: “Well, how can we accede to this narrow nationalist argument when what we should be going for is a global working class solidarity”, and global working class solidarity with the Syrian people requires supporting the destruction of their state.

MA: Yeah, you know this is a very old argument in a sense. I studied Tunisia and many of these same arguments were put forward by the trade unions linked to the French colonial socialist trade unions as opposed to the more domestic indigenous trade unions linked to Tunisians, and some of them said, “Well, we’re just going to ignore the national question, pretend it doesn’t matter”, and the other ones insisted on the importance of the national question. And the national question continues to matter. It is global south countries that need to affirm that principle to avoid being destroyed.

So it’s not about internationalism versus parochial nationalism. It’s about substantive versus vacuous nationalism. It’s about internationalism that takes account of one’s location, and the privileges and political opportunities that are available to one, and that one has in a given location, versus one that is very much blind to it, and ends up being very idealist. I believe in internationalism and international solidarity but I believe that supporting the peoples of the global south in their struggles begins with looking at the ways the US government prevents people in the global south from determining the courses of their own lives. And frequently – given that we live in a world which is commonly broken up along national units – then part of that is going to take the appearance of nationalism.

But this accusation that nationalism is parochial is actually historically a position that comes from the colonial end of the so-called socialist movement, and is very chauvinist in my opinion and regressive. Because for people in given geographical territories, living in that territory often imposes common experiences and a common fate on them. Like when the US destroyed Iraq, for people in Iraq to support national resistance…was that nationalism? Yes, and was it bad nationalism? Of course not. The Latin American experiments have seen a very creative and powerful reinvigoration of nationalism, the nacional-popular, and recuperated discourse of sovereignty. And emanating from that sovereignty, they branched out into more regional agendas and have engaged in a more substantive internationalism. So to just sidestep how that happens, how struggle marks the course of history, and to just assert this very idealist internationalism of globally-linked civil society struggles…this kind of discourse seems to come straight from the State Department.

JP: Yeah, exactly. And those origins and those debates are really interesting to trace and I’m happy with the discussion we’ve had about the left, and the targeting of the left, and the imaginary left that has been supposedly silent and so on. I’m also very interested to talk to you about the targeting of the Palestine movement, because that has also, in addition to Syria, been something that is used to attack ‘the left’ – whatever ‘the left’ is – claiming that the left has been totally inadequate on this issue. But I’ve also found a really strong degree of targeting, and in some cases of destroying, local student activist groups around Palestine. I know you have some experience and something to say about that, so I’d like to ask you about that now.

MA: Absolutely, I mean, we could sense that this was becoming a rather urgent issue….it was a rather urgent issue about Syria from the outset. It was apparent to me that there was an attempt to – and one can have a range of legitimate opinions about what was going on in the early months in Syria – but what was clear was that certainly the Gulf governments and the US were looking to use whatever had happened and to elevate the strands they preferred, to use those strands to justify or incite a militarization and destroy Syria. It’s targeted particularly the Palestine movement in a variety of ways. And one of the most effective ways has just been through Yarmouk – what happened in the Yarmouk camp.

What actually happened is still a bit cloudy and argued over but one can certainly say that by late 2013 the Yarmouk camp had been an arena of fighting between sectarian groups and militias that were on the same side as the Syrian government, and that the Syrian government was deployed on the outskirts of the Yarmouk camp, basically in order to contain the situation. And one of the consequences of that was that food was becoming very difficult to access in the camp. There were a lot of actors actually bringing food in, it wasn’t a hermetic siege by any means. But, as always whenever there’s a situation in which food is harder to access, prices go up, and the most vulnerable suffer. And this, in turn, was being used as a way to split the Palestine movement, especially globally. In fact, an intern for the American Task force for Palestine – which had been continuously funded by Gulf regimes and was a pro-normalization organization – started writing a wide range of articles calling on us to take action about the Yarmouk camp. The basic call that came from the Palestinian factions, from Palestinian solidarity organizations in the US, was that two things should happen: One, that there should be measures taken to ensure the food could be brought into the camp so that food did not become a weapon of war against a civilian population; and two, that these armed groups – whatever support people in Yarmouk had for what had occurred in Syria and for the Syrian opposition, certainly the armed groups did not appear to be broadly welcomed in the camp – all relevant representatives and institutions appeared to be calling for the armed groups to leave. And those were the basic demands.

My student group, recognizing that there was this attempt at manipulation going on, amplified those demands and situated them in anti-imperialist politics, identifying the US role in first using Israel to divert Syria from what had been a progressive course through 1967, and then setting it on a further rightward course after that; and then also playing a role in destroying the PLO, and in militarizing the process…all of which is openly acknowledged. And furthermore, that people living in the US didn’t stand outside of that history, and that any negative things going on in Syria at the hands of the government – insofar as that was relevant – they were, in part, responsible for. And we think that this is what substantive internationalism looks like: identifying the way that US power has actually constituted history as we confront it in front of us. For us, anyway.

Now, we – that is, Cornell Students for Justice in Palestine – were very viciously attacked. People were trying to say we were justifying collective punishment which was very disingenuous since we called directly for food to go in, and we weren’t sure how you could at the same time justify collective punishment and call for it to end. It’s incoherent. But the people making this attack were primarily from Chicago-based student groups, people who were more or less engaged in various forms of provocation, some from the Trotskyite movement, socialist organizations, grassroots membership coordinators, US Campaign to End the Occupation, and so forth.

And, very broadly, we, and especially I, were marginalized in the student movement. We were told to dissolve ourselves during an April attempt to get Cornell to divest itself of Israeli investments – we were doing a divestment campaign – and they actually told us too dissolve our chapter. And the individual who made that call is friends with a wide range of student activists and people who, at the time, were on the coordinating committee of National SJP. So really this was kind of a precursor to, or first step towards really splitting apart the Palestine movement, and it only got worse and worse.

I’m sure you’ve seen the attacks on journalists linked to Electronic Intifada and Mondoweiss, which are… – both have a broad range of politics, both on Syria and more broadly – but they are media institutions that play a fundamental role in supporting the Palestinian liberation movement and solidarity movement. They’re fundamental, and to attack them and sap their energy in this way, and say: “Either you’re going to toe the line on US intervention in Syria in terms of supporting it, supporting a ‘revolution’” (that – whatever it had been in 2011 – simply had zero progressive credentials by 2014) is to basically hold the Palestine movement hostage. It is to say: “We don’t really care if the Palestine movement collapses due to infighting if it won’t support the uprising.” And it’s clear that a movement can’t really survive – or flourish, certainly – under such pressures: under pressure of attempts to split it.

And if you take for example, the student movement 2012/13, 2013/14 versus 2015/16, 2016/17, the volume of divestment or attempted divestments, has decreased by – I would estimate – a factor of ten. And divestment is the primary tactic of the student movement. Now, tracing a direct linear line of causality between one and the other is difficult, although one can certainly identify people who have been involved in saying “we don’t really want a movement if it doesn’t support what we call the Syrian Revolution, and blame the Syrian government 100 or 99 or 95 percent for what is going on.”

It’s been very much wracked with infighting; there are certain places and people who have managed to maintain a principled…

JP: Yeah, I’ve seen many people say: “I don’t talk about Palestine unless you’re anti-Assad. Don’t talk about Palestine; I don’t want to hear anything about Palestine unless you support the Syrian Revolution” which I’ve always found to be a really bizarre line to take, when everybody in your society is telling you to shut up about Palestine. Making an additional condition – that you’re supposed to shut up about Palestine unless you agree with me about facts and interpretations of what the nature of this opposition to Assad is – doesn’t strike me as something that has Palestine at its heart. It doesn’t seem to me to be people who are looking after Palestine’s interests that are making this call.

MA: One has to be honest and state that a lot of vocal young people from the [Palestinian] Diaspora basically signed on to that position. I don’t mean thousands, or a numerically high percentage, but I do mean that, of people who are active, a lot have taken this position. So it creates a great difficulty. If you look at the Palestinians in Syria, they’ve been very much split. A lot of them have been pro-government, and pro-government in ways that, in the west, you would be accused of eating Syrian babies for breakfast. But a lot have been pro-government. And also in Palestine.

The bottom line is that…the Palestinians are split. Any claim that there’s a kind of unity on the issue is not really true, and so we should own the political position …we should take a position on Syria and own it for ourselves. Often we’ll end up working with people we may disagree with about interpretations of what’s going on in Syria. Unless people prefer to do otherwise, which strikes me as very sectarian and has been manifestly disruptive.

JP: A theoretical question going back to our discussion of the left debate: another thing that I’ve heard (we haven’t discussed this before but I suspect you’ll have something interesting to say about it) is the idea that, being anti-imperialist in the Syrian context, really means opposing Russia and Iran because those are the real imperialists in Syria right now.

MA: To talk about who is or isn’t imperialist isn’t a question of describing who is or isn’t intervening in Syria, or if you don’t like them or don’t like the side they’re supporting. It should be a theoretical category. It should be a theoretical category that derives from what was going on before, and be used to interpret it and make sense of it, not just opportunistically deployed in order to justify whatever side one’s on.

So one can go back to 1917 – or earlier – and talk about Lenin’s theory of imperialism or export of capital, and in that case, Russia is not exporting capital to Syria – at the current moment, Iran is expending capital in order to support the Syrian government: there’s loans, I think there are oil shipments that are ongoing. Both countries are supporting the Syrian treasury, extending large credit lines. Calling a post-colonial state – no matter what one wants to say about its political and social track record post-1970 – that called on allied forces to support the state institutions doesn’t strike me as imperialism by any understanding of the word, especially if one actually looks and tries to understand why both Russia and Iran have actually supported it.

Now there’s been a real paucity of analysis about these forces. More so, there’s been an absence of good analysis based on why Russia has responded to this call by the Syrian government. People say it’s ok, it’s just to maintain its one Mediterranean outpost. Well yeah, of course that’s certainly true, but that just adds a little more detail to the issue without clarifying what is actually at stake.

I would say for Iran, that the Iranian government fundamentally understands that it is under siege by the west: it’s basically surrounded by US military bases. And to the extent that it’s able to extend either state or asymmetric, popular, militia-based arms-capacity, it’s able to exert a certain pressure against the US political goal of putting both economic, political and diplomatic pressure on it in order to collapse the state institutions and reverse the 1979 revolution. This is the keystone of US strategy in the region…to reverse 1979 and re-impose a client state on Iran. And also, the Gulf States and Israel also play their role in supporting and encouraging this strategy, but fundamentally it emanates from 1979 and US strategic preparedness.

And so Iranian support for Syria is quite defensive and reactive. Really, I think it’s the same for Russia. Yes, Russia does want to extend that and yes, it’s true that Russia appears to have reconstituted a Soviet military-industrial complex. And people are saying that its sale or other provisioning of weapons to the Syrian government is something that the domestic arms industries are profiting from…this may very well be true, but I don’t think it accounts for Russian involvement. I think Russia is also under siege by the US. There may be a partial rapprochement under Trump, but I think this is an attempt to target…if anything, it’s an attempt by the Trump administration to target China and Iran, and an attempt to leverage Russia outside of that so it can isolate and take them one by one, as opposed to the Obama administration strategy, which was kind of a full-spectrum confrontation. During the tailing days of the Obama government, they moved thousands of tanks right up, practically, to Russia’s western border. And Russia basically just recovered its Soviet levels of life expectancy, its percentage of GDP military spending – far, far, far under that of the US. All of this is very well known. What people mean by imperialism is that Russia’s doing something they don’t like and therefore it’s imperialism. And this is not a coherent theoretical account of imperialism at all. No one has made a coherent account of whether or not Russia is exporting a surplus, whether or not it’s securing profit from its endeavours in Syria. What it most resembles – speaking in broad terms – is actually the Soviet defensive strategy in Eastern Europe where it actually cost the Soviet Union money to uphold these states as a political/military defence line against US/European encroachment and aggression and which was along the historic invasion route through Germany into the USSR. I would say it has the most family resemblance to this pattern of action; whether or not it’s imperialist…is quite absurd.

The idea that Iran is acting in an imperialist manner in Syria just beggars belief. Such terms by these people are never applied to Saudi Arabia. I’ve seen estimates from Camille Otrakji – who is a Syrian who used to get quite a lot of coverage and is now excluded from western media – and he’s estimated that the collective western and GCC’s cost to support this war on Syria is 35-50 billion dollars: mercenaries and black-ops and weapons transfers and so forth. I don’t know whether that’s true – it strikes me as a ball-park estimate.

And the amount of Iranian troops that are on the ground is not very many at all. We don’t have accurate information, but we do have accurate information on death-counts for pro-government, non-Syrian militia and it’s a few thousand at most, whereas the broad range of anti-government militia, including Daesh and all the rest of the anti-government militia, the foreign dead, according to the count of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights – which is problematic but at least more credible than any other source on these – has put it at 50,000. So that tells you something about who’s doing the fighting. So sending in tens of thousands of mercenaries is not imperialism, but sending in a third or a quarter of that many is? I don’t know what kind of imperialism they’re talking about but it sounds more like they’re throwing around concepts to justify US aggression.

JP: Maybe we can move towards wrapping it up, but I wanted to return to your statement here where you say: “We were the first to raise our voices sice 2011 against the US/Gulf pouring weapons in when just thousand were dead, not hundreds of thousands.” And that really burns me to think about that, how long this has been allowed to go on, how many more deaths have happened because people just dug in, and joined a kind of an “anti-war” position and just kept digging in no matter what the facts on the ground were telling them.

MA: People will shift, at various times, their political position; the flood of propaganda about Syria was immense. Even now, I would say, it costs more to people to speak out about Syria than it costs them to speak out about Palestine. So if you look at US Middle East scholars and Middle East academics, the people speaking out against the US war on Syria are very few indeed. Even in 2011, by July-August-September-December, it was clear that there was a militarization going on, including offensive attacks against Syrian armed installations. There were reports of people crossing the Lebanese border. And Al Jazeera refused to air video of this by someone named Ghassan bin Jiddo, who went on to found the Pan Arabic, Al Mayadeen channel which has taken a very different stance on the Syrian conflict. He represented the Arab nationalist side at Al Jazeera, and he resigned from Al Jazeera because they wouldn’t share this video. And if one talks to Lebanese communists, they’ll say, “Yes, there were people, there were training camps in the north of Lebanon, they were sending fighters.

Now I don’t want to sidestep or really enter into a very fraught discussion about what was indeed going on in Syria, what was the dominant dynamic. Even very anti-imperialist media, a Lebanese leftist newspaper have criticized the Syrian government for putting in place what it called the “security solution” in response to what was going on in March-April-May, meaning, choosing to respond to nonviolent protests that were met with, sometimes, murder, in the words of a columnist for Al Akhbar.

Now again, whatever was going on in Syria – and I do think the rhetoric of the revolution was, at this stage, was far more a propaganda edifice than meant to illuminate what was going on in Syria. And as for what people outside were saying, you could barely trust it at all. It was clear that there was an attempt to use whatever went on in Syria to destroy Syria itself, as is the case basically on the entire planet.

The role of people in the core, in Canada and the US, was to identify what the government was doing and act to come out against it. And those of us speaking out about this were accused, even then, of “denying Arab agency”. We might say, “Ok, the US is basically acting with total convergence with Saudi Arabia and Qatar”, and they would say, “Well, you’re denying the agency of the Arab working class”. Well what does that mean? I mean these countries are, first of all, the modern states were half-created by the US, their entire capital flows, their developmental apparatus…you know, they rely 100% on the US: their treasuries go to the US, their weapons come from the US, the US police are there, they’re under the US security umbrella. In essence, they’re US protectorates. So what does this rhetoric of “agency” mean, other than to deny…

JP: I think it means “Shut up!”

MA: Yeah, it means “Shut up”, and the people saying “shut up” have been emerging from the woodwork since 2011. They want people to shut up, and that’s the basic agenda. I mean it was clear what turkey’s role has been and it’s clear that this has been in coordination with the US which has operating [bases?] in both Turkey and also in Jordan. And it’s been reported, including by Andrew Cockburn, that there are CIA agents coordinating weapons flows on the Turkish border, and there were militants going in, and the Turkish border guards going in. Now it was clear as early as 2011 that this was going on, and it was clear that Syria, already in 2011, was a massive international news item.

Now what the people saying that this wasn’t going on with US approval are suggesting, is that from 2011, Turkey, Jordan, and the Gulf States, historic US allies, were carrying out extensive operations in one of the most hot-button conflicts zones of US imperialism over the last 90 years, were carrying out huge policies that the US didn’t want them doing, and basically the US just did its best – unsuccessfully, perhaps – to control these people. And all it could do was to prevent anti-aircraft missiles?

The flip side of this is that to report a more complicated narrative going back to March 2011 or to this narrative of a popular revolution at all – and the revolution narrative has been used to justify any [ ] US/Gulf malfeasance in that arena.

Because revolution is meant to carry its own legitimacy. If there’s a revolution it doesn’t need to draw on any external claims for legitimacy, we just assume “Ok, there’s something beautiful going on and we need to support it, which is precisely why this revolution rhetoric continues to live on, because it serves quite a powerful purpose for destroying Syria. And so if there’s a revolution and it’s calling for US weapons, or if there’s a revolution calling for a US no-fly zone, at the very least – we might not need to support such actions – we certainly shouldn’t oppose it. Which was the same rhetoric of Gilbert Achcar, almost to the letter, about Libya. And the upshot of this has been that this war – which in the first six months claimed, at a very rough estimate, 3,500 lives. By now it has claimed maybe half a million.

Whatever one wants to claim about the violent role of the government, there’s zero dispute amongst serious people that the US role has been absolutely massive in destroying Syria. We know this both from open and public reporting and we know it because this is basically what the US government has announced that this is what it has wanted to do since 2006. It said, “We want to destabilize and destroy Syria.” And these people have said, “Ok we don’t want you opposing any of the violence. If you do, you’re responsible for what the Syrian government does.” Whereas they, who don’t want us opposing the US government, or the fighting, they who don’t want us to act to oppose the ongoing violence, don’t want to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions, which are basically meant to destroy the country. It’s very much upside-down in fact.

JP: Last question, where do you think this is all going. I mean, I studied Haiti, and in Haiti there was a fake revolution that was used to destroy an elected popular government and to then enact an occupation of the country that’s now gone on for, I guess it’s thirteen years now. And a lot of people supported that and said, “Ariside (who was president of Haiti at the time) has become unpopular; it’s time for him to go; and we support his overthrow from the left.” A lot of people who supported that have just kind of forgotten that they ever said that. You know, their statements have been scrubbed from the internet, and those of us who remember, don’t really talk about it anymore, because they’re back to doing their good work against neoliberalism, or whatever it was. So I’m sort of disgusted by that on the one hand but on the other hand I’m almost hopeful that that’s something that could happen for Syria where people will come around to this. But I don’t know, I don’t see a lot of people coming around even now. I wonder what your sense of it is. Is there any sense that this is changing on the horizon, or is this just a sign of how easy it is to capture and undermine solidarity in anti-imperialism.

MA: Broadly, I thin it’s a sign of how easy it is to capture people. People have to admit that they were wrong, that they were duped, or that they were complicit in lies. If this was 2013, you know there are people who switched positions. I think that was late, but people switched, finally. And people switched positions in 2014. We’re almost halfway through 2017. It’s very late for people to begin to switch positions, and accept that they were allied with US imperialism, that they were allied with Israel…

For one, it just seems very unlikely that they’re going to do it. For two, it seems that there’s still hope in pushing the destruction of Syria. I mean, the project is ongoing, because the scale of a US defeat is very large, and this is underappreciated. The US goal hasn’t necessarily been to overthrow the Syrian government; it’s been primarily to destroy Syria.

It’s also a very much wanted Syria to change course on foreign policy, because a foreign policy that supports the sovereignty of states, which is also the foreign policy, to some extent, of Palestine and to a much larger extent, of Iran. It’s a foreign policy that the US won’t tolerate in the region when its primary goal is to reverse the revolution of Iran. So this attack, this assault, is still ongoing, and many of these people stake out these positions, you know, they are the cultural compliment to this assault. I don’t think that they’re independent agents. I don’t actually think that they could be independent agents.

A lot of them are bought-and-paid-for. They have built lucrative careers and reputations by being intellectual mercenaries of a US assault on a sovereign country, which the US intends to continue until it is somehow forced to stop for one reason or another.

I haven’t really even thought or hoped for people to shift their ground, but what I have hoped for is people who are scared to speak out, to speak out. Those are the people I’m most concerned about. I hope that they can overcome the intimidation and the thuggery, and speak out in defence of Syria as a nation, and against the war going on against it, in which the US government is so heavily complicit. But for the other people, the real heavy ideologues, I don’t see them ever shifting.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 19, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

America today is caught in a plague of gun violence.

It wasn’t always this way. Americans used to own guns without engaging in daily massacres. Indeed, it always jumps out at me that the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929, when members of one Chicago gang set up and killed seven members of a rival gang, was so shocking it led to legislation that prohibits automatic weapons in the U.S.

Eighty-nine years later, though, in 2018, another Valentine’s Day shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killed 17 children and wounded 17 others. In response, then-President Donald Trump called for arming teachers, and the Republican-dominated Florida legislature rejected a bill that would have limited some high-capacity guns.

Our acceptance of violence today stands in striking contrast to Americans’ horror at the 1929 Valentine’s Day Massacre.

Today’s promotion of a certain kind of gun ownership has roots in the politics of the country since the Supreme Court handed down the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision, which declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Since Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt instituted a government that actively shaped the economy, businessmen who hated government regulation tried to rally opposition to get rid of that government. But Americans of the post-World War II years actually liked regulation of the runaway capitalism they blamed for the Great Depression.

The Brown v. Board decision changed the equation. It enabled those who opposed business regulation to reach back to a racist trope from the nation’s Reconstruction years after the Civil War. They argued that the active government after World War II was not simply regulating business. More important, they said, it was using tax dollars levied on hardworking white men to promote civil rights for undeserving Black people. The troops President Dwight Eisenhower sent to Little Rock Central High School in 1957, for example, didn’t come cheap. Civil Rights, then, promoted by the newly active federal government, were virtually socialism.

This argument had sharp teeth in the 1950s, as Americans recoiled from the growing influence of the U.S.S.R., but it came originally from the Reconstruction era. Then, white supremacist southerners who were determined to stop the federal government from enforcing Black rights argued that they were upset about Black participation in society not because of race—although of course they were—but rather because poor Black voters were electing lawmakers who were using white people’s tax dollars to lay roads, for example, or build schools.

In contrast to this apparent socialism, southern Democrats after the Civil War lionized the American cowboy, whom they mythologized as a white man (in fact, a third of the cowboys were men of color) who wanted nothing of the government but to be left alone (in reality, the cattle industry depended on the government). Out there on the western plains, the mythological cowboy worked hard for a day’s pay for moving cattle to a railhead, all the while fighting off Indigenous Americans, Mexicans, and rustlers who were trying to stop him.

That same mythological cowboy appeared in the 1950s to stand against what those opposed to business regulation and civil rights saw as the creeping socialism of their era. By 1959, there were 26 Westerns on TV, and in March 1959, eight of one week’s top shows were Westerns. They showed hardworking cowboys protecting their land from evildoers. The cowboys didn’t need help from their government; they made their own law with a gun.

In 1958, Republican Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona rocketed to prominence after he accused the president from his own party, Dwight Eisenhower, of embracing “the siren song of socialism.” Goldwater had come from a wealthy background after his family cashed in on the boom of federal money flowing to Arizona dam construction, but he presented himself to the media as a cowboy, telling stories of how his family had come to Arizona when “[t]here was no federal welfare system, no federally mandated employment insurance, no federal agency to monitor the purity of the air, the food we ate, or the water we drank,” and that “[e]verything that was done, we did it ourselves.” Goldwater opposed the Brown v. Board decision and Eisenhower’s decision to use troops to desegregate Little Rock Central High School.

Increasingly, those determined to destroy the postwar government emphasized the hardworking individual under siege by a large, grasping government that redistributed wealth to the undeserving, usually people of color. A big fan of Goldwater, Ronald Reagan famously developed a cowboy image even as he repeatedly warned of the “welfare queen” who lived large on government benefits she stole.

As late as 1968, the National Rifle Association supported some forms of gun control, but that changed in the 1980s as the organization affiliated itself with Reagan’s Republican Party. In 1981, an assassin attempted to kill the president and succeeded in badly wounding him, as well as injuring the president’s press secretary, James Brady, and two others. Despite pressure to limit gun ownership, in 1986, under pressure from the NRA, the Republican Congress did the opposite: it passed the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act, which erased many of the earlier controls on gun ownership, making it easier to buy, sell, and transport guns across state lines.

In 1987, Congress began to consider the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, otherwise known as the Brady Bill, to require background checks before gun purchases and to prevent certain transfer of guns across state lines. As soon as the measure was proposed, the NRA shifted into high gear to prevent its passage. The bill did not pass until 1993, under President Bill Clinton’s administration. The NRA set out to challenge the law in the courts.

While the challenges wound their way upward, the idea of individuals standing against a dangerous government became central to the Republican Party. By the 1990s, men increasingly vowed to take up arms against the government that talk radio hosts told them was bringing socialism to America. After April 19, 1993, when federal officers stormed the compound of a religious cult whose former members reported that their leader, David Koresh, was stockpiling weapons, talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones warned that the government was about to impose martial law. Angry opponents of the government began to organize as well-armed “militias.”

In 1997, the NRA’s challenges to the Brady Bill had made their way to the United States Supreme Court. Printz v. United States brought together the idea of unfettered gun ownership and Republican government. The court held that it was unconstitutional for the federal government to require states to perform background checks. This both freed up gun purchases and endorsed states’ rights, the principle at the heart of the Republican policy of dismantling the active government that regulates business and protects civil rights.

We are in a bizarre moment, as Republican lawmakers defend largely unlimited gun ownership even as recent polls show that 84% of voters, including 77% of Republicans, support background checks. The link between guns, cowboys, race, and government in America during Reconstruction, and again after the Brown v. Board decision, helps to explain why.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/a-joe-biden-white-house-will-have-little-time-and-less-lovefor-britains-trump-the-guardian/

A Joe Biden White House will have little time and less love for ‘Britain’s Trump’ - The Guardian

When the long race for the White House ends, another begins: the sprint to be the first European leader to be granted an audience by the new US president. In 2016, Theresa May was distraught to have got a wooden spoon in the competition to put in an early congratulatory telephone call to Trump Tower. That made her even more neuralgic about beating a path to Washington ahead of her European rivals. Mrs May had to throw in the promise of a Trump state visit to the UK – I rather rudely called it “pimping out the Queen” – to ensure that she got to the White House first.

This desperation can make British prime ministers look pathetically needy, but there is a reason why they set so much store by displays of proximity with the Oval Office. How important a prime minister is to the United States, the planet’s largest economy and most potent military force, sends a message about how much influence the UK wields in the world. So it is telling that Number 10 is resigned to the prospect that Boris Johnson will not be the first name on Joe Biden’s call sheet if he becomes the 46th president. Nor is there any expectation that Mr Johnson will be first in line when they hand out invitations to the White House. He has already quit a race UK prime ministers are usually pretty good at winning.

“There is an intrinsic problem for Boris,” observes Sir Christopher Meyer, the UK’s ambassador in Washington during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W Bush. “The Democrats think Boris is a pea from the same pod as Trump.” Being “Britain’s Trump” goes down almost as poisonously as being Trump himself among many in Team Biden. They are bracketed together in the minds of Democrats not just because both are rule-breaking populists who have polarised their countries and trashed historic alliances. Likely members of a Biden administration remember examples of the Tory leader’s insultingly Trumpian behaviour. Ben Rhodes, who was deputy national security adviser when Mr Biden was vice-president to Barack Obama, has remarked: “I’m old enough to remember when Boris Johnson said Obama opposed Brexit because he was Kenyan.” A more recent inflammatory episode exposed a complete absence of thought in Number 10 about the man whom the polls suggest will be the next US president.

It is set to start out as one of the frostiest relationships between Number 10 and the White House since Harold Wilson and Lyndon Johnson

One of the most essential things to know about Mr Biden – it would be on the first page if anyone wrote a book called Biden for Beginners – is that he is a Catholic who is extremely proud of his Irish ancestry. Mr Johnson was either blithe or ignorant about that when he declared that he was ready to break international law by dishonouring clauses concerning Ireland in the withdrawal agreement with the EU. Mr Biden was one of the voices in the chorus of American condemnation that the Johnson government was jeopardising the Good Friday agreement. “That was profoundly clumsy and stupid,” says Sir Chris. “It immediately ignited the Irish-American lobby in Washington, which is second in power only to the pro-Israeli lobby.”

Mr Johnson can be quite adept at shape-shifting when he thinks it suits his interests. He was a liberal mayor of London before he became the face of the anti-immigrant Brexit campaign. Confronted with a Democrat in the White House, he may try to slough off his Trumpian skin and offer himself as a useful partner for an internationalist president. For his part, Mr Biden will say that America’s ties with the UK are important to him, if only because that is what all American presidents say. It is nevertheless set to start out as one of the frostiest relationships between Number 10 and the White House since Harold Wilson and Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s.

Though Mr Biden has been a large figure in US politics for decades, one well-placed observer says that Number 10 is “absolutely clueless” about him and his key people. In the past, it has been usual for the Washington embassy to attach a diplomat to the campaigns of presidential candidates, the better to get to know their teams and likely priorities in office. Wary of any suggestion of outside interference in the US election, the Biden team banned meetings with foreign diplomats. Downing Street has found it hard to find other ways to establish connections. Previous Tory governments had good lines of communication to both parties in the US. This Brexiter-dominated cabinet has cultivated ties solely with Republicans. It was only very recently and very belatedly that Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, managed to get some time with Biden allies on Capitol Hill. If they were smarter, the Johnson government would also have paid a lot of attention to Mr Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, because she will be a 77-year-old’s heartbeat away from the presidency.

Even if a Biden administration decides to let bygones be bygones, the Johnson government will still struggle to make itself relevant in Washington. After a Trump presidency that has massively strained America’s historic alliances while often fawning to authoritarians, a Biden presidency will try to reassert US leadership of the world’s democracies. A critical feature of that will be detraumatising the transatlantic relationship. At a recent Ditchley conference of foreign policy experts from America, Britain and elsewhere, one question that preoccupied the gathering was who would become Mr Biden’s “special friend” in Europe. Emmanuel Macron is very eager to secure that status, though others familiar with thinking among the Biden team believe that their highest priority will be re-establishing strong relations with Germany. Almost no one expects the UK to have preferred partnership status.

Kamala Harris will be a 77-year-old’s heartbeat away from the presidency

After the huge distress to European leaders of enduring a US president who willed the breakup of the European Union, a Biden administration will revert to something much closer to America’s traditional post-1945 policy. Namely that US interests are best served by Europe being stable and cohesive. Having severed its central bond with its neighbours, the UK can no longer hope to offer itself to Washington as America’s bridge across the Atlantic.

Searching for areas where the relationship could still be close, some emphasise “the hard security issues” – military co-operation, counter-terrorism and intelligence – where there are mutual interests that have historically transcended the personalities of leaders. “When the Americans are looking for military help, they ask who are our allies and what have they got?” says one senior Tory who thinks this still matters. But Johnson government officials sound rather desperate when they try to talk up the importance of the UK’s much-reduced military heft. Mr Biden is not planning any wars and, even if he were, the United States can act without the help of Britain.

The biggest foreign policy challenge of the Biden presidency will be managing his country’s tense strategic competition with China while avoiding a deterioration into armed confrontation. Britain’s ability to be of use to Washington in that sphere is limited because our capacity to apply meaningful pressure on China is not high. The UK government has protested in vain about China’s treatment of Hong Kong.

Downing Street also sounds as if it is clutching at very feeble straws when it suggests that there will be an opportunity to win favour next year when Britain hosts the UN climate change conference. Mr Biden is not exactly a summit novice and his team have clocked that Britain was mealymouthed when Mr Trump ripped up American commitments to tackling the climate crisis.

There are compelling reasons why a change at the White House ought to unnerve Mr Johnson. The Trump presidency emboldens populist nationalists around the world by encouraging them to believe that they are part of an irresistibly triumphant global trend. Defeat for him will give his one term in office more the character of a freakish spasm and leave imitators looking like purveyors of an ideological style that is going out of fashion.

During the Trump period, Mr Johnson has tried to lever influence with other leaders by presenting himself as the man who has the ear of, and can help to interpret, the White House wild man. “Boris Johnson sold himself as the Trump whisperer,” says Jonathan Powell, a diplomat in Washington before he became Tony Blair’s chief of staff. “Without Trump, what is the point of Johnson?” More existentially, the British may ask themselves where his policies have left this country other than looking alone in a dangerous world. Brexit has fractured the relationship with Europe, one pillar of the postwar foreign policy. Now it looks highly likely that the other pillar, a close relationship with the US, will be shuddering.

• Andrew Rawnsley is Chief Political Commentator of the Observer

[polixy]

64% of Americans say social media have a mostly negative effect on the way things are going in the U.S. today

64% of Americans say social media have a mostly negative effect on the way things are going in the U.S. today;

About two-thirds of Americans (64%) say social media have a mostly negative effect on the way things are going in the country today, according to a Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults conducted July 13-19, 2020. Just one-in-ten Americans say social media sites have a mostly positive effect on the way things are going, and one-quarter say these platforms have a neither positive nor negative effect.

Those who have a negative view of the impact of social media mention, in particular, misinformation and the hate and harassment they see on social media. They also have concerns about users believing everything they see or read – or not being sure about what to believe. Additionally, they bemoan social media’s role in fomenting partisanship and polarization, the creation of echo chambers, and the perception that these platforms oppose President Donald Trump and conservatives.

This is part of a series of posts on Americans’ experiences with and attitudes about the role of social media in politics today. Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand how Americans think about the impact of social media on the way things are currently going in the country. To explore this, we surveyed 10,211 U.S. adults from July 13 to 19, 2020. Everyone who took part is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology.

Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and its methodology.

The public’s views on the positive and negative effect of social media vary widely by political affiliation and ideology. Across parties, larger shares describe social media’s impact as mostly negative rather than mostly positive, but this belief is particularly widespread among Republicans.

Roughly half of Democrats and independents who lean toward the Democratic Party (53%) say social media have a largely negative effect on the way things are going in the country today, compared with 78% of Republicans and leaners who say the same. Democrats are about three times as likely as Republicans to say these sites have a mostly positive impact (14% vs. 5%) and twice as likely to say social media have neither a positive nor negative effect (32% vs. 16%).

Among Democrats, there are no differences in these views along ideological lines. Republicans, however, are slightly more divided by ideology. Conservative Republicans are more likely than moderate to liberal Republicans to say social media have a mostly negative effect (83% vs. 70%). Conversely, moderate to liberal Republicans are more likely than their conservative counterparts to say social media have a mostly positive (8% vs. 4%) or neutral impact (21% vs. 13%).

Younger adults are more likely to say social media have a positive impact on the way things are going in the country and are less likely to believe social media sites have a negative impact compared with older Americans. For instance, 15% of those ages 18 to 29 say social media have a mostly positive effect on the way things are going in the country today, while just 8% of those over age 30 say the same. Americans 18 to 29 are also less likely than those 30 and older to say social media have a mostly negative impact (54% vs. 67%).

However, views among younger adults vary widely by partisanship. For example, 43% of Democrats ages 18 to 29 say social media have a mostly negative effect on the way things are going, compared with about three-quarters (76%) of Republicans in the same age group. In addition, these youngest Democrats are more likely than their Republican counterparts to say social media platforms have a mostly positive (20% vs. 6%) or neither a positive nor negative effect (35% vs. 18%) on the way things are going in the country today. This partisan division persists among those 30 and older, but most of the gaps are smaller than those seen within the younger cohort.

Views on the negative impact of social media vary only slightly between social media users (63%) and non-users (69%), with non-users being slightly more likely to say these sites have a negative impact. However, among social media users, those who say some or a lot of what they see on social media is related to politics are more likely than those who say a little or none of what they see on these sites is related to politics to think social media platforms have a mostly negative effect on the way things are going in the country today (65% vs. 50%).

Past Pew Research Center studies have drawn attention to the complicated relationships Americans have with social media. In 2019, a Center survey found that 72% of U.S. adults reported using at least one social media site. And while these platforms have been used for political and social activism and engagement, they also raise concerns among portions of the population. Some think political ads on these sites are unacceptable, and many object to the way social media platforms have been weaponized to spread made-up news and engender online harassment. At the same time, a share of users credit something they saw on social media with changing their views about a political or social issue. And growing shares of Americans who use these sites also report feeling worn out by political posts and discussions on social media.

Those who say social media have negative impact cite concerns about misinformation, hate, censorship; those who see positive impact cite being informed

When asked to elaborate on the main reason why they think social media have a mostly negative effect on the way things are going in this country today, roughly three-in-ten (28%) respondents who hold that view mention the spreading of misinformation and made-up news. Smaller shares reference examples of hate, harassment, conflict and extremism (16%) as a main reason, and 11% mention a perceived lack of critical thinking skills among many users – voicing concern about people who use these sites believing everything they see or read or being unsure about what to believe.

In written responses that mention misinformation or made-up news, a portion of adults often include references to the spread, speed and amount of false information available on these platforms. (Responses are lightly edited for spelling, style and readability.) For example:

“They allow for the rampant spread of misinformation.” –Man, 36

“False information is spread at lightning speed – and false information never seems to go away.” –Woman, 71

“Social media is rampant with misinformation both about the coronavirus and political and social issues, and the social media organizations do not do enough to combat this.” –Woman, 26

“Too much misinformation and lies are promoted from unsubstantiated sources that lead people to disregard vetted and expert information.” –Woman, 64

People’s responses that centered around hate, harassment, conflict or extremism in some way often mention concerns that social media contributes to incivility online tied to anonymity, the spreading of hate-filled ideas or conspiracies, or the incitement of violence.

“People say incendiary, stupid and thoughtless things online with the perception of anonymity that they would never say to someone else in person.” –Man, 53

“Promotes hate and extreme views and in some cases violence.” –Man, 69

“People don’t respect others’ opinions. They take it personally and try to fight with the other group. You can’t share your own thoughts on controversial topics without fearing someone will try to hurt you or your family.” –Woman, 65

“Social media is where people go to say some of the most hateful things they can imagine.” –Man, 46

About one-in-ten responses talk about how people on social media can be easily confused and believe everything they see or read or are not sure about what to believe.

“People believe everything they see and don’t verify its accuracy.” –Man, 75

“Many people can’t distinguish between real and fake news and information and share it without doing proper research …” –Man, 32

“You don’t know what’s fake or real.” –Man, 49

“It is hard to discern truth.” –Woman, 80

“People cannot distinguish fact from opinion, nor can they critically evaluate sources. They tend to believe everything they read, and when they see contradictory information (particularly propaganda), they shut down and don’t appear to trust any information.” –Man, 42

Smaller shares complain that the platforms censor content or allow material that is biased (9%), too negative (7%) or too steeped in partisanship and division (6%).

“Social media is censoring views that are different than theirs. There is no longer freedom of speech.” –Woman, 42

“It creates more divide between people with different viewpoints.” –Man, 37

“Focus is on negativity and encouraging angry behavior rather than doing something to help people and make the world better.” –Woman, 66

Far fewer Americans – 10% – say they believe social media has a mostly positive effect on the way things are going in the country today. When those who hold these positive views were asked about the main reason why they thought this, one-quarter say these sites help people stay informed and aware (25%) and about one-in-ten say they allow for communication, connection and community-building (12%).

“We are now aware of what’s happening around the world due to the social media outlet.” –Woman, 28

“It brings awareness to important issues that affect all Americans.” –Man, 60

“It brings people together; folks can see that there are others who share the same/similar experience, which is really important, especially when so many of us are isolated.” –Woman, 36

“Helps people stay connected and share experiences. I also get advice and recommendations via social media.” –Man, 32

“It keeps people connected who might feel lonely and alone if there did not have social media …” – Man, 65

Smaller shares tout social media as a place where marginalized people and groups have a voice (8%) and as a venue for activism and social movements (7%).

“Spreading activism and info and inspiring participation in Black Lives Matter.” –Woman, 31

“It gives average people an opportunity to voice and share their opinions.” –Man, 67

“Visibility – it has democratized access and provided platforms for voices who have been and continue to be oppressed.” –Woman, 27

Note: This is part of a series of blog posts leading up to the 2020 presidential election that explores the role of social media in politics today. Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and its methodology.

Other posts in this series:

Brooke Auxier  is a research associate focusing on internet and technology research at Pew Research Center.

; Blog (Fact Tank) – Pew Research Center; https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/15/64-of-americans-say-social-media-have-a-mostly-negative-effect-on-the-way-things-are-going-in-the-u-s-today/; https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/FT_20.10.13_SocialMediaNegative_feature.png?w=1200&h=628&crop=1; October 15, 2020 at 02:06PM