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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 2 years ago

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 15, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson

The Justice Department today announced the arrest of Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, also known as Ho Wan Kwok and Miles Guo, charged with defrauding followers of more than $1 billion. The 12-count indictment for wire fraud, securities fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering says Guo and a co-conspirator, Kin Ming Je, raised money by promising stock in Guo’s GTV Media Group, a high-end club, or cryptocurrency but then used the money themselves for items that included a $53,000 fireplace log holder, a watch storage box that cost almost $60,000, and two $36,000 mattresses, as well as more typical luxury items: a 50,000-square-foot mansion, a Lamborghini, and designer furniture.

The U.S. government seized more than $630 million from multiple bank accounts as well as other assets purchased with illicit money. If convicted, Guo faces up to 20 years in prison. Guo has attracted donors by developing the idea that he is a principled opponent of the Chinese Communist Party, but Dan Friedman, who writes on lobbying and corruption for Mother Jones, points out that this persona appears to be a grift. Guo is close to sometime Trump ally Steve Bannon, who was reading a book on Guo’s yacht, Lady May, when federal officers arrested him in 2020 for defrauding donors of $25 million in his “We Build the Wall” fundraising campaign. Rather than constructing a wall, Bannon and three associates funneled that money to themselves. Trump pardoned Bannon for that scheme hours before he left office. Friedman points out that prosecutors say Guo’s criminal conspiracy began in 2018, which is the year that Guo and Bannon launched The Rule of Law Foundation and the Rule of Law Society. They claimed the organizations would defend human rights in China and then, according to prosecutors, lured donors to other products. In April 2020, Guo and Bannon formed the GTV Media Group, which flooded the news with disinformation before the 2020 election, especially related to Hunter Biden and the novel coronavirus. Sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in September 2021 for the illegal sale of cryptocurrency, GTV paid more than $539 million to settle the case. Bannon’s War Room webcast features Guo performing its theme song. One of the entities Guo and Bannon created together is the “New Federal State of China,” which sponsored the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., earlier this month. In other money news, Hugo Lowell of The Guardian reported today that $8 million of the loans that bankrolled Trump’s social media platform Truth Social came from two entities that are associated with Anton Postolnikov, a relation of an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin named Aleksandr Smirnov. Banks continue to writhe, in Europe this time, as Credit Suisse disclosed problems in its reporting and its largest investor, Saudi National Bank, said it would not inject more cash into the institution. The government of Switzerland says it will backstop the bank. In the U.S., Michael Brown, a venture partner at Shield Capital and former head of the Defense Department’s Defense Innovation Unit, told Marcus Weisgerber and Patrick Tucker of Defense One that the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank had the potential to be a big problem for national security, since a number of the affected start-ups were working on projects for the defense sector. “If you want to kind of knock out the seed corn for the next decade or two of innovative tech, much of which we need for the competition with China, [collapsing SVB] would have been a very effective blow. [Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin] would have been cheering to see so many companies fail.” Federal and state investigators are looking into the role of Representative George Santos (R-NY) in the sale of a $19 million yacht from one of his wealthy donors to another, for which he collected a broker’s fee. In an interview with Semafor last December, Santos explained that his income had jumped from $55,000 in 2020 to enough money to loan his 2022 campaign $705,000 because he had begun to act as a broker for boat or plane sales. He told Semafor: “If you’re looking at a $20 million yacht, my referral fee there can be anywhere between $200,000 and $400,000.” Today’s emphasis on money and politics brings to mind the speech then–FBI director Robert Mueller gave in New York in 2011, warning about a new kind of national security threat: “so-called ‘iron triangles’ of organized criminals, corrupt government officials, and business leaders” allied not by religion or political inclinations, but by greed. It also brings to mind the adamant opposition of then–National Republican Senatorial Committee chair Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to campaign finance reform in 1997 after he raised a record-breaking amount of money for Republican candidates, saying that political donations are simply a form of free speech. The Supreme Court read that interpretation into law in the 2010 Citizens United decision, but the increasingly obvious links between money, politics, and national security suggest it might be worth revisiting. Money and politics are in the news in another way today, too, as part of the ongoing budget debates. A letter yesterday from the Congressional Budget Office to Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Ron Wyden (D-OR), answering their questions about how to eliminate the deficit by 2033, says that it is impossible to balance the budget by that year without either raising revenue or cutting either Social Security, Medicare, or defense spending. Even zeroing out all discretionary spending is not sufficient. Led by House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Republicans have promised they can do so, but they have not yet produced a budget. This CBO information makes their job harder. And finally, today, in Amarillo, Texas, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk held a hearing on the drug mifepristone, used in about half of medically induced abortions. The right-wing “Alliance Defending Freedom,” acting on behalf of antiabortion medical organizations and four doctors, is challenging the approval process the Food and Drug Administration used 22 years ago to argue that the drug should be prohibited. While the approval process took more than four years, it was conducted under an expedited process that speeds consideration of drugs that address life-threatening illnesses. “Pregnancy is not an illness,” senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom Julie Marie Blake said. And yet mifepristone is commonly used in case of miscarriage and for a number of other medical conditions. And Texas’s Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review, released in December 2022, concluded that from March 2021 to December 2022, at least 118 deaths in Texas were related to pregnancy. In 2020, 861 deaths in the U.S. were related to pregnancy, up from 754 in 2019. Public health officials note that extensive research both in the U.S. and in Europe has proven the medication is safe and effective. They warn that a judge’s overturning a drug’s FDA approval 20 years after the fact could upend the country’s entire drug-approval system, as approvals for coronavirus treatments, for example, become plagued by political challenges. Kacsmaryk was appointed by Trump and is well known for his right-wing views on abortion and same-sex marriage. Initially, he kept the hearing over a nationwide ban on the key drug used for medicated abortion off the docket, and in a phone call last Friday he asked lawyers not to publicize today’s hearing, saying he was concerned about safety. Legal observers were outraged at the attack on judicial transparency—a key part of our justice system—and Chris Geidner of LawDork outlined the many times Kacsmaryk had taken a stand in favor of the “public’s right to know.” According to Ian Millhiser of Vox, Kacsmaryk let 19 members of the press and 19 members of the public into today’s hearing.

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#heather cox richardson #Letters From An American #Corrupt GOP #Criminal GOP #Kacsmaryk #Corrupt SCOTUS #money in politics #Citizens United

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bopinion · 1 month ago

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2024 / 48

Aperçu of the week

“Life is lived forwards and understood backwards.”

(Søren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher, writer and theologian)

Bad News of the Week

Marine Le Pen from the right-wing populist French Rassemblement National and with a good chance of beating Emanuel Macron in the upcoming presidential election is on trial. In addition to a custodial sentence and fine, the public prosecutor's office is demanding that Le Pen is banned from standing in elections for five years for alleged embezzlement of EU funds. The proceedings were concluded last week and the verdict and sentence are expected to be announced at the beginning of 2025.

Jair Bolsonaro, former right-wing populist Brazilian president, is likely to stand trial soon. The federal police have presented “overwhelming evidence” to the public prosecutor's office that he was personally involved in planning a coup attempt when he lost the elections to Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro is already banned from running for political office until 2030. And after Vladimir Putin, the International Criminal Court has now also issued an arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes. Excellent. The rule of law at work. Everywhere in the world.

Everywhere in the world? No. Because in countries like Myanmar, Belarus or Equatorial Guinea there is no functioning rule of law. And neither in the USA. That may sound provocative. But the way in which the US legal system buckled before the legally convicted fraudster and rapist Donald J. Trump after his candidacy is not befitting of a constitutional state from A to Z. And after his election, all the things that were to be feared are now happening. And they don't look good.

The proceedings against Trump for attempted election fraud and a document affair are about to come to an end. Because he is about to return to the White House, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith has requested that they be dropped. The federal judge responsible, Tanya Chutkan, granted the request. The reason given was that it is "customary" for the Department of Justice not to take action against sitting presidents. Really? Out of tradition, so to speak? And only for the president? Sorry, but that is unworthy of a constitutional state.

I find the principle of pardons just as unworthy, illogical and incomprehensible. Governors can even save murderers from the electric chair (yes, that is also unworthy per se). And Trump has already taken advantage of this privilege. He first pardoned the father of his son-in-law Jared Kushner - Charles Kushner was convicted of illegal campaign financing, tax fraud and witness intimidation, among other things - and has now even appointed him as ambassador to France.

And this is not even a Republican “problem”. Joe Biden has just pardoned his son Hunter - who was theoretically facing up to 42 years in prison after being convicted of tax fraud and illegal gun possession. Just as Bill Clinton did to his half-brother accused of drug trafficking on his last day as president. For me that's qualifying for a Banana Republic. But it shouldn't for a democracy.

Good News of the Week

The traffic light coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals governing at the German federal level has collapsed, with early elections scheduled for the end of February 2025. All parties have more or less rushed into the election campaign, with special party conferences, candidate selection and programmatic positions taking place. Currently, more or less everyone is competing against everyone else. And of course there is a blame game for the traffic light break.

Many political observers expected the Liberals to be the party most likely to provoke a break in the coalition. Party leader Christian Lindner (called “Bambi” because of his quite innocent looks) had already caused a coalition to collapse - albeit during negotiations to form one - with the words “Better not to govern at all than to govern wrongly”. Now he was obviously of the same opinion again, otherwise one cannot understand his repeated attacks on his coalition partners. As finance minister, he has a decisive lever in his hand: money. And Lindner's fetish has always been the "debt brake", even if, according to economic experts, this system should be overhauled and, in the opinion of society at large, should no longer be sacred, at least in exceptional circumstances.

It is therefore not surprising that the biggest scandal of recent days concerns the Liberals. According to the official interpretation, the Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz had to dismiss his Finance Minister because the latter was no longer willing to compromise on budgetary issues. Days earlier, however, Lindner had already been exerting increasing pressure for economic policy reforms that no longer had anything to do with liberal politics, but were instead reactionary economic policy: less welfare state, less regulation, less climate protection. Instead, tax subsidies and cost reductions for industry. Unacceptable for the Social Democrats and Greens - of course.

And then a bombshell was dropped: in a strategy paper, the Liberals had planned in detail the deliberate break-up of the traffic light system. Including a date defined as “D-day” on which the “open field battle” was to begin. This paper was leaked. But its existence was not denied. But it was only circulated at party staff level. The leadership, board or ministers were not aware of it. And besides, it was completely normal to play through eventualities in theory. Since then, the General Secretary has resigned and the entire party has plummeted to 3%. As things stand today, the party would not enter parliament again (5% hurdle).

Why do I think this is good news? Because it is rare that those actually responsible are (or could be) held accountable. The last time the Liberals broke the coalition was in 1982 - against the Social Democrats. And then went back into government with the Conservatives under Helmut Kohl. And back then, the Liberals still had values with greats such as Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Otto Graf Lambsdorff. With today's Liberals, and Christian Lindner in particular, you get the feeling that it's not even client interests that count, but only personal ones. And that is not enough. They will probably have to pay a bill for this. And that's good.

I couldn't care less...

...that FIFA awarded the 2034 Men's Soccer World Cup to Saudi Arabia. Because we already knew about their corruption before the decision in favor of Russia and Qatar. But the official justification leaves me a little speechless: because the hosts' “unique, innovative and ambitious vision” would make it clear “that the bid offers significant opportunities for positive impact on human rights”. You really should think about boycotting. But I already went soft last time. Let's see.

It's fine with me...

...that Australia bans social media for minors younger than 16 years. Because, in the government's view, social media endangers the wellbeing of children and young people at the very least. I can live with that. After all, we also want our children to be 16 years old before they drink alcohol. And we also have something against bullying and exclusion and elitism in the schoolyard - so why not online too?

As I write this...

...I have to think about the general mood. According to a recent survey in Bavaria, only 12 percent are confident about the future. In contrast, 83 percent are worried about the situation in the country. And Bavaria is not only doing quite well comparatively speaking. But somehow it feels as if we all are lurching from one crisis to the next, falling from one hole to the next.

Post Scriptum

In the last chapter, we come to a truly catastrophic development - at least for me, who drinks five to ten espresso doppios a day (and also knows that this is too much): the price of coffee is rising to its highest level since 1977. Poor harvests and Donald Trump's customs policy are making coffee more expensive. Arabica beans are being traded on the New York commodity exchange at the highest level in almost 50 years. I will probably have to change my budget plans.

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cyarskaren52 · 1 year ago

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shaunking ➡️ When you’ve gone 75 years without an ounce of accountability, this is what happens when you enter the complicated legal bureaucracy of presidential politics. ⁣

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In some ways, becoming President was the WORST thing a law breaking scoundrel like Trump could ever do. He’s never been forced to follow the law until now, and it’s crashing down on him. ⁣

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So, this is, rightfully so, going to dominate the news for a very long time. ⁣

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Let me try to break a lot of facts down for you, OK?⁣

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1. Federal charges are ALWAYS serious and are ALWAYS hard to defeat. ⁣

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2. This was not an official announcement from the DOJ. It’s verified, but not official, if you know what I mean. The official announcement may not come until Tuesday, we are told. ⁣

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If it’s 7 different charges, as we are told, Trump is in a world of trouble. ⁣

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3. Trump has been charged already with local criminal charges by the Manhattan DA on a different case. He has another federal case other than this one pending that’s just focused on trying to illegally overturn the election. And he had a case in Georgia pending. And a case in NY state pending.⁣

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4. A special prosecutor named Jack Smith was appointed in this case. That’s also a nightmare for Trump. They literally hired Jack Smith away from the International Criminal Court where he prosecuted war criminals. ⁣

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He’s a serious, somber, methodical, thorough man. The last person you ever want to cross. ⁣

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5. Trump, for his own survival, is running for President because he thinks he can squash these federal charges if he wins. Or if another Republican wins they can, perhaps, pardon him if he’s convicted. ⁣

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6. But no President can pardon him from the state and city based cases piling up on him. ⁣

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7. Trump has a HORRIBLE legal team. He’s an awful client. He’s known to not only refuse to pay people, but it’s said that in some of these cases, the lawyers he hired have been asked to do illegal and unethical things. He burned through lawyers as President and before and after the elections. ⁣

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So now that he needs great ones, they are hard to find. ⁣

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8. Republicans are defending Trump without seeing the indictments. That might be a bad idea.⁣

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thewarfox · 1 month ago

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His denouncement of the Hunter Biden conviction and the subsequent 11 year pardon completely undermines the point he was trying to make, that political prosecutions undermine the faith in institutions. The reason this is a problem is that the things Hunter Biden is alleged to have taken part in per the contents of his own laptop are catastrophic breeches of institutional integrity. The tax charges he was found guilty of were things he pled guilty to. The pardon he received goes back to 2014, well before the above tax charges. 2014 is when Hunter was put on the board of Burisma, and when the US government assisted in a soft coup of Ukraine and turned it into a puppet state. If the allegations that Hunter has been a money man and influence peddler for Joe Biden are true, the faith in our institutions very much NEEDS to be in question. If we have elected officials, VICE PRESIDENTs who later become President, selling us out to other country's interests, we deserve to know. It is not acceptable to have us participating in a government where the activities of our elected officials are not known to us. If their children are using their parents' positions and power to get rich and sell us out, we deserve to know that. It needs to be investigated. It needs to be prosecuted. As long as things like this are alleged or rumored to have happened, it does far more to undermine the faith in our institutions than any prosecution could. John Fetterman has come a good distance towards becoming a good person, but he's not there yet. He's still a politician. He's covering his ass by coupling up Hunter's pardon with a hypothetical Trump pardon. He could have made a genuine point by isolating it to Trump. Hell, he could have had a separate point made about Hunter and it would have taken less away than addressing both at once. Hunter Biden's pardon is a blatant admission of criminality. It might as well be a banner that states, 'All your rumors and accusations were true.' hanging over Hunter Biden for the rest of his life. The Biden family legacy is tarnished forever, both from this action, and the disaster of the Joe Biden presidency. He should rightly go down as the worst president in US history. Even while he's leaving office he's trying to foment a civil war and World War III rather than try to maintain the nation's stability during the transfer of power. The only thing that might come out of Hunter's pardon of worth is the fact that his 5th Amendment rights to the time period between January 1st 2014 and December 1st 2024 no longer apply. He legally has to testify if he is made to do so under threat of contempt of court, of which he has no pardon to protect him from. If he is brought up to testify against his father or about his own actions, he has to respond or go to jail.

Will anything come of that? Probably not. But the influence of the Democrat party, and thus the people who would intimidate the court officers who might try to do this is on the decline. There's a non-zero chance, however small, that Hunter Biden sells an American citizen out one more time, but that citizen might be Joe Biden.

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darkarfs · 4 years ago

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single moments from the Trump presidency that would have defined/ended any other politician’s career

- saying he could “buy Greenland” - suggesting it was a good idea to nuke hurricanes - saying there would be fewer forest fires if we just got rid of all the leaves - asking Trudeau if Canada had tried to burn down the White House - autographing pictures of shooting victims - when he kept talking about how they drop bowling balls on cars to test them in japan and no one could figure out where he could have even gotten the idea - when he suggested Seoul should just move away from the North Korean border - introducing West Virginia’s governor as ‘the largest, most beautiful man’ - when he tweeted SEE YOU IN COURT! right after an appeals court ruled against him. like. yeah man. they just did. - the time he didn't know how to close an umbrella so he just dropped it and walked away - fighting with the Vietnam vets over whether napalm or agent orange is used in the Ride of the Valkyries scene in Apocalypse Now and then when they insisted it was napalm, Trump said they disagreed with him because they didn't like the movie (The line is famously, literally “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”) - using his position as the single most powerful person in the world to promote Goya canned beans - when he bragged about the crowd size at the hurricane shelter in coastal Texas (”what a turnout”) - signing Bibles. What. - thinking the F-22 is invisible to the naked eye - smiling and giving a thumbs up during a photo op with a baby orphaned by a mass shooting - putting a candy bar on a Minion’s head because he’s never interacted with a child before - when he interpreted some stray comment about transparency in the process to mean his border wall should literally be transparent, so passersby are not beaned by bundles of drugs and cans being thrown over the wall - the time he talked about having to flush his massive dumps 10 times and then immediately tried to blame the dumps on his supporters - the fake Sharpee’d hurricane map, which he did solely to not appear wrong on television - suggesting that federal employees working unpaid during the gov shutdown should just “do a work around” at the grocery store if they can’t pay for groceries - the fucking eclipse thing - the fucking three-pointers with paper towels to Puerto Rican hurricane victims - when he told thousands of Boy Scouts a story about his rich friend's fuckboat and then complained about Hilary for the remainder of the speech - when the called the CEO of Lockheed Martin “Marilyn Lockheed” (her last name is Hewson) which was objectively funnier than “Tim Apple” - when he picked an argument with Baltic world leaders because he thought the Baltics were the Balkans - the first time his team had a meeting in the cabinet room they couldn’t figure out how to turn on the lights and ended up just having the meeting in the dark - The time he said Andrew Jackson was "really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War, he said 'There's no reason for this.'" (Jackson died 16 years before the Civil War, and he owned 150 slaves.) - told a 7-year-old boy there was no Santa Claus on Christmas - the team of staffers whose only job was to tape back together documents he had torn up because he’s just THAT used to destroying evidence, because they couldn’t get him to stop ripping them up, but legally, the documents had to be archived - when he said the Continental Army took over the British airports during the Revolution - no sanctions on Russian soldiers killing American soldiers - “I take no responsibility for this pandemic.” - when touring the damage the Louisiana gulf coast after Hurricane Laura (just a few months ago!), he started giving first responders autographed pieces of paper, which he told them to sell on eBay for $10,000 - when he thought "clean coal" meant that the miners dug it out of the ground and physically cleaned it - the goddamn fast food catering - trying to trick the family of a teen killed by a US diplomat's wife who fled justice into meeting her, Ellen-style - pushing the Prime Minister of Montenegro out of the way to preen - that time he called into Fox & Friends and ranted for so long that they politely but firmly kicked him off - hiring an Obama impersonator solely to berate him - having a button installed on his desk that let him order Diet Coke on a whim. And sometimes using that button upwards of 13 times a day. - that time when a kid handed him a hat to sign, and he signed the hat, but instead of handing it back, he just threw it into the middle of the crowd - autographing the guestbook at the Holocaust memorial, with an added “had such a great time!” - when he zoned out and wondered where a woman's dead relatives were DIRECTLY after she had said her mother six brothers were killed. (Actual exchange: “They killed my mother, my six brothers...” “Where are they now?”) - sending 2,000 soldiers to the border to stop “the caravan,” having their pictures taken, and then recalling them all. - consoling a dead soldier’s family by saying “he knew what he was getting into.” - when he said no one could climb over the border wall because there would be no way down, and then belatedly remembered rope - when he congratulated the Great Lakes on their "record deepness" - calling Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas” at an event meant to honor Navajo code talkers - “Shithole countries” - calling Baltimore “rat-infested” - tweeting “too bad!” right after Elijah Cummings’ house was broken into - calling the White House “a dump” a month into moving in, which led to first both him and Melania, and then just Melania by herself, staying in Trump Tower for almost 5 months, costing taxpayers around $100,000 a day - an entire quarter of his presidency spent on his own golf courses, costing taxpayers around $141,000,000, NOT counting the Secret Service detail (they were charged for rooms and golf carts, since these were Trump’s OWN golf courses) - using “Pocahontas” again to slur Elizabeth Warren while talking down to a Native American journalist - holding a rally in Pittsburgh and trying to woo the locals by ranting about how the statue of Joe Paterno, the accused pedophilia enabler who was coach of a rival sports team, should go back up - confusingly having bigger salt and pepper shakers than everyone else in his administration, because everything to him is a dick-measuring contest - when he said he would “run in and take care of” school shooters, to school shooting victims - appointing fucking DeVos, Miller, Pompeo, Mnuchin, Nunes - inciting a seditious white supremacist mob to make sure he’s president until he’s 85, resulting in 5 dead (for which I am constantly wondering...”really? FOR THIS GUY?”) - drafted a proposal to open 94% of previously protected American shorelines to offshore drilling - when he walked up the stairs to Air Force One with toilet paper stuck to his shoe - at least 44 times in March, April and early May in which he downplayed the threat of the virus calling it “very well under control” again and again - when somebody asked him his favorite book and he pointed at a bookshelf and said “there are some over there” - meeting with the goddamn MyPillow guy to discuss overturning election results and declaring martial law - impeached twice, was golfing both times the vote went through - 70 pardons for known criminals (including Bannon), 70 sentences commuted, just to be a spiteful little toad - when he blathered on about how much he loved the queen, the totally hacked her off - when Hope Hicks steamed his pants as he was wearing them - getting mad-pissed at White House kitchen staff because they couldn’t recreate McDonald’s and it was too late to order and I wonder how much I missed. I bet there’s a McSweeney’s article listing all of it.

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carewyncromwell · 5 years ago

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“And so...esteemed members of the Wizengamot...based on the overwhelming evidence -- the factually bankrupt, inflammatory anti-Muggle and Muggle-born leaflets sent out by the defendant’s Commission and promoted by the defendant herself; the transcripts of trials overseen by the defendant that spell out blatant corruption and unsanctioned cross-examination techniques, including having Dementors present during all trials and actively refusing to give any defendant proper legal representation; the testimony of over fifty Ministry employees, speaking to the defendant’s close working relationships with known Death Eaters and to her own willingness to overlook Wizarding Law to advance herself and her Commission’s political aims; the countless memos written in the defendant’s own hand condemning nearly a thousand people, including over a hundred children, to unjust captivity; and the defendant’s well-known reputation among her ex-students, her coworkers, and even her own family for enjoying the suffering of others and persecuting fellow wizards and witches not just for their blood, but also for suffering from medical conditions like lycanthropy and blood maledictions -- all of which the defense has offered no suitable defense for, aside from incorrectly asserting that the defendant was ‘simply following orders’ from her superiors...I think there is no question as to her guilt, or to what justice would be appropriate.

Although I -- as a private citizen of the Wizarding World -- agree with Minister Shacklebolt’s measure to remove the Dementors from Azkaban prison...I must acknowledge that if there were ever a case for a criminal from our world deserving the Dementor’s Kiss...it would be Dolores Jane Umbridge. But because we -- unlike the defendant -- have a code of honor before us that we will not break just to achieve a political objective...I believe it’s our solemn duty to ensure this basilisk in human skin never walks free again.”

~Carewyn Cromwell, prosecutor for the trial of Dolores Umbridge // January 1999

Hey guys! So I came across this awesome fashion post and was reminded of dress robes...so here we have a 25-year-old Carewyn Cromwell as the lawyer in charge of prosecuting Dolores Umbridge for her crimes during the Second Wizarding War. She got her hair cut, as you can see! In the 90′s, when the original books are set, there was a lot less of the “big hair” popular during the 80′s, and short, more modest hairstyles became more common. Think of this as a #Future!MC Challenge? 8D

More Future!Carewyn lore under the cut!

The Second Wizarding War was...difficult for Carewyn. Although she had so much baggage with Dumbledore, she agreed to join the Order of the Phoenix, but only on her own terms. Carewyn never attended any of the Order’s meetings in person, preferring to stay in touch solely through her old friends Tonks and Jae, so as to stay at an advantageous position within the Ministry without Fudge suspecting her of associating with known Dumbledore allies like Professor McGonagall or the Weasleys. Even if she wasn’t very active on the battlefield against Voldemort, Carewyn nonetheless provided quite a bit of covert support to them by silently sabotaging Fudge and the Death Eaters at the Ministry. It was a struggle to stay silent and composed in the face of the Death Eaters’ tyrannical takeover of the Ministry and persecution of Muggle-borns and political dissidents, but Carewyn knew she had to strike at the proper moment, if she had any chance of delivering a fatal blow to someone as powerful as Voldemort. This doesn’t mean it wasn’t very, very hard for her not to lash out violently in defense of the people the Muggle-Born Registration Commission hauled into court on trumped-up charges. She was able to smuggle intelligence out to other Order members who helped with rescuing some of those prisoners or protecting wanted fugitives, but Carewyn never forgave herself about the many people she was unable to help.

Meanwhile Carewyn’s brother, Jacob Cromwell -- now a rather prominent Cursebreaker and traveling magical researcher -- helped the Order by hiding Muggle-born fugitives in a secret room he’d constructed in his flat. Even though Ministry officials searched his home multiple times, Jacob’s combination of both magical and Muggle tricks kept the families in his care from being detected every single time.

When the Battle of Hogwarts began, the Minister and his entire support staff left the Ministry to either join their true master Voldemort or (in the case of Percy Weasley) join the Order. Carewyn -- realizing how dangerous it would be to leave the Ministry unprotected when Voldemort and the Death Eaters were still at the height of their magical power -- instead stayed behind, incapacitated the head of the Muggle-born Registration Commission Dolores Umbridge, put her under citizen’s arrest, and took temporary charge over the remainder of the Ministry’s staff. Carewyn sent the majority of them either home to their families or to Hogwarts as reinforcements -- the few employees who chose to stay behind then helped Carewyn with securing the Ministry against a possible assault by the Death Eaters in case they returned and with starting the process of rescuing the Muggle-borns and political enemies imprisoned in Azkaban and its related camps. By the time the Battle of Hogwarts was over, the Death Eaters had lost everything -- their leader, most of their members, and all the power they’d accrued over the Wizarding World.

After the Battle, Carewyn arrived at Hogwarts, seeking out Jacob, who’d gone to fight in her stead, as well as Percy, who at that point would’ve been the legal successor to the role of Minister. While there, she learned of the deaths of Tonks, Lupin, and Fred. The three deaths, on top of the past deaths of other dear friends like Rowan, Cedric, Kyril @kyril-hphm, Moody, and Dobby, were too much for Carewyn to bear. Even now, years later, she resents herself for not having been able to take care of and protect her friends the way she thinks she should have.

Since Percy had resigned as Junior Undersecretary mid-battle, it was decided that an election would have to be held very quickly -- in the meantime, Kingsley Shacklebolt took on the role temporarily, with Carewyn, Arthur Weasley, and Percy serving as support. (Shacklebolt would go on to be nominated and elected Minister for several terms.) Carewyn specifically almost singlehandedly took on the task of bringing everyone who had aligned themselves with the Death Eaters to court to receive proper justice. Fortunately, unlike Barty Crouch, Sr. during the First Wizarding War, Carewyn never railroaded her defendants or lost sight of who she was getting justice for. Every time she faced an accused Death Eater or Voldemort sympathizer, Carewyn felt the presence of her friends in that courtroom with her. And when she looked into her defendants’ eyes and -- through her Legilimency -- saw no sincere love in their minds or souls, the lawyer once called “Cursebreaker Cromwell” became all the more convinced that love was the strongest magic of them all.

Interestingly, although Carewyn prosecuted all three Malfoys, she actually offered relevant evidence and testimony she came across in her own investigations to the defense attorneys assigned to Draco and Narcissa Malfoy. She never let go of her dislike for Lucius Malfoy or his wife, but perhaps because of her sympathy for Draco Malfoy’s position as well as her having met him when he was a kid, Carewyn didn’t express vocal disappointment when the Wizengamot pardoned the Malfoy family after the War. In Draco’s case specifically, Carewyn believed that he, unlike his parents, had the potential to reform himself. She even visited Draco after he was released from custody and -- reminding him of what he’d said to her before they’d parted ways so many years ago -- challenged him to a friendly duel.

Carewyn Cromwell’s name never became world-renown, but the cases she was involved in, both regarding the War and not, became her legacy. Thanks to her efforts, countless Death Eaters were arrested; victims of the Muggle-born Registration Commission received proper compensation and justice; the Statute of Secrecy was relaxed so that Muggle spouses of witches and wizards were allowed to know of their partner’s magical talent before having children with them; and the High Inquisitor position was dismantled so thoroughly that no similar position could ever be created again.

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coochiequeens · 4 years ago

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More than 200,000 women and girls are incarcerated in this country — 10,000 of them in federal prisons — and Danielle Metz used to be one of them.

Metz was married to an alleged drug kingpin and had two small children, 3 and 7 years old, when she was sentenced in 1993 for drug conspiracy and money laundering convictions. She had never been in legal trouble before, "not even a traffic ticket," she says. "I was sentenced to three life sentences and when I came in the system they didn't have parole or anything like that anymore. So I was just doing time day for day. The process was really hard. My family didn't know what to do in the beginning. I had exhausted my appeals. Clemency was my only hope."

Nothing came of Metz's first clemency petition, however things started to change when prosecutors wrote a letter to the Office of the Pardon Attorney on her behalf. In August 2016, President Barack Obama commuted her sentence.

That was after 23 years and 8 months of serving," Metz says.

The U.S. Constitution gives the president power to grant clemency for a person who committed a federal crime. Typically that's either a commutation, which reduces a person's sentence, or a pardon, which absolves them of a crime. Metz works now with the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls. As part of a clemency campaign, the group is asking President Biden to grant clemency to 100 women during his first 100 days in office.

The Council's founder and executive director Andrea James says draconian penalties and mandatory minimum sentences that escalated the country's "war on drugs" including the 1994 crime bill and the government's increased use of drug conspiracy charges swept up too many people who had marginal if any roles in drug trafficking.

"When I was in federal prison, there were women that were there for conspiracy who never touched a drug, they didn't see a drug," says James, who was incarcerated for two years on a wire fraud conviction. "If you took conspiracy out of the equation, you could not justify these women sitting in prison for 10, 15, 20, 25 years and life without parole sentences and it's just absolutely heartbreaking."

During his days in the U.S. Senate, Biden authored or supported many of the tough on crime bills that critics say have had a disparate impact on Black neighborhoods and increased the prison population. He has since offered criminal justice reforms that counter some of the earlier legislation. James and the National Council say the president should continue righting wrongs by granting the clemency requests of the 100 women they believe should be released.

The group's primary focus is on the elderly and women serving life without parole for drug cases.

"The second category are women who are sick," James says. "They have chronic or terminal illness and they are in prison during COVID-19.

The U.S. Department of Justice publishes clemency statistics going back to the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt in the 1900s. The numbers from recent years show President George W. Bush pardoned 189 people and commuted 11 sentences. Obama, who encouraged people to file petitions during his administration's clemency initiative, granted 212 pardons and commuted the sentences of 1,715 people. President Donald Trump, who largely bypassed the traditional Justice Department process for some of his clemency decisions, granted 143 pardons and commuted 94 sentences during his presidency. The Justice Department also shows, at last count, nearly 400 clemency petitions asking for President Biden to pardon or commute sentences have been filed.

Rachel Barkow, a New York University law professor and an expert on clemency, says there's certainly a need to grant thousands of clemency petitions. The problem she says is that the system is broken with no transparency about how requests are handled.

"It's a black box," Barkow says, "so there's no telling where those 100 women would fit in the clemency process or the Biden administration's priorities."

As part of Obama's clemency initiative, Barkow co-founded a clemency resource center that obtained commutations for 96 people. However, Barkow says the Obama initiative is also, in part, the reason why there is a 14,000 person clemency backlog since a deluge of women and men — more than 36,000 — filed clemency petitions during that time. And that backlog grew during the Trump administration.

Also at fault says Barkow is the slow, bureaucratic process of how clemency applications are approved or denied. It's a procedure that begins at the U.S. Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney. Barkow says its long past due to take the process out of the Justice Department and to let an independent body review clemency petitions and make recommendations to the president.

"It just does not make sense to ask prosecutors to make these decisions. There's a bias there," Barkow says. "The prosecutor who looks at is really focused on the initial crime and what the person did, but clemency is so much more about who that person is today."

So as the countdown on President Biden's first 100 days continues, incarcerated women, their families and supporters say they will continue to implore the president to grant 100 women clemency over the next few months. They will also urge him to ignore the presidential practice of offering clemency as a gift near the end of a term in office.

Biden should fix the mess he helped make.

#FreeHer #WarOnCrime #WarOnDrugs

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panicinthestudio · 4 years ago

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Dear America,

By inserting yourselves, your motives, and interests on a global scale and stage a macro social contract was made; nations, peoples, and allies followed you voluntarilty and involuntarily into revolution and wars on the lofty ideals of a responsive democratic republic.

We all should clearly understand this has historically been flawed if not hollow, with generations of ongoing slavery, genocide, racial and social inequity, and historic explicit and unsubtle violences towards your own people and other countries to name but a few scars. The claim to the wealthiest and most prosperous nation is a desperate one, when there is extreme affluence and privilege for a miniscule minority while access to basic necessities of food, clean water, education, and health care, let alone human rights and civil dignity for the populace are subject to the whims of political and economic gain.

There is no room to demure and romanticize the American democratic enterprise. Two centuries have been spent evading and fumbling the fundamental issues at the heart of your nation's history, mythology, and identities, namely an imperfect union that centers the world on a fulcrum underneath itself. Struggling to perfect its promises and guarantees is admirable, but proclaiming democracy has won the day doesn’t ring true in the waning days of Donald Trump’s political ascendance, the ongoing horrific pandemic response, and now the cracking of the electoral and constitutional structures of a government that is unable or unwilling to meaningfully restrain him.

Russia, China, and Iran have all isssued statements to take their cheap punches, angling to elevate themselves as if their respectively plutocratic, authoritarian, and theocratic regimes are untainted or are not situated in their current positions in many ways due to the trajectory of American politics.

This is who you are in this moment. Trump, his supporters, enablers, and the structures of power that allow this to continue aren’t some dark reflection or anomaly in American history, it’s a place you have repeatedly been before. It is late to claim a conscience after repeatedly failing to hold him, many of his now pardoned co-conspirators, cabinet, campaign, former and current staff, and the members of the Republican Party itself to their consititutional and legal responsibilties. It has long been in the realm of criminal negligence and conspiracy, instigating insurrection in response to normal electoral process, and some continuing to hold this line hours after being party and witness to an attack on the United States Capitol.

His concession would have been the bare minimum of norms after the November election, not as a non-apology for actively spreading disinformation and fomenting domestic terrorism aimed at disrupting the electoral vote tabulation weeks before inauguration. Peaceful transition of power is now openly marred. The resignations of his cabinet and staff do not read as acts of courage but reflect on the willful blindness they exercised in the months and years up to this point. Removal of their and their supporters rhetoric from the public sphere and ability to access social media piecemeal, heavily dependent on corporate policy and so late reveals that it was always possible to bring scrutiny to intent. The politicians, organizations, and people that have been providing Donald Trump and his circle cover must be held accountable; their contemptable actions and words over the years ought to be as strongly condemned as those who have participated in armed domestic terrorism.

What I ask is that the United States admit to its failings, as many other countries continue to struggle with; humble itself from the self-important pedestal on which it continues to prop itself up, and see itself through the lenses which other countries are forced to choose. Stop placing yourselves inside some constructed narrative of predestined perfection or exceptional excellence, only then can you hope to properly deal with the historical and all-too-relevant underbelly of hatred, violence, and undisguised opportunism. There is no healing when the infection and malignancy goes much deeper than the boil of Trump and his legacy. More than ever, be vigilant of the worst impulses and people in your midst willing to manifest them.

None of us are inside the city upon a hill--it will take more grit than better angels and striving for a more perfect union to even approach--but we may through great effort take that first step. Be better, America.

#US Capitol #politics #USA #history #Donald Trump #state of the world #writing

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years ago

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 8, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

On this day in 1974, President Gerald Ford granted “a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.” Ford said he was issuing the pardon to keep from roiling the “tranquility” the nation had begun to enjoy since Nixon stepped down. If Nixon were indicted and brought to trial, the trial would “cause prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and degradation a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States.”

Ford later said that he issued the pardon with the understanding that accepting a pardon was an admission of guilt. But Nixon refused to accept responsibility for the events surrounding the break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C.’s fashionable Watergate office building. He continued to maintain that he had done nothing wrong but was hounded from office by a “liberal” media.

Rather than being chastised by Watergate and the political fallout from it, a faction of Republicans continued to support the idea that Nixon had done nothing wrong when he covered up an attack on the Democrats before the 1972 election. Those Republicans followed Nixon’s strategy of dividing Americans. Part of that polarization was an increasing conviction that Republicans were justified in undercutting Democrats, who were somehow anti-American, even if it meant breaking laws.

In the 1980s, members of the Reagan administration did just that. They were so determined to provide funds for the Nicaraguan Contras, who were fighting the leftist Sandinista government, that they ignored a law passed by a Democratic Congress against such aid. In a terribly complicated plan, administration officials, led by National Security Adviser John Poindexter and his deputy Oliver North, secretly sold arms to Iran, which was on the U.S. terror list and thus ineligible for such a purchase, to try to put pressure on Iranian-backed Lebanese terrorists who were holding U.S. hostages. The other side of the deal was that they illegally funneled the money from the sales to the Contras.

Although Poindexter, North, and North’s secretary, Fawn Hall, destroyed crucial documents, enough evidence remained to indict more than a dozen participants, including Poindexter, North, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, and four CIA officials. But when he became president himself, Reagan’s vice president George H.W. Bush, himself a former CIA director and implicated in the scandal, pardoned those convicted or likely to be. He was advised to do so by his attorney general, William Barr (who later became attorney general for President Donald Trump).

With his attempt to use foreign policy to get himself reelected, Trump took attacks on democracy to a new level. In July 2019, he withheld congressionally appropriated money from Ukraine in order to force the country’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to announce he was opening an investigation into the son of then–Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden. That is, Trump used the weight of the U.S. government and its enormous power in foreign affairs to try to hamstring his Democratic opponent. When the story broke, Democrats in the House of Representatives called this attack on our democracy for what it was and impeached him, but Republicans voted to acquit.

It was a straight line from 2019’s attack to that of the weeks after the 2020 election, when the former president did all he could to stop the certification of the vote for Democrat Joe Biden. By January 6, though, Trump’s disdain for the law had spread to his supporters, who had learned over a generation to believe that Democrats were not legitimate leaders. Urged by Trump and other loyalists, they refused to accept the results of the election and stormed the Capitol to install the leader they wanted.

The injection of ordinary Americans into the political mix has changed the equation. While Ford recoiled from the prospect of putting a former president on trial, prosecutors today have seen no reason not to charge the people who stormed the Capitol. More than 570 have been charged so far.

Yesterday, a 67-year-old Idaho man, Duke Edward Wilson, pleaded guilty to obstruction of an official proceeding and assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers. He faces up to 8 years and a $250,000 fine for assaulting the law enforcement officers. And he faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for obstruction of an official proceeding.

This law was originally put in place in 1871 to stop members of the Ku Klux Klan from crushing state and local governments during Reconstruction.

If Wilson is facing such a punishment for his foot soldier part in obstructing an official proceeding in January, what will that mean for those higher up the ladder? Representative Eric Swalwell (D-CA) has sued Trump; Donald Trump, Jr.; Representative Mo Brooks (R-AL), who wore a bullet-proof vest to his speech at the January 6 rally; and Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who also spoke at the rally, for exactly that: obstructing an official proceeding.

Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS) launched a similar lawsuit against Trump, Giuliani, the Proud Boys, and the Oath Keepers, but withdrew from it when he became chair of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. Ten other Democratic House members are carrying the lawsuit forward: Representatives Karen R. Bass (CA), Stephen I. Cohen (TN), Veronica Escobar (TX), Pramila Jayapal (WA), Henry C. Johnson, Jr. (GA), Marcia C. Kaptur (OH), Barbara J. Lee (CA), Jerrold Nadler (NY), Maxine Waters (CA), and Bonnie M. Watson Coleman (NJ).

Lawyer and political observer Teri Kanefield writes on Just Security that there is “a considerable amount of publicly available information supporting an allegation that Trump and members of his inner circle intended the rallygoers to impede or delay the counting of electoral votes and certification of the election.” She points out that the rally was timed to spur attendees to go to the Capitol just as the counting of the electoral votes was scheduled to take place, and that in the midst of the attack, Giuliani left a voicemail for a senator asking him to slow down the proceedings into the next day.

At the end of the Civil War, General U.S. Grant and President Abraham Lincoln made a decision similar to Ford’s in 1974. They reasoned that being lenient with former Confederates, rather than punishing any of them for their attempt to destroy American democracy, would make them loyal to the Union and willing to embrace the new conditions of Black freedom. Instead, just as Nixon did, white southerners chose to interpret the government’s leniency as proof that they, the Confederates, had been right. Rather than dying in southern defeat, their conviction that some men were better than others, and that hierarchies should be written into American law, survived.

By the 1890s, the Confederate soldier had come to symbolize an individual standing firm against a socialist government controlled by workers and minorities; he was the eastern version of the western cowboy. Statues of Confederates began to sprout up around the country, although most of them were in the South. On what would become Monument Avenue, the white people of Richmond, Virginia, erected a statue to General Robert E. Lee in 1890, the same year the Mississippi Constitution officially suppressed the Black vote. Black leaders objected to the statue, but in vain.

Today, 131 years later, that statue came down.

Notes:

https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/speeches/740061.asp

https://www.cfr.org/blog/orlando-massacre-and-global-terrorism

https://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/prosecutions.php

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/swalwell-lawsuit-trump/6d4926e63b9a8fcd/full.pdf

https://www.justsecurity.org/75032/litigation-tracker-pending-criminal-and-civil-cases-against-donald-trump/#Thompson

https://www.justsecurity.org/78035/why-a-trump-lawsuit-to-protect-executive-privilege-could-backfire/

https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/idaho-man-pleads-guilty-assault-law-enforcement-and-obstruction-during-jan-6-capitol?s=03

Dr. Hilary Green @HilaryGreen77With Lee Monument coming down, I know that this site will be filled with apologists decrying the process. As someone who wrote about Richmond in book 1 and currently in book two, Black Richmonders rejected the Lost Cause monuments and routinely vocalized their discontent. 1/8

278 Retweets1,076 Likes

September 8th 2021

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/robert-e-lee-statue-removal/2021/09/08/1d9564ee-103d-11ec-9cb6-bf9351a25799_story.html

Sha

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #The Law #political #equal under the law #presidential pardons #above the law #consequences #sedition #treason #Civil War #history

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dweemeister · 4 years ago

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November 17, 2020

By Jonathan Mahler

(The New York Times Magazine) -- EARLY IN NOVEMBER, as President Trump challenged the integrity of the election with baseless lawsuits, Joe Biden delivered his first speech as president-elect, declaring it a “time to heal.” It was a phrase that many Americans were surely longing to hear, given the precarious state of the nation’s political culture. But it was also one that carried significant historical weight and possible implications for the future. When President Gerald R. Ford pardoned Richard Nixon for his role in the Watergate scandal, he, too, spoke about the need for “healing.” (Ford titled his subsequent memoir “A Time to Heal.”) When President Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address during the waning days of the Civil War, he spoke in similar terms about the imperative to “bind up the nation’s wounds.” Whether Biden intended to do so, his words provided an early signal about one of the first questions he is going to confront as president: What to do about Donald Trump? Biden faces many daunting challenges — mitigating the ongoing damage from the pandemic, repairing institutions, restoring faith in government — but how to deal with his predecessor’s flagrant and relentless subversion of the rule of law is in many ways the most vexing.

Last year, one of Trump’s lawyers, William Consovoy, memorably argued in open court that a sitting president could shoot a man in public and not be prosecuted. The legal validity of this claim notwithstanding, there is nothing to protect a former president from prosecution. No ex-president has ever been indicted before, but no president has ever left office with so much potential criminal liability.

As the election approached and the polls pointed to a Trump defeat, there was a growing sense that his moment of reckoning was coming. He was, after all, already the subject of a criminal investigation by the district attorney of Manhattan as well as a civil investigation by the attorney general of New York State. Both of those inquiries concern his conduct as a private businessman. The bigger and infinitely more fraught question is how to address Trump’s potentially criminal acts as a political candidate and president. Those would most likely be federal crimes that could only be prosecuted by the federal government.

As president, Trump cavalierly called for the imprisonment of political opponents, shattering a longstanding democratic norm. This is not a precedent to follow lightly. Presidents have historically gone out of their way to avoid using the power of the office to pursue their political rivals. When President George H.W. Bush pardoned six Reagan White House officials who were involved in the Iran-contra affair, he warned of “a profoundly troubling development in the political and legal climate of our country: the criminalization of policy differences.” Bush was sparing members of his own party. President Obama created what is perhaps an even more relevant precedent for Biden by choosing not to prosecute members of the George W. Bush administration who had authorized the unlawful torture of detainees; his nominee for attorney general, Eric Holder, used the very same phrase — the criminalization of policy differences — when the issue came up during a 2009 congressional hearing. Over the summer, I asked David Cole, the national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, what he thought would happen to Trump if he lost the election. “My gut is that you’re very unlikely to see a federal prosecution,” he told me. “For me, the real accountability will be on Nov. 3, if he is sent packing from the White House.”

It was a sentiment that I heard from a lot of legal thinkers and former government officials in the months leading up to the election: The visions of Donald Trump in an orange jumpsuit were more fantasy than reality. His true moment of reckoning would happen at the ballot box. But the election has now come and gone, and Trump, along with most of his party and many millions of Americans, has refused to accept the results. Accountability feels as if it might be further away than ever.

#Donald Trump #Joe Biden #Constitution #New York Times #New York Times Magazine

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exceptionalism · 4 years ago

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The final chapter in the Heaven's feel trilogy. Angra Mainyu has successfully possessed his vessel Sakura Matou . It's up to Rin, Shiro, and Rider to cleanse the grail or it will be the end of the world and magecraft as we all know it.

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Our relationship is strained. It feels like it has been for a while. For the last four years, there has been an elephant in the room — I’d joke and call it an orange elephant, but I’m nervous that might end this earnest conversation before it even begins. Have I changed? I mean, yes, of course I have. I’ve gotten older. I’ve had two children. I’ve tried to read and learn as much as possible, just as you taught me. In fact, that’s sort of the weirdest thing. I don’t think I’ve changed much. I still believe, deep in my bones, all the fundamental things you not only talked to me about, but showed me when I was little. I believe in character. I believe in competence. I believe in treating people decently. I believe in moderation. I believe in a better future and I believe in American exceptionalism, the idea that the system we were given by the Founding Fathers, although imperfect, has been an incredible vehicle for progress, moral improvement, and greatness, unlike any other system of government or country yet conceived. I believe this exceptionalism comes with responsibilities. Politically, I’m pretty much the same, too. Government is best when limited, but it’s nonetheless necessary. Fair but low taxes grow the economy. Rights must be protected, privacy respected. Partisanship stops at the water’s edge. No law can make people virtuous — that obligation rests on every individual. So how is it even possible that we’re here? Unable to travel, banned from entry by countless nations. The laughingstock of the developed world for our woeful response to a pandemic. 200,000 dead. It hasn’t been safe to see you guys or grandma for months, despite being just a plane ride away. My children — your grandchildren — are deprived of their friends and school. Meanwhile, the U.S., which was built on immigration — grandma being one who fled the ravages of war in Europe for a better life here — is now a bastion of anti-immigrant hysteria. Our relatives on your side fought for the Union in the Civil War. Great-grandpa fought against the Russians in WWI, and granddad landed at Normandy to stop the rise of fascism. And now people are marching with tiki-torches shouting, “the Jews will not replace us.” What is happening?! Black men are shot down in the streets? Foreign nations are offering bounties on American soldiers?

fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song release date fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song full movie fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song watch fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song stream fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song blu ray fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song reddit fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song dub fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song blu ray release date fate/stay night heaven's feel iii. spring song australia And the President of the United States defends, rationalizes, or does nothing to stop this? I’d say that’s insane, but I’m too heartbroken. Because every step of the way, I’ve heard you defend, rationalize, or enable him and the politicians around him. Not since I was a kid have I craved to hear your strong voice more, to hear you say anything reassuring, inspiring, morally cogent. If not for me, then for the world that will be left to your grandchildren. This does not feel like a good road we are going down… Look, I know you’re not to blame for this. You hold no position of power besides the one we all have as voters, but I guess I just always thought you believed in the lessons you taught me, and the things we used to listen to on talk radio on our drives home from the lake. All those conversations about American dignity, the power of private enterprise, the sacredness of the Oval Office, the primacy of the rule of law. Now Donald Trump gushes over foreign strongmen. He cheats on his wife with porn stars (and bribes them with illegal campaign funds). He attacks whistleblowers (career army officers, that is). He lies blatantly and habitually, about both the smallest and largest of things. He enriches himself, his family members, and his business with expenditures straight from the public treasury. And that’s just the stuff we know about. God knows what else has happened these last four years that executive privilege has allowed him to obscure from public view. I still think about the joke you made when we walked past Trump Tower in New York when I was kid. Tacky, you said. A reality show fool. Now that fool has his finger on the nuclear button — which I think he thinks is an actual button — and I can’t understand why you’re OK with this. I mean, the guy can’t even spell! You demanded better of me in the papers I turned in when I was in middle school. I know you don’t like any of it. If you’d have had your choice, any other Republican would have been elected but Trump. You’re not an extremist, and you’ve never once said anything as repulsive as what people now seem comfortable saying on TV and social media (and in emails to your son, I might add). Four years ago, I wrote to you to ask you not to vote for Donald Trump. But this time around, that’s no longer enough. At some point, just finding it all unpleasant and shaking your head at the tweets, while saying or doing nothing more about it, is moral complicity. You told me that as a kid! That the bad prevail when good people do nothing. A while back I emailed a friend of mine who is an advisor to the administration. I said to him, why do you think my dad’s support of Trump bothers me so much more than yours? Because it does. This is someone who helped put Trump in office and wants to keep him there, but we’re still friends. Talking to him doesn’t hurt my heart the way it does when politics come up over family meals. The man’s answer was telling, and I am quoting. He said, “Because I am irredeemable, but your dad ought to know better.” Does that register with you at all? One of the things you taught me well was how to spot a scam. Double check everything, you said. Do your research. Look at what the people around them say. Look at their history. Remember when you used to quote Reagan’s line to me, “Trust, but verify”? I’ve been lucky enough to make a few trips to Washington the last few years. I’ve sat across from Senators and Congressmen. I’ve talked to generals who have briefed the president, and business leaders who worked with him before the election. This is a guy who doesn’t read, they said, a guy with the attention span of a child. Everybody avoided doing business with him. Because he didn’t listen, because he stiffed people on bills, because he was clueless. He treated women horribly. He’s awful, they said. I thought this was a particularly damning line: If Donald Trump were even half-competent, one elected official told me, he could probably rule this country for 20 years. I have trouble figuring what’s worse — that he wants to, or that he wants to but isn’t competent enough to pull it off. Instead, Washington is so broken and so filled with cowards that Trump just spent the last four years breaking stuff and embarrassing himself. I learned from you how to recognize a dangerous or unreliable person. If you don’t trust the news, could you trust what I’m bringing you, right from the source? Let’s trust our gut, not our political sensibility. Based on what I’ve told you, and what you’ve seen: Would you let him manage your money? Would you want your wife or daughter to work for him without supervision? I’m not even sure I would stay in one of his hotels, after what I’ve read. Watching the RNC a few weeks ago, I wondered what planet I was on. What’s with all the yelling? How is this happening on the White House lawn? Why are his loser kids on the bill? His kid’s girlfriend??? And what is this picture of America they are painting? They are the ones in charge! Yet they choose to campaign against the dystopian nightmare that is 2020… which is to say, they are campaigning against themselves. Look, I agree there is crazy stuff happening in the world. The civil unrest is palpable, violence is on the rise, and Americans have never been so openly divided. Sure, rioting and looting are bad. But who is to blame for all the chaos? The President. Remember what you told me about the sign on Truman’s desk? The buck stops here. (May we contrast that with: “I don’t take responsibility at all.”) In any case, what some crazy people in Portland are doing is not ours to repeatedly disavow. What the president does? The citizens are complicit in that. Especially if we endorse it at the ballot box come November 3rd. Besides, what credibility do we have to insist on the ‘rule of law’ when eight of the president’s associates have faced criminal charges? His former lawyer went to jail, too! And then the president commutes their sentences, dangles pardons to keep them quiet, or tries to prevent them from cooperating with authorities? When he’s fined millions of dollars for illegally using his charity as a slush fund? When he cheats on his taxes? When he helped his parents avoid taxes, too? I remember you once told me the story of a police officer in your department who was caught filling up his personal car with gas paid for by the city. The problem, you said, wasn’t just the mistake. It was that when he was confronted by it, he lied. But the cameras showed the proof and so he was fired, for being untrustworthy most of all. Would you fire Trump if he worked for you? What kind of culture do you think your work would have had if the boss acted like Trump? As for the lying, that’s the craziest part, because we can, as the kids say, check the receipts: Was it bad enough to call John McCain a loser? Yes, but then, of course, Trump lied and claimed he didn’t. Bad enough to cheat on his wife? Yes, but of course, he lied about it, and committed crimes covering it up (which he also lied about). Was it bad enough to solicit help from Russia and Wikileaks in the election? Yes, but then he, his son, and his campaign have lied about it so many times, in so many forums, that some of them went to jail over it. Was it stupid that, in February, Trump was tweeting about how Covid-29 was like the flu and that we didn’t need to worry? Yes, but it takes on a different color when you listen to him tell Bob Woodward that in January he knew how bad it was, how much worse it was than even the worst flu, and that he was deliberately going to downplay the virus for political purposes. I’m sure we could quibble over some, but The Fact Checker database currently tallys over 20,000 lies since he took office. Even if we cut it in half, that’s insane! It’s impossible to deny: Trump lied, and Americans have died because of it. A friend of mine had a one-on-one dinner with Trump at the White House a while back. It was actually amazing, he said. Half the evening was spent telling lies about the size of his inaugural address. This was in private — not even for public relations purposes, and years after the controversy had died down. That’s when he realized: The lying is pathological. It can’t be helped. Which is to say, it makes a person unfit to lead. Politics should not come before family. I don’t want you to think this affects how I feel about you. But it does make it harder for us to spend time together — not just literally so, since Trump’s bumbling response to the pandemic has crippled America and made travel difficult. It’s that I feel grief. I feel real grief — were the lessons you taught me as a kid not true? Did you not mean them? Was it self-serving stuff to make sure I behaved? Was I a fool for listening? Or is it worse, that my own father cares more about his retirement accounts — and I’ll grant, the runup of the market has been nice for me, too — than the future he is leaving for his children? Are you so afraid of change, of that liberal boogeyman Limbaugh and Hannity and these other folks have concocted, that you’d rather entrust the country to a degenerate carnival barker than anyone else? I see all this anger, what is it that you’re so angry about? You’ve won. Society has worked for you. My own success is proof. So what is it? Because it can’t possibly be that you think this guy is trustworthy, decent, or kind. It’s definitely not about his policies… because almost every single one is anathema to what Republicans — and you — have talked about my entire life. The one thing I hold onto is hope. I believe in America. I believe in the goodness of hardworking people like you and Mom. I know that this is not what you wanted to happen, that this is not the America you grew up in nor the one you would like for me and my kids to grow up in. I hold onto hope that you’re tired enough to draw the line. That you are not irredeemable as that Trump advisor allowed himself to become. The right thing is always the right thing, you’ve said. Even when it’s hard. Even when it goes against what your friends think, or what you’ve done in the past. The right thing is obviously to end this. To cancel this horrendous experiment with its cavalcade of daily horrors and vulgarities and stupidities and historical humiliations. America is a great nation. …

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grandwizardcreation · 4 years ago

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fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song full m-o-v-i-e

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somethingusefulfromflorida · 5 years ago

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A Century in Review

1920, Republican Warren G. Harding is elected President of the United States. He is remembered for the Teapot Dome Scandal, in which he and members of his cabinet were bribed by private companies into giving them access to the Navy’s oil reserves. It was the biggest scandal in American history at the time, and Harding’s Secretary of the Interior was the first cabinet member ever to go to prison. Harding himself died two years into office, and is considered one of the worst Presidents of all time.

1928, Republican Herbert Hoover is elected President. He was appointed rather than elected to the only offices he’d held up to that point, and is remembered for destroying the economy during the Great Depression; he prevented the Federal Government from aiding in any relief efforts, insisting that the people pull themselves up by their bootstraps instead. Hoover is considered one of the worst Presidents of all time.

1968, Republican Richard Nixon is elected President. He is remembered for the Watergate Scandal, in which he ordered some goons to break into the DNC headquarters to dig up dirt on a political opponent, used that dirt to ruin his career and get re-elected, then covered it up. He admitted to all of this on his own Oval Office tape recorder, and was forced to release the tapes by unanimous Supreme Court decision; he lost all support, even from his own party, and resigned before he could be impeached, removed, and tried in criminal court (his successor immediately pardoned him to stop the trial before it started). Watergate has since surpassed Teapot Dome as the biggest scandal in American history, and Nixon is considered one of the worst Presidents of all time.

2000, Republican George W. Bush is NOT elected President. By all accounts he lost, but his brother Jeb was the Governor of Florida and said “well, no, actually he wins,” and the conservative-majority Supreme Court stopped the federally sanctioned recount to make it official. He was the least intelligent man to ever hold the office of the President, started two unending wars based on lies, killed countless civilians in the Middle East, put us on the path towards on Orwellian surveillance state, and plunged us into the worst economic recession since Hoover. Bush is considered one of the worst Presidents of all time.

2016, Republican Donald Trump is “elected” by an even smaller margin than Bush (the last Republican to actually win the presidency with a majority of the vote was Bush’s daddy in 1988). He made a career out of playing the heel, being as big an asshole as possible for publicity, reveling in cruelty, racism, xenophobia, and the worst disregard for the truth in American history. He is less intelligent than Bush, self-absorbed, petty, and pathologically incapable of empathy. More of his underlings have been indicted for crimes than the last five presidents combined, he tried to blackmail Ukraine into digging up dirt on a political opponent and was impeached for it, got away with it because his party didn’t want to hold him accountable, and has plunged us into an even worse recession than Bush did, in half the time. He purposefully fumbled his response to the pandemic so as to kill Black and Hispanic voters, and hid under his bed with the lights off like a punk ass bitch when protestors gathered outside his house. While it’s still relatively early, he is already considered one of the worst Presidents of all time.

I wonder what future the Republicans have in store for the country.

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 years ago

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#1yrago How Doonesbury helped turn George HW Bush into a mass-murdering war criminal

George HW Bush was a mass murderer and a war criminal and now he is dead.

In some ways, Bush I was fated to be a terrible person. His family fortune sprang from his father's willingness to cozy up to Hitler and sell him the steel he needed to re-arm Nazi Germany. As a young man, Bush I distinguished himself by desecrating indigenous graves.

But it was when Bush I's national political career took off in earnest, first as Reagan's VP and then as a presidential hopeful and finally as a one-term, failed president that he began to performatively inflict cruelty upon innocents, lying to the American people, victimizing people both retail and wholesale, all in the service of shaking off his media image as a "wimp."

Matt Taibbi (previously) is in characteristically fine form in tracing the path to dishonor pursued by George Herbert Walker Bush, the petty, spiteful campaigns he waged after being stung by mockery in the panels of Doonesbury (reminding us on the way of the enormous political power Garry Trudeau has quietly wielded down through the years, including the infliction of much-deserved psychic trauma on Trumplethinskin himself). Multiple sources, including George W Bush, have stated that Jeb Bush was so enraged by the toll this mockery took on "Poppy" that he vowed to go to New York City and kick Garry Trudeau's ass.

But Bush I's pricked ego didn't stop at stewing over Garry Trudeau. He and his team entrapped a young Black man into trying to sell crack in front of the White House, merely so he could go on TV and complain about the crack epidemic getting so bad that someone had been arrested for selling crack outside of the White House. The young man, an 18-year-old called Keith Jackson, went to prison for 8 years. Bush I didn't pardon Jackson on the way out: instead, he pardoned the Iran-Contra conspirators who ran huge quantities of cocaine to finance weapons for terrorists and training for murderous death squads.

The hagiography of Bush I before and after his death often compares him favorably to Trump, but the reality is that unless Trump launches a nuclear war, Bush I killed more people than Trump could ever be organized enough to kill, and did so for reasons of petty ego, American exceptionalism, racism and personal gain.

https://boingboing.net/2018/12/10/wimp.html

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theliberaltony · 5 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

When protests kicked off throughout the nation a week and a half ago, commentators turned to history to make sense of events. One year dominated the conversation: 1968. Racial tensions, clashes between police and protesters, a general sense of chaos — 1968 and 2020 seemed to have a lot in common. Observers wrote about how Trump’s use of “law and order” rhetoric echoed Richard Nixon and George Wallace in 1968. The comparison makes broader sense, too: 1968 was a destabilizing year in American politics, marked by Civil Rights protests, uprisings born out of racist oppression, assassinations, violence at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago (classified later as a “police riot”) and protests against the Vietnam War. Racial tensions and inequality were at the center of the instability that year, with the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. sparking uprisings in cities across the country.

But 1968 isn’t the only chapter in American history that’s relevant to the current crisis. America has a long history of racial injustice, which makes it difficult to isolate any one precedent for the current environment. History has a way of building on itself; the injustices of one generation are passed on to the next, even as incremental progress is made. This is why I want to share with you three other episodes that also help contextualize the moment we’re in now. They, like 1968 and the broader Civil Rights movement, highlight the depths of violence and injustice that black Americans have faced, and explain why everyday political processes have failed to bring about lasting systemic change.

1990s: National attention on police brutality spurs action … sort of

The early 1990s saw two connected developments that still shape the dynamics of policing in the U.S. First, in 1991, before there were cell phones everywhere, a witness in Los Angeles caught police officers beating Rodney King on a hand-held camcorder, and the video caught the nation’s attention. The four officers charged in the incident were acquitted, which sparked further national outrage, and some Los Angeles residents took to the streets, turning to violence and destruction of property. In total, the demonstrations lasted for five days.

The Rodney King episode is different in important ways from the protests happening now over George Floyd’s death, but there are still some similarities. Namely, it was a high-profile incident of police brutality that underscored just how differently police treat black Americans from white Americans. Additionally, a bystander’s video recording of the officers beating King brought the incident to national audiences, heightening a broad sense of injustice when the verdict was announced.

The fallout after the King verdict is worth considering in this moment. For one, some research shows that the event triggered lower public trust in the police in Los Angeles, especially among African Americans.

The role of the federal government is instructive here as well. In 1992, California Gov. Pete Wilson requested military assistance under the Insurrection Act of 1807, which Trump has suggested he might also invoke now. But LA’s ordeal also prompted federal change — Congress passed legislation allowing the Department of Justice to order reforms of police departments found to have engaged in misconduct. That ability has allowed the federal government to investigate police departments and root out poor practices. This oversight, however, has not been enough to prevent police killings, as we saw again with Floyd.

This provision was also part of a larger piece of anti-crime legislation — the now somewhat-infamous 1994 crime bill that helped create the mass incarceration crisis and forced recent Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden to confront their past stances on crime. The crime bill arguably helped to create some of the challenges today’s protesters are responding to. As sociologist Philip McHarris explained in The Washington Post, the bill “flooded black communities with police, helped states to build prisons and established harsher sentencing policies.” These policies not only helped to create the conditions for further police violence, but by expanding policing and incarceration in the U.S., they also helped to diminish the political power of many black communities through disenfranchisement and disengagement.

The point is that while focusing national attention on police brutality brought about needed change in some respects, reforms fall short when the system charged with implementing that change has racist origins.

Reconstruction: The federal government fails to protect black lives

After the American Civil War ended slavery in 1865, there was no road map for what Southern society would look like, but white Americans quickly adoped two major changes that harmed formerly enslaved people. First, Southern states passed laws restricting black citizens’ freedoms and essentially preserving the abuses of slavery. Second, violence against freed people living in those areas changed form but very much continued, and included the destruction of homes and churches, and sexual violence.

Particularly relevant to the current moment: Then-President Andrew Johnson allowed all this to happen. He failed to extend federal protection to the victims of the violence that Southern whites were engaging in, and, through his liberal use of pardons and lax loyalty requirements, he even allowed former Confederate leaders to find important roles in new state governments. These individuals, once in power, enacted oppressive measures. As historian Annette Gordon-Reed describes in her biography of Johnson, simple things like hunting and fishing became criminal activities for many black Americans, meaning they were increasingly dependent on their employers for their livelihoods.

Johnson’s decision to allow both state and non-state violence against southern blacks deeply shaped American racial politics. The laws states adopted in this period ultimately created the status quo that the civils rights movement of the 1960s pushed back against.

But this historical period is also a pivotal one in understanding race relations in America today as it highlights the lasting repercussions of morally bankrupts presidential judgment. As my colleague Perry Bacon and I wrote a few days ago, the events of the last few days — and years — suggest that Trump is not interested in using federal power to help those protesting racial injustice, and is, at best, indifferent to those goals. Experts have compared Johnson to Trump for years. History shows us that when federal leaders ignore racial injustice and violence — and certainly when they embody and enshrine it — that injustice and violence continues unabated, even if its form changes.

Early 1900s: Black Americans organized and met opposition at every turn

The power structure created after the Civil War led to a lynching crisis in the South (and elsewhere in the U.S.). Thousands of lives were lost in this brutal and inhumane system of vigilante justice — journalist Ida B. Wells, for instance, wrote extensively to document the violence of lynching and to spread awareness nationwide about what was happening.

But it is also in this dark chapter of American history that black American activists entered a new phase in organizing against systemic racism, using a variety of approaches. As political scientist Megan Ming Francis has written, this period gave birth to civil rights organizations like the NAACP, which pushed to change policy through Congress, the White House and the courts.

Those efforts made a real difference. Francis emphasizes the way in which black Americans organized and achieved these changes despite their exclusion from much of the political process and lack of traditional political power. These groups increased public awareness, improved legal standards and persuaded presidents to publicly denounce lynching.

The struggles of this movement, however, also illustrate how slow and frustrating it can be to work through official government channels. For instance, at the urging of these early civil rights activists, the House of Representatives passed an anti-lynching bill. But the bill died in the Senate after a filibuster, and no federal anti-lynching law was ever passed. (The latest anti-lynching bill was held up in the Senate as recently as June 4, 2020.) The American political system makes change difficult. In both Congress and the White House, Southern votes exerted a great deal of influence, and the opponents of an anti-lynching bill had both political power and the power of the status quo.

Every moment in history is distinct, and there are no perfect parallels for what’s happening in 2020. However, looking at other points in both the distant and recent past helps us see how deeply racial injustice is ingrained in the American system. The 1968 comparison can be helpful, but it also tempts us to frame the situation in terms of tranquility and unrest. But “tranquility” has been defined by those in power — almost always whites. Looking at other events helps answer some deeper questions about why people have taken to the streets to demand change and why protesters may be able to accomplish more faster by disrupting “normal” life. Because the system itself is part of the problem, politics, again and again, has set up the rules to make it difficult to pursue accountability and justice within the system.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Julia Azari

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grimnoire87 · 5 years ago

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I feel like people need to understand U.S. history to get why American minorities are very stressed about the possibility of a draft or a war with Iran. It is extremely frustrating to see how few people actually put effort into learning this even though they regularly make general criticisms about the US. Even a basic comprehension of U.S. current events would prepare someone to understand this. White Americans might be victimizing themselves but the rest of us are worried for a different reason and it needs to be recognized. And if you recognize it you probably can also understand why we bristle at the implication that we only benefit from a system that was built around enslaving or killing us or people who look like us, or why its so wrong to equate Soleimani to a black victim of police brutality.

People are able to have generalized discussions of US white supremacy and Imperialism but only in a way that reflects the last 50 years and only in a manner that treats it as just an external problem that never effects us here. Which is why folks sound so tone deaf when they talk about "Americans".

U.S. white supremacy was not built around fascism or the desire to police the rest of the world. Nor is Imperialism a US creation. Both takes are neo liberal ways to avoid responsibility and completely ahistorical.

Some context (warning, this will be a long post and might get redundant at times but I promise that there is a reason for it.):

Edited because I finally figured out how to install a break

The U.S. was, at one point, and English colony. It was "The New World" aka a just another colony in a long line European Imperialism. French, Spanish, and Dutch "explorers" also were making a mark on the continent. They were using and killing indigenous people and importing enslaved black people. Black and Native people have always been the first and most longstanding victims of U.S. agression. After the Revolutionary War, the new U.S. continued to expand, engaging in genocide against Black and Native peoples for hundreds if years. While the U.S. would eventually seek to expand its borders on the continent, in the beginning it was rather isolationist in regards to world affairs. Like Australia, their white supremacy was almost entirely "local" due to the nature of its origin, it wasn't powerful enough to take over entire countries on the other side of the world but it was powerful enough to murder and enslave people here .

White supremacy was central to that white American identity. American Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny (and US Imperialism in general) sprung from this new identity as a "White Christian Nation". Its similar to how the "White Man's Burden" was used to justify British Imperialism in Africa and Asia.

That was a tangent but...anyways. U.S. identity has always been fostered by the idea of the "other". For whiteness to function it needs an other or a scapegoat. And how does this relate to the fear if another war? Well all you have to look at the Civil War.

Black people were made into scapegoats on both sides. The Draft Riots were race riots where Irish draftees went out and burned a black orphanage and killed men, women and children. It got worse after that war ended. Black people in the North were scapegoated for the war, draft, and taking lower paying jobs. In the South, they were scapegoated for the loss of the economic and political power that came from slavery. Thus white resentment led to black people being tortured and terrorized by their white neighbors. They hunted us. This would be a common pattern, and would happen anytime white people felt anxiety over a war, economic problems, loss of political power, etc. They would ride out and sooner or later a black person, family, or entire town would be lynched. We were surrounded by a majority who could do what they wanted to us.

It was the same thing after WWI. Black vets would come home and wind up being the sole defense against white mobs numbering in the hundreds. The Red Summer consisted of massacre after massacre. There were no consequences for the perpetrators. Survivors were put in camps or prison, none would be compensated. And yes, by this point U.S. imperialism had allowed white Americans to continue to slaughter Natives and steal Mexico, and go beyond its shores to start wars to see which Imperialist nation could colonize where.

The U.S. has loved scapegoating "others" to justify limiting rights, expanding its borders, taking resources and supporting white supremacy. It was as American as apple pie. Look at the Japanese Internment. When Timothy McVeigh committed the Oklahoma City bombing, no one blamed white fundamentalists. He was seen as an individual.

That's not what happened in 2001. On Sept. 11, 2001, after a cowardly attack that killed close to 3,000, white anxiety would lead to the scapegoating of another community in a manner similar to how black people were scapegoated for the Civil War. It didn't matter that this mass murder was orchestrated by Saudi Arabia, "9/11 was committed by Muslims", therefore it was open season. Regardless of the fact that Muslims died in the attack and were the primary victims of these terrorist groups in the Middle East. They were at fault simply because they appeared to be "Muslim". And the US already had an issue with Islam because of its role in black civil rights. So that attack just made it worse and shifted the vitriol away from black Muslims and towards all Muslims. Folks would go out and hunt for Muslims and people would justify it. Mosques were being targeted in a manner similar to black churches in the South. They were criminalized into terrorists. And the Iraq War would only make this worse and create refugees that would come here and be scapegoated all over again. After the Pulse shooting white people railed against Muslims and Black Lives Matter, but Dylann Roof was just one person.

We have had laws passed that scrapped civil liberties, Trump had a Muslim travel ban list, ICE is actively detaining and deporting brown and black people, and modern weaponry and lax gun laws allow people to commit mass murder on a scale never seen before. White supremacists and Islamophobes have already killed people for "looking like Muslims". Black people are being killed by the thousands every year and we have to convince people we don't deserve to be murdered. People going out and assaulting/killing Jewish people. There is a lot to be anxious about over because white American aggression is not purely an external problem.

White anxiety and scapegoating gets people killed. Daily. And white Americans (just like Europeans) LOVE to take their frustrations out on a scapegoats and always have. Because U.S. white supremacy is built around the idea that whiteness entitles you to privilege and if you lack it than its someone else's fault and you have the right to hurt them for it.

And that is a very stressful reality when you are a minority surrounded by people with the privilege and power to harm you whenever they feel a little anxious. Especially when you have someone like Trump in power (unlike Obama he surrounded himself with white supremacists, courts them, and sics them on people). It doesn't matter whether there is a war or just an escalation of tensions. No matter whether there is a draft or not, you always be vulnerable to a white supremacist with an assault rifle who can walk into a Mosque and murder you by the dozen. U.S. history has set a precedent.

And imagine the horror of a draft! Imagine everyone between the ages of 18-35 being told they are in a lottery and if picked have to go to war (and potentially commit war crimes) or go to jail in a country that loves for profit prisons, locks up minorities, kills black and Native detainees and pardons people who murder prisoners of war. Use common sense. It is perfectly reasonable to be nervous about a draft here and you can't call people immoral for joining the military and then turn around and call kids selfish for being scared of being forced to do so. And a draft would only fan the flames of white resentment here just like what happened during the earlier drafts. There would be war crimes against Iranians, for sure. A draft would be awful. No one should be joking about it. It would be horrifying.

I was vague about it before because I figured that asking for empathy would be enough but it isn't. A lot of people talking about the Suleiman strike are far removed from U.S. white supremacy and don't necessarily understand our anxieties and it shows in how they talk about the situation and who "benefits". The fact that they think American minorities (especially Muslims) won't face *any* backlash or consequences for Trump's actions here is evidence enough.

This isn't an attempt to paint Americans into the victim of this situation with Iran. To do so would be despicable. And joking about it is in poor taste and can come off as cruel even if US minorities do it to cope with our reality here.

But acknowledging that U.S. minorities (including Iranian and Iraqi immigrants and refugees) will be at risk isn't taking away from Iranians or Iraqis in the Middle East. American minorities are here because of U.S. and European Imperialism. And it is a fact that Imperialism will lead to more deaths in an already traumatized region and it is a fact that white supremacy will put people in a precarious position here where they are more vulnerable to white aggression all year round. Both are true. Its not a competition and seeing US minorities talk about it shouldn't be bothering you because both are symptoms of the same problem.

Kind of a tl;dr: American minorities aren't being selfish (or US centric) by talking about their fears of war with Iran and a draft because many will be more vulnerable than they already are and U.S. history has demonstrated why these fears are valid. Learn it. It explains a lot of why we do what we do. Also a draft would terrible for Americans and devastating for Iranians (i.e. look at Vietnam). There us a difference between white Americans victimizing themselves and American PoC being worried about what this situation means for them. Learn the difference; those disclaimers are necessary for a reason. You dont show someone empathy by denying it to others, I wish more progressives figured this out. Its not a competition or ideological chess. People could and probably will die and its scary to be surrounded by angry white people just looking for an excuse (like a war).

#U.s. imperialism #long post #very long post #white supremacy #us history #antiblackness #islamophobia #racism #current events

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