#yes racism and sexism also lost harris the presidency and i think sanders is kind of glossing over this aspect of it

[pjharvey]

tumblr is so funny bc people get so focused on like this insane little bubble of political thought that theres people who like think the most countercultural belief system u can have is being a normie lib who thinks bernie sanders is wrong.

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

@dykeofwellington

#he’s no better than any other politician

#and is indeed actively worse than quite a few

#politics

#us politics I am curious as to why you think he’s actively worse than someone like Steyer, or Tulsi Gabbard, or simply in general. Why do you feel he’s actively worse than the rest? I would also love to know who you think is the best choice out of the lot? and you’re reasoning behind that?

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Hey for some reason I can’t reblog the post where you asked the above about Bernie. I’m going to give a very brief rundown of thoughts. 

First, let’s clear up some rather broad, assumptions made: 

am curious as to why you think he’s actively worse than someone like Steyer, or Tulsi Gabbard, or simply in general. / Why do you feel he’s actively worse than the rest?

I never said any politician’s name. Just a general indication that he’s worse than a few. I think it’s interesting you assumed I meant those two and not that he’s worse than, let’s say, Julian Castro. 

I clearly said “no better than any other politician” which puts him on equal footing with Warren etc. so this assumption: Why do you feel he’s actively worse than the rest? is unwarranted. 

What I was saying was basically - no better than e.g. Warren and worse than quite a few e.g. Castro, Clinton (I know, come fight me leftists who drank the almost 30 years of GOP koolaid on her) etc. 

--

A quick rundown of issues I have with Bernie include, but are not limited to: 

Inability to deal with sexual harassment in his campaign in a meaningful way (he apologized and such, but there’s not to my eyes been a significant change)

General sexism in his campaign as well as sexism displayed by followers. He’s just got a sexism issue overall.

Lack of meaningful, recent civil rights record 

Unwilling to coalition build with colleagues in government (a profoundly necessary skill if you want to get anything done as president). Basically, he’s not a team player. We need team players. Team players is how DC works. (e.g. “Ms. Clinton, pointing out that Mr. Obama had to fight tooth-and-nail even for relatively centrist solutions such as the Affordable Care Act, draws the lesson that the next president must have a strong sense of practicality and realism; big rallies cannot wish away the complex politics of Congress. Mr. Sanders, by contrast, claims that Mr. Obama had insufficient revolutionary zeal.” Sanders’ view is not helpful nor realistic.) 

Lack of passing meaningful policy/legislation in his 25 years as senator which indicates an overall inability to solve issues within the existing system as well as a manifestation of the above mentioned inability to coalition build. While many senators propose many bills and pass few (that’s kind of par for the course) Sanders’ are particularly lack lustre. Of the seven enacted of which he was primary sponsor, three were designations (S. 885, H.J.Res. 231, S. 893) and one was a national park boundary movement (H.R. 1353). 

Bernie Sanders was the primary sponsor of seven bills that were enacted:

S. 885 (113th): A bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 35 Park Street in Danville, Vermont, as the “Thaddeus Stevens Post Office”.

S. 2782 (113th): A bill to amend title 36, United States Code, to improve the Federal charter for the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, and for other purposes

S. 893 (113th): Veterans’ Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act of 2013H.R. 5245 (109th): To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 1 Marble Street in Fair Haven, Vermont, as the “Matthew Lyon Post Office Building”.

H.J.Res. 129 (104th): Granting the consent of Congress to the Vermont-New Hampshire Interstate Public Water Supply Compact.

H.R. 1353 (102nd): Entitled the “Taconic Mountains Protection Act of 1991”.

H.J.Res. 132 (102nd): To designate March 4, 1991, as “Vermont Bicentennial Day”.

Medicare for All: it’s an incredibly complicated thing to implement and I’m personally not convinced Sanders’ plan is the right approach, nor that it would pass congress when introduced. 

Weak stance on gun control and relationship with the NRA

Tendency to shout over and shut people down, especially those asking questions he doesn’t want to answer 

His lack of attempting to control his supporters - their misogyny and racism - are indicative of the kind of person running the campaign. These things rot from top down. 

How powerfully his ego influences his actions, especially in 2016 when it took Obama hauling him into the white house before he finally stepped down and stopped running 

That whole Russia murkiness

His continued view that the primaries are rigged when they aren’t, he just lost, is actively harmful 

He has, or has benefited from, super PACs (he has some direct PAC contributions, but it’s not a large amount. Most of his benefits from PACs come in other forms than direct contributions). 

So, this is not something I particularly care about overall, because running for president is expensive (which is a Problem), and it’s a current reality to campaign financing. But he made such a big deal out of it I take vindictive pleasure in him having them/benefitting from them because I can now corner Luke Savage at a mutual friend’s annual Christmas party and tell him to shove it up his arse. 

Support of Gabbard who is a bit of a Russian plant (not to mention a terrible candidate overall) 

He is old, he is white, he is straight, he is cis, he is male - we have the most diverse range of potential nominees and if we think he’s the Answer or Saviour there’s a lot of unpacking of internalized stuff that needs to happen. 

A personal thing, but I really, really dislike his shoutiness. He reminds me of every socialist bro who has shouted down women and other marginalized people at parties I’ve been to (I know quite a few Jacobin/Socialist hacks e.g. aforementioned Luke Savage who uses the Sanders Certified approach If You Shout Enough They Can’t Get A Word In Therefore You Win to conversations and debates) and it leaves my skin crawling. 

No policy to address the needs and interests of First Nations/Native Americans including living standards, water access, education, treaty rights, any sort of reconciliation and addressing the issue of colonialism and genocide etc. (I think Castro is the only one with anything addressing Native American needs)

Breach of Clinton’s campaign voter data. Super. Shady. 

Ultimately, I’m not an idealist because idealism doesn’t make for good policy. While I dislike the term leftist because it invokes, to my mind, the blind, unthinking frothing wrath of Bernie Bros(tm), I do have leftist goals. 

However, I am practical about the approach, which will almost always be incremental. It’s like building a house: you lay foundations before you start on the walls, roof and insulation. Bernie wants an instant house to appear out of no where. That’s not how life nor government, works.

This isn’t to say we shouldn’t push to improve things and make for a better world, a more just society. But the reality is: we have a system we must work within and so we need people who can do that effectively. That said, we can and should try to improve the system on the way, as well. But burning it down and starting from scratch is a pipe dream. Best lay it to the side and fight for things that can actually improve lives today. In the here and now. 

in the end, I don’t like Bernie Sanders because he is an old, shouty white man driven by ego who is crude, mean, and isn’t a real democrat. I think we can do better. 

My current list of choices for the Democratic nominee (which is open to change. It will depend on how debates play out and further policy details put forward by candidates): 

Julian Castro (I like his platform the most; he has experience in DC from the Obama administration; knows how to be a team player; he’s young, intelligent and well spoken; has that “presidential” look that many voters like to see, which you know. Makes sense. Mostly I like his platform and everything I’ve heard and read about him has been positive. He also runs a (mostly) positive campaign! Unlike Some Old White Shouty Men. I can go on.)

Kamala Harris (She has a good platform with sound policy plans; she has grit and stamina needed to run against Trump; She runs a positive campaign - even using her funding to support other democrats currently primarying republicans/are just up for general re-election; she’s a senator so has experience and allies in DC with whom she can coalition build; she’s a team player; she will give us a good shot in Florida and N. Carolina; she has strong support from Black Americans who are the base of the democratic party; as DA she fought against prop 22 and prop 8 [yes, she’s not perfect as DA or AG but point to someone with a perfect track record. I’ll wait. I’m not here for perfection or purity politics, I’m here for someone who can win and will implement descent policy while in power], she pioneered one of the first open data initiative to expose racism in the legal system, lol she’s not a millionaire unlike Some Old White Shouty Man - which is neither here nor there for me personally, because again I’m realistic, just a refreshing thing. I can go on.) 

Elizabeth Warren (I’m rather luke-warm on her but she’s better than the other options.)

My ideal ticket, currently, is: Harris/Castro. 

Again - this is open to change. And, at the end of the day, I will vote for the democratic nominee in 2020 no matter what because we can’t have another four years of Trump. 

[latestnews2018-blog]

We Don't Need 'Who Is America?' To Tell Us How Bad Things Are

New Post has been published on https://latestnews2018.com/we-dont-need-who-is-america-to-tell-us-how-bad-things-are/

We Don't Need 'Who Is America?' To Tell Us How Bad Things Are

His pants lowered to bare his buttocks, Georgia state Rep. Jason Spencer scuttled backward at his opponent, who was portraying an Islamic terrorist. “America!” Spencer bellowed. “I will turn you into a homosexual!” he tells the terrorist.

Welcome to the second episode of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Showtime comedy “Who Is America?” The premiere arrived last week on a wave of critical buzz, thanks to a torrent of outraged statements from conservative politicos who’d been fooled by the actor into advocating for the arming of small children.

But despite the anticipation, the debut ratings were dismal. Though the numbers edged up with encore and On Demand viewings, viewership was weak compared with the debuts of cable TV’s recent successful political comedies, like TBS’s “Full Frontal with Sam Bee” and HBO’s “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.” Even Comedy Central’s “The Opposition with Jordan Klepper,” canceled thanks to abysmal ratings after one season, started stronger than Baron Cohen’s new vehicle.

Why is “Who Is America?” opening with more of a whimper than a bang? Perhaps we’re tired of political humor, or it’s been too long since Baron Cohen’s last hit. Or perhaps this particular brand of comedic exposé has lost its appeal. After all, it’s not like we really need it anymore to grasp how bad things are.

Not that Sunday night’s segment with Spencer wasn’t jaw-dropping. The Republican lawmaker believed he was taking part in anti-terrorism training with an Israeli former military officer, Erran Morad (Baron Cohen in heavy, rather obvious makeup). Morad put Spencer through his paces, having him participate in exercises in which he yelled racial slurs as a diversionary tactic, performed an offensive parody of a Chinese tourist, and took an upskirt photo of a person in a burka to check for weaponry. 

It was an astonishing display, even for a politician previously best known for threatening a former Democratic state rep — a black woman — that she might “go missing” in the swamp due to her public support for removing Confederate statues. Spencer, who in May’s GOP primary lost his bid for a fifth term, put out a statement before this embarrassing footage aired, saying, “It is clear the makers of this film intended to deceive me in an attempt to undermine the American conservative political movement.”

But meanwhile, the party’s leader, President Donald Trump, was in the midst of a rather typical evening of tweeting: referring to his long-ago opponent in the presidential election as “Crooked Hillary,” then sending an all-caps threat of military engagement to President Hassan Rouhani of Iran. 

Of course, no statement needed to be issued to explain how the president was tricked into this unhinged behavior. With Trump leading the way, conservatives have become more and more comfortable showing their own asses unprompted. 

Sure, it’s still quite alarming to see lobbyists and congressional representatives eagerly advocate arming kindergartners with stuffed animal guns. In the most successful sketch from the premiere, Morad peddles a program, “Kinder-Guardians,” intended to solve America’s school shooting epidemic by arming schoolchildren as young as four. As a work of entertainment, the segment is masterful ― and it takes the gun debate in a daring direction by pulling in the right-wing fascination with Israel and its military culture.

Showtime

Gun rights advocate Philip Van Cleave participating in an fictional ad campaign for stuffed animal guns for children in the premiere of “Who Is America?”

The Republicans caught by the Kinder-Guardians trick are defensive and embarrassed, at least for now. Being fooled by a liberal comedian makes them look gullible. But then again, they really weren’t fooled into revealing much that didn’t already exist out in the open.

There was a moment, when “Da Ali G Show” and “The Daily Show” were in their prime, that comedy like this could be genuinely revealing. In the old-fashioned days of the aughts, seeing Baron Cohen or a “Daily Show” correspondent coax a shocking statement out of a public figure, or even a random person on the street, had the power to truly jolt us.  Comedy interviews stood to expose the depths of our fellow humans’ carefully hidden cravenness, bigotry, ignorance, extremism.

“Da Ali G Show” character Borat Sagdiyev, a Kazakh reporter also played by Baron Cohen, made a specialty of baiting subjects with his own professed anti-Semitism, racism and sexism. During a wine-tasting segment, he asked Norman Harris, the head of a Mississippi wine organization, whether the black waiter was “his slave.” Harris responded that slavery had been outlawed, which was a good thing. “For them,” he added. “For you, not so much!” Borat replied jovially. Harris agreed.

“That guy normally would never say that he thought it’s a shame that slavery doesn’t exist anymore,” Baron Cohen told The New York Times. “But because he’s in the room with somebody who’s totally naïve and seems to not mind that slavery existed, he was fully honest.”

By comfortably displaying racist views, a character like Borat made interviewees feel safe in revealing their own. In another interview, the comedian described the technique as “a dramatic demonstration of how racism feeds on dumb conformity as much as rabid bigotry.”

Now, 14 years later, that seems hard to dispute. We don’t even need to turn to edgy comedy for overt demonstrations of the phenomenon. Trump himself functions as an always-in-character version of what Baron Cohen pretends to be for a comedy show: a public figure who offers tacit encouragement for others to voice and enact bigotry by doing so himself.

Baron Cohen’s variety of comedic exposé was perfectly engineered for a time when the kind of middle-class white liberals who watched “Ali G” and “The Daily Show” weren’t confronted with the extremity of others’ views all the time. Back then, it was relatively easy to avoid people who think things were better before the Civil War or that, I don’t know, you should give high-powered weaponry to children on the cusp of learning to use a fork.

But we’re bathed in it now, in the ambient Pizzagate conspiracy theories and “build the wall” rants we face on every platform. We don’t need Borat to bust GOP officials and candidates when they’re recklessly posting racist memes to their own Facebook pages. 

As for random citizens, they easily can, and do, broadcast their own anti-Semitic, misogynistic, anti-gun control and racist views to Twitter ― no comedic sting required. During the second episode, NPR host Dr. Nira Cain-N’Degeocello, another Baron Cohen character, announces the construction of an enormous new community mosque to a meeting of Kingman, Arizona, residents. They respond with trembling outrage; one shouts that he identifies as “racist against Muslims,” and several more argue that they already tolerate black people, although they don’t like it. The scene felt gratuitously painful, an unfunny rehash of a racist debate we already know too well.

Then again, much of Baron Cohen’s shtick has always been a straightforward troll. In “Who Is America?,” he subjects Bernie Sanders to a mathematically incomprehensible presentation on how to move all of the 99 percent into the 1 percent while the senator, with a single-mindedness familiar to those who followed the 2016 Democratic primary, steered the conversation back to his stump speech. This showed nothing new about Sanders, but Baron Cohen didn’t seem to be aiming to.

Showtime

“Bachelor” star Corinne Olympios poses as an aid worker who helped combat an ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. She didn’t perform such service, and the scene for the second episode of “Who Is America?” was filmed in front of a green screen.

Aside from Morad’s interviews with conservative officials and activists, Baron Cohen’s antics seemed tame, even pointless, compared with the charged conversations we deal with daily in real life. Take the segment in which one-time “Bachelor” star Corinne Olympios, while endorsing a fake charity supposedly providing relief for an Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, blankly reads a script for an ad urging people to support child soldiers by providing them with training and equipment. Yes, yes, reality stars will do anything for attention; it’s hard to recall a time when such a revelation would have rocked anyone to their core.

In “Who Is America?,” Baron Cohen repeatedly whiffs on opportunities to illuminate what bizarre things people really would support. Why send an absurd parody of a lefty NPR host to the home of GOP local bigwigs? Without exactly giving a flattering read to the Trump-supporting couple, it does offer them an opportunity to politely condemn behavior that most on the left would also decry, like forcing a young girl to stand while urinating. The takeaway is muddled at best. Getting liberals to cosign those choices on camera ― that might be a coup.

Resurrecting his particular brand of stunt comedy journalism ― honed in a very different cultural and political context ― for a Trump era already awash in gleeful incompetence, extremism and trolling, might seem like a perfect fit for the times. Instead, it’s outdated. (Perhaps that’s partly due to the outdated writers’ room, which consists entirely of men, including one who lost his job on “Inside Amy Schumer” after publicly bragging about choking his ex and sending hordes of sexist trolls after female writers.)

We also must ask whether his approach could be as harmful as it is informative and entertaining. Baron Cohen’s provocations have always raised the question of whether the end of exposing prejudice justifies the means of recreating it, and the evidence is piling up that comic bigotry may only make people more comfortable with the real thing. Take the spillage of Reddit Nazism-for-lolz into genuine radicalization and violence. Take Trump himself.

GOP politicians certainly haven’t become less openly racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Islam and sexist than they were when Baron Cohen first started scamming them in the early aughts. And given how far-right shit-posting has likely helped accommodate the country to outright white nationalism, I found myself wondering uncomfortably whether the guns-for-kids stunt on “Who Is America?” might not also be absorbed into the political debate. Maybe irony can move the  Overton Window, too. 

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