Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors
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Saturday October 23, 2021 · 1:15 PM MDT
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Aldous J Pennyfarthing
Community Contributors Team
If U.S. democracy falls this century, it will likely be at the hands of a stubby-fingered sack of extra-piquant donkey farts who likely never bothered to read the Constitution he swore to uphold—and certainly didn’t understand it if he did bother. In other words, we’re at the stage in the Siegfried & Roy show where the tiger starts picturing Roy as a semi-ambulant canned ham.
Donald Trump is a buffoon, but he’s an evil buffoon, and it doesn’t actually take a smart man to demagogue against democracy. You simply need zero shame, a preternatural instinct for bullying, and a party full of Q-besotted quislings to go along with your rotten plans.
On Friday’s episode of The Beat With Ari Melber, Yale history professor Timothy Snyder didn’t mince words when it came to the ominous, anti-democratic forces that are currently gathering to storm the gates of our venerable republic.
After Melber noted that several Big Lie proponents are running (with the backing of the ocher abomination) for secretary of state positions in several U.S. states—which would give them a great deal of control over the 2024 election in some key swing states—he had an unsettling talk with Snyder, an expert on authoritarianism and author of the book On Tyranny.
Transcript!
ARI MELBER: “When you see this effort to put this much pressure on installing partisan officials who’ve embraced lies and tried to overturn elections in these official positions for next election, how concerned should we be? What, if any, foreign analogs do you see?”
TIMOTHY SNYDER: “Well, as someone who follows contemporary Russia, there is a Russian phrase that comes to mind, which is ‘the administrative resource.’ What the administrative resource means in Russian is that, sure, you have an election, but the people who are running the election are going to determine how the election turns out. What the Republicans are going for is precisely that thing—the administrative resource.
Historically speaking, what we know about a big lie is that, because of its very scale, it’s not about truth or not-truth, it’s about living in a kind of alternative reality. And what we’re looking at is people who believe in or pretend to believe in this Big Lie actually carrying out our elections. And the problem with this, or one of them, is that, since these people have already claimed that the other side cheated, that basically legitimates their cheating. In other words, if you talk about the Big Lie now, you’re basically promising to cheat the next time around, and that’s very concerning.” Snyder has special insight into authoritarian regimes and movements, but anyone who watches sports also recognizes this tactic. It’s called “working the refs.” By complaining about every call, this theory goes, you’re more likely to get favorable treatment in the future. Now imagine if every Super Bowl was decided by referees who were handpicked by one side because they thought their team had been ripped off the previous year.
MELBER: “How worried are you that the United States could face a situation where coordinated efforts by these kind of officials could actually swing an election?”
SNYDER: “Oh, we don’t need the ‘could’ ... I mean, I would say we should be thinking of this as what is happening, and then ask ourselves what we can do to prevent it. I mean, it’s very clear that some combination of people who talk about the Big Lie being in important administrative posts, along with nonlegal or extralegal reviews of the election, perhaps along with states claiming for themselves the right to allocate electoral votes against the wishes of their own people. Some combination of that is clearly in the works, alongside voter suppression, which has a long and dark history in our country.
The scenario for 2024, for most influential people around Donald Trump, which unfortunately means one of the political parties, is precisely to be installed without winning the election. That’s very consistent with everything Mr. Trump has ever said—in 2016, 2020, and now. So I don’t think it’s something that could happen; I think it’s something that’s underway, and the question is, can we accept this reality in time to take the measures we need to take to prevent it?”
It can be easy to forget that Donald Trump has been undermining confidence in our elections for at least six years. He claimed fraud in the election he won. He also tried to claim Texas Sen. Ted Cruz stole the Iowa Caucus from him. This is what he does. Part of it is just garden-variety childishness. His ego can’t sustain the kind of wound that comes with losing a presidential election. But he also appears to be plotting to rig the game ahead of time. The guy pulled out all the stops in the last election, and only the actions of a few brave election officials and secretaries of state saved us from a full-blown constitutional crisis. What if those people are sidelined next time around?
And the potential problems aren’t simply at the secretary of state level. On Thursday, Talking Points Memo explored Michigan Republicans’ recent efforts to place Big Lie adherents on local boards of canvassers.
For example, Robert Boyd, a new member of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, which certifies vote totals for the Detroit area, is still convinced the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.
Talking Points Memo:
[Boyd is] one of several new members of such boards around the state, chosen by local Republican leaders, who are replacing incumbents who voted to certify the last election under immense, nationwide pressure from their party. The Detroit News first reported on the wave of replacements last week, including incumbents who wanted to be renominated but weren’t.
Unlike the canvasser he’s replacing, Boyd says he would not have certified the 2020 vote. Even now, after numerous local audits and a Republican-led state Senate investigation found no basis for Donald Trump’s lies about a stolen 2020 election, he remains unconvinced.
“That’s one side,” Boyd said of the investigation. “The other side, as I say, is thinking that there was some hanky panky going on.”
Donald Trump doesn’t tell the truth for the simple reason that he doesn’t care about it. It’s irrelevant to his fantasy, in which he’s the greatest president, human, and sentient being in the history of the universe. He wants a rigged game, and he’s been greasing the skids for fascism by constantly accusing the other side of exactly what he’s doing.
As Snyder warns, we need to wake up now, because democracy is on a razor’s edge, and the bleeding has already started.
Saturday, October 23, 2021
Why 52% of Trump Supporters favor seceding from the Nation (Lord, let these people go.)
I’ve read a lot of right-wing rhetoric in my time. From Newt Gingrich to Paul Ryan and on and on, I’ve gone through quite a bit of it. After all this time, I can conclusively say that I haven’t read any right-wing arguments that didn’t have a lie and a delusion hiding in the heart of it. Sometimes several lies.
So somehow I stumbled upon this responding DesMoines Register op-ed from Iowa Rep. Steven Holt. Now, it’s a thing. If I get through it and find something true, I’ll be stunned.
I read with amused frustration Rekha Basu’s Oct. 8 opinion piece in which she spoke of the parallel universe she felt she was living in, seemingly oblivious to the reasons that 52% of Donald Trump supporters favor seceding from the Union.
Wherein Mr. Holt attempts to explain to poor uninformed Ms. Basu exactly why more than half of Trump supporters are basically ready to give this entire "America" thing up much like their essential inspiration from 160 years ago — the Confederates — previously did.
Rekha, those 52% understand what America once was and what it is becoming. They cherish their freedom and liberty, they understand the importance of our founding values, and they see the destruction of those values taking place before their eyes. They fear for the future of their children and grandchildren as America becomes increasingly unrecognizable. Almost everything about America that would previously have been thought to be unthinkable is now taking place.
“They cherish their freedom and liberty.”
I think this is absolutely true (Shocker), they do cherish “their
freedom and liberty,” however, what they don’t cherish and treasure is my liberty and freedom
or for that matter, your liberty and freedom. They want what they
want, they want it when they want it and they don’t much care who they
have to take it from.
They are essentially selfish and myopic. Entitled.
They don’t want to wear masks because they're uncomfortable; they don't care that it not only protects them from a deadly virus, it protects me and you from a deadly virus. They don’t want to be vaccinated because they don’t trust the NIH or the CDC; they don’t much seem to care that about the evidence that 200 million Americans have already been vaccinated and they’re doing just fine, while those who are unvaccinated are dying by the thousands. They want the freedom for their votes to be counted, but they don’t much care for the liberty and freedom of other people — mostly black and brown people —- who voted in Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Phoenix, Houston and Austin. They are highly energized by “Critical Race Theory” which in actuality merely discusses the fact that systemic racism is not just predicated on the negative action of certain bigoted individuals, but is actually the result of a larger system which has bias designed into its core.
Case in point: Black and White people use and sell drugs at similar rates, however, it is largely black and brown people who are arrested, prosecuted and convicted for drug crimes to the point that they represent over 60% of those in prison on those charges. That is not the result of a set of strategically placed biased individuals, that’s the result of a biased system. It's not that every cop or judge is a bigot, it's that they operating in a system that was specifically designed, during the post-Civil War era, to work this way. It's doing what it was made to do. It needs to be severely reformed.
“...they understand the importance of our founding values, and they see the destruction of those values taking place before their eyes.”
Which values are those exactly? Are we talking about the “values” of the declaration of independence which proclaimed “all men are created equal” or the reality of compromise reflected in the founding version of the Constitution which only valued certain citizens as only worth 3/5ths of others and implemented the Fugitive Slave Clause which required Free States to do the dirty work for the Slave States? Which didn’t value women at all. Which actually only valued monied white men who owned property?
“...they see the destruction of those values taking place before their eyes.”
Yes, actually — they do (Shocker again) because in reality and fact those were essentially the values of white power and white supremacy. This country was indeed founded on those values and they are slowly being destroyed. Bit by bit, brick by brick. I understand fully that this terrifies Trump voters. It should.
“They fear for the future of their children and grandchildren as America becomes increasingly unrecognizable.”
You mean increasingly brown. Filled with black people, filled with Latinos, filled with Muslims. Yes, things will be unrecognizable, if you look at them entirely through paranoid white eyes.
This section of his op-ed reads like platitudes toward freedom and liberty, but in fact it is only liberty and freedom for some, certainly not all. It’s a paeon to White Identity Politics.
Trump supporters of course reject the idea that they are motivated by racism, bigotry and fear. But then again the Pew polls indicate that they are some of the least empathetic to the struggles of minorities and women.
Biden supporters say it is a lot more difficult to be Black than White, while a smaller majority of Clinton supporters (57%) said this in 2016. Among Trump supporters, there has been virtually no change since 2016. Currently, 9% say it is a lot more difficult to be Black than White; 11% said this four years ago.
[...]
The survey by Pew Research Center, conducted July 27-Aug. 2 among 11,001 U.S. adults (including 9,114 registered voters) on the Center’s American Trends Panel, also finds growing divergence between the two camps on attitudes about gender and family: Biden voters today are now somewhat more likely than Clinton voters were to say women continue to face obstacles that make it harder for them to get ahead than men, while Trump supporters are now somewhat less likely to say this than they were in 2016.
[...]
Among Biden supporters, 79% say women still face significant obstacles that make it harder for them to advance; a smaller majority of Clinton supporters (72%) expressed this view in 2016. By contrast, a somewhat smaller share of Trump supporters express this view today (26%) than did so four years ago (31%).
[...]
Only about a third of Trump supporters (32%) say immigrants do more to strengthen society, but this is a 13 percentage point increase from 19% in 2016. Biden supporters are more likely than Clinton supporters four years ago to say the growing number of newcomers strengthens society (84% vs. 71%).
[...]
Most Trump supporters (72%) continue to associate Islam with violence, though the share saying this has declined 8 points since 2016. An even larger majority of Biden supporters (74%) than Clinton supporters (63%) say Islam does not encourage violence more than other religions.
In each of these areas, black people, women, immigrants and Muslims, Trump supporters are largely in opposition to the rise and growth of all these groups. They see them all as a “threat”, not as their fellow citizens.
Under the Biden administration, America has abandoned its allies in Afghanistan, left Americans behind to face the bloodthirsty Taliban and allowed 13 brave American military personnel to die unnecessarily.
This is an entirely unfair argument. As has been often stated this withdrawal was negotiated and planned by Trump and there was nothing in his plan to remove any civilians. Period. When the Afghan army collapsed we were indeed caught flat-footed, which was unfortunate, but it also should be noted that the US Army stepped up and performed a heroic airlift pulling over 123,000 of our allies out of the nation. No, they didn’t get everyone, but the State Dept continues to bring Americans and our allies out. This is an ongoing story — and I have many frustrations with how the State Dept, which was deeply gutted by Trump, has handled things — but it’s not over.
We have an invasion on our southern border as hundreds of thousands of immigrants come into America without authorization.
An “invasion?” And here I was under the impression that immigration is how most Americans got here in the first place. Here’s the thing that most Trumpsters don’t understand. It is perfectly legal to come to the border, and even cross the border, in order to petition for asylum. This has been the law for 50 years.
8 U.S. Code § 1158 (a) Authority to apply for asylum
(1) In general
Any alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival and including an alien who is brought to the United States after having been interdicted in international or United States waters), irrespective of such alien’s status, may apply for asylum in accordance with this section or, where applicable, section 1225(b) of this title.
It was never a requirement to enter through “an approved point of entry.” That’s a nicety. Now, once someone has entered and applied for asylum, things get complicated and only about 30% are ultimately approved, but this is the legal process. This is the law.
Biden has indeed raised the Asylum Cap from 15,000 back to 125,000 but that doesn’t mean that the border is "wide open.” Not hardly.
And also, as a point of fact, removals under Trump in 2020 decreased by over 30% due to Covid.
CE ERO conducted 185,884 removals during FY 2020, a 30 percent decrease from FY 2019. This decrease primarily resulted from a sharp decline in CBP apprehensions at the Southwest Border due to the use of authority under 42 U.S.C. §§ 265 and 268 to expel noncitizens from the United States to prevent the introduction of COVID19, though it was also impacted by a decline in ICE ERO interior arrests. The vast majority of ICE ERO’s interior removals – 92 percent – had criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, demonstrating ICE ERO’s commitment to removing those who pose the greatest risk to the safety and security of the United States. Additionally, despite the overall decrease in removals, ICE ERO assisted CBP with 17,000 air charter expulsions under Title 42, and also saw increases in removals to several countries that were previously uncooperative with removal efforts.
Frankly, the number of immigration removals and returns by the Obama Administration were far greater than Trump during his entire tenure, not just his final year.
Meanwhile, the Biden Administration has increased expedited removals.
Asylum and other legal migration pathways should be readily available to those who need them, and this Administration is committed to fairly and efficiently considering asylum claims. Those not seeking protection or who do not qualify will be promptly returned to their country of origin.
Consistent with that approach, the Department of Homeland Security today resumed expedited removal flights for certain families who recently arrived at the southern border, cannot be expelled under Title 42, and do not have a legal basis to stay in the United States. Families apprehended by Customs and Border Protection were removed via U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Air Operations to their home countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.
The expedited removal process is a lawful means to securely manage our border, and it is a step toward our broader aim to realize safe and orderly immigration processing. By placing into expedited removal families who cannot be expelled under Title 42, we are making clear that those who do not qualify to remain in the United States will be promptly removed.
As we saw with the migrants from Haiti, despite their suffering from a devastating Earthquake and the assassination of their President recently, these people were largely and forcibly returned to their country by the Biden administration — not simply allowed to “walk across the border.” The border remains fraught with difficulties but the evidence of “invasion" is quite weak.
As hard-working Americans face forced vaccinations or the loss of their livelihoods, thousands receive government assistance with no demands for vaccination, and some of them likely spread the COVID-19 virus to places they are taken.
So we’re blaming the spread of Covid on people who receive unemployment, food stamps and Medicare? Because we should “test them” before they get government assistance just like the states that attempt to drug test the poor first? That didn’t go well.
In 2017, states spent more than $490,000 to drug-test 2,541 people who had applied for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits, which yielded just 301 positive tests.
[...]
The screening method is deeply flawed. The questions typically ask people to volunteer information about their own illegal drug use, and the questions vary widely between states. The vast majority in all but one state still tested negative, even after they were given screening questions, raising serious questions about the efficacy of these screening processes.
“This is not an academic survey and it’s not a clinical tool that I’m doing for somebody at a treatment facility,” said University of Chicago professor, Dr. Harold Pollack, who’s studied drug testing in public assistance for more than a decade. “It’s a series of intrusive questions that I’m asking someone who is in economic need and has approached a public agency looking for assistance.”
The fact is that Covid had been spreading because of the unvaccinated who overwhelmingly were Trump supporters.
Trump and many of his Republican colleagues have allowed a virulent anti-vaccine/anti-masking/anti-social distancing campaign to spread among their voters, reinforced by Fox News. The campaign gained strength just in time for the emergence of a new and more contagious COVID variant: the Delta variant. Polling has shown that the anti-vaccine message is especially popular among Republicans. Kaiser Family Foundation data indicate that Republicans are the group most likely to say they will “definitely not” get a vaccine:
Yeah...
We are a nation of immigrants who came to America for freedom and a better life, but that 52% recognize immigration must be done legally, and that with no border we have no country. Even President Barack Obama has acknowledged that the situation on our border is unsustainable.
America was once a nation that embraced the concept of equal opportunity and achieving the American dream through hard work.
When exactly was that? No, seriously — when did that happen? During the 60s as Watts burned? Did it happen in the 70s while Nixon and Hoover implemented COINTELPRO? During the 80s when Reagan was railing about “Welfare Queens” and implemented the War on Drugs? Was it when Clinton put “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” into place? When was this golden age of meritocracy? When exactly was the period when White Male Hetero Christian Power didn’t supplant all? Enlighten me. Truth is, you can't find a period of “American Greatness" where that wasn’t the case.
Now, that concept has been replaced by the far left with the demand for equal result, which is the essence of socialism. It is no longer about equal opportunity, but rather shared misery under the yoke of a socialist state. Our social safety net is now a hammock in which thousands of Americans no longer feel the need to work. This has been exacerbated by government’s response to the pandemic, leading to thousands of businesses unable to even operate normally because they cannot find people willing to work. This is the beginning of our shared misery, and that 52% see it clearly.
First off, the initial response to the pandemic, which included multiple emergency bipartisan “rescue” bills — which drove our deficit to $3.5 Trillion in a single year — was on Trump’s watch. He built the “hammock.”
Because of those bills, and before Joe Biden came around, people now have the “freedom” to not have to work for poverty starvation wages. They realize they have better choices, and most of them actually are working — just at different jobs. And the argument that extended unemployment benefits have contributed to people “sitting home, collecting their checks” has been thoroughly debunked. The reality is far more complicated.
States that withdrew early from federal unemployment programs pushed few people back to work and fueled a nearly $2 billion cut in household spending, potentially hurting their local economies, according to new research.
Twenty-six state governors — all Republican, except one — opted out of the pandemic-era programs several weeks before their official expiration on Labor Day. Enhanced benefits were keeping the unemployed from looking for jobs and fueling a labor shortage, they claimed.
That bet seems to have had a limited payoff so far, according to a paper authored by economists and researchers at Columbia University, Harvard University, the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Toronto. The research was published Friday
The data suggests unemployment benefits aren’t playing a big role in hiring challenges and that other factors are having a larger impact — a similar thrust to other recent research analyzing the policy decisions.
Continued...
America was once working hard to embrace the ideals of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., when he spoke to our hearts and told us that we should judge one another based not on skin color but rather on character.
I do enjoy when right-wingers quote Dr. King and completely ignore the work he did for the working poor whom this guy just disparaged. They argue his “I have a dream” quote but they don’t fully understand what that dream truly entailed. These days they’d call it “Socialism.”
Now, that too has been turned upside down as the Marxist ideology of critical race theory, teaching us to judge not based on character but on skin color, permeates our universities and even reaches K-12 schools.
Uh, no. That is not Critical Race Theory, and besides law and grad school, it is not being taught in universities or K-12 schools.
If schoolchildren indeed employed critical race theory in any analytical homework assignment, they would be graduate-level or law school wunderkinds.
To wit, I am reading “Cruel Optimism” by Lauren Berlant, a professor and scholar at the University of Chicago who recently died. Berlant specialized in social and affect theory, so the book critiques the social-democratic promise of the post-war period of the U.S. Let me tell you, I have to reread the introduction because the high-level scholarship stumps me —and I have a master’s degree.
So no, elementary and high school students are not doing this work. Just as physics classes aren’t advising NASA.
I do find it interesting that the fairly arcane academic study of systems — not people — that perpetuate racial bias has been mutated into “I should hate white people” by those who frankly haven’t actually read a single word of it. It seems like this is some form of internal guilt speaking through them, terrifying them into the idea that if white people lose sway and power — minorities will start treating them in exactly the same way that they’ve been treated.
That’s frankly pathetic. It’s dumb and it’s paranoid — but then Trumpsters excel at both.
Try again.
The 52% recognize that what has held us together since the founding of our nation is the concept of the melting pot, that regardless of race or creed, from many we become one, and that the Marxist ideology that teaches we are either oppressor or oppressed will ultimately tear us apart.
First of all, this nation was founded on oppression. Oppression built the White House. Oppression built the Capitol Building. Many fortunes and family dynasties were built upon oppression. It remained with us through the black codes and Jim Crow for generations. Freedom was denied for nearly a century after the 13th Amendment supposedly ended slavery — but actually only transferred it into the criminal justice system — the 14th Amendment granted citizenship and the 15th Amendment granted the right to vote. Republicans are implementing oppression now after having gutted the Voting Rights Act and blocking it from being restored while erecting more and higher barriers for black and brown people to participate in the vote. There’s plenty of oppression to go around.
As you can see with the Trump family discrimination lawsuits of the 70s to the emails of Jon Gruden the bigotry and racism that fueled that oppression did not magically disappear with the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.
Except for the actions of people like the Klan, It went underground.
It went behind closed doors, it went from the shouted N-word and a burning cross to the sniggering whispers about big lips and fat asses behind the back. People do it, people say it but they constantly deny what they’ve just done and what they’ve just said. Police are called on people for having a bar-b-que, selling water on a corner, when they haven’t taken someone else's cell phone, for trying to go to a pool party, sitting in the lobby of their own apartment building or bird watching, rental properties suddenly become “unavailable” when a brown face shows up, job opportunities suddenly vanish when the applicant's name is “Shaniqua” or “Tyrese” — always with the ever-present denial — “I called the police on this black person for not doing anything remotely illegal but I‘m not a racist!” Sure, you’re not honey — that was the other racist person who was screaming epithets and called 9-1-1 for no good reason. You can sit down now.
It has gone from front of mind, to back corners of our collective subconscious, like an itch we can’t scratch and a knee-jerk automatic reflex we can’t quite stop ourselves from. It has greatly changed since the Civil Rights Era, it has become far more circumspect, far better disguised, far less obvious — which sometimes leads to people “finding’” hidden racism where it may not exist — but it certainly has not gone away. Making theft and murder illegal didn’t make those go away, why would we think the Civil Rights Act would make racism totally go away? It made it a crime, it made it a civil liability — it didn’t make it disappear.
However, unlike the Marxist idea that this oppression is inherent and unyielding many of us who oppose the Trumpsters believe that it can be defeated, it can be removed, it can be excised. It is not permanent or ever-present. It’s a choice.
You speak of this nation as being a “melting pot.” That’s a fairly cavalier view to have when one is an immigrant, when your language, cuisine and culture originated in some other land, on some other soil. You can pick and choose how much of the “old country” to retain and how much to let fall away as you assimilate — as you melt yourself — into the composite, hybrid, homogenized culture of America. Immigrants make a choice, they decide they want the freedom and liberty of this land, and their willingness to sacrifice the old ways in exchange for that benefit.
But what if your culture, language and cuisine doesn’t come from elsewhere. What if it comes — from here? How are you to “melt” if you are a Native American? If you don’t speak your own native tongue, no one will.
Kevin Costner actually ran smack dab into this problem while filming Dances with Wolves. The native Lakota Sioux who he hired to play their own ancestors didn’t know their own language. He had to resort to firing the lot of them to get them to take learning their lines seriously. But then if you look back and the Native American Boarding Schools which were designed to "beat the savage out” of their children for generations, you might better understand how they were “melted.”
What if you are a Latino/a, and your family and culture has roots in America that go back to 1600 when the Spaniard Conquistadors settled what ultimately became the western states? Part native Mestizo, part Aztec, part Inca, part Espania do you retain any of your native culture and language — or do speak that language of the Conquerors? Do you worship your own gods or is it the God of the Catholics? Or do you enjoy a hybrid culture that includes Old America as much Dias De Los Muertos of Mexico, as much of El Salvador, as much of Honduras, as well as that of Spain?
As an aside I think it’s fairly ironic whenever I hear one person demand another speak English rather than Spanish, they’re demanding they use the language of one colonizer instead of another colonizer. Neither of which are native languages to THIS country. Chances are that if you were to track through the native heritages and languages of everyone in the conversation — they wouldn’t lead either to England or to Spain.
Another thing: about this “Replacement Theory" idea. People who are undocumented can’t vote. I know you Trumpsters have been told differently, but it's not true — they can't legally vote. And as you should know there currently is no path to "legality" available to them, so for all intents and purposes, they will never be able to legally vote. People who’ve been granted asylum can't vote. People who are here under TPS (Temporary Protective Status) and Green Card holders can't vote. You have to be a citizen to vote and it takes years on average to become naturalized, which you can't do if you are undocumented. So the super-secret dastardly plan of the Democrats is to have open-door immigration that brings in millions of people who still can't vote. The only people who are automatically citizens are the children of immigrants who are born in the U.S. — so our real grand plan is to bring in undocumented immigrants so that their children will be able to vote in 18 years? Do you think people in Congress and the DNC are planning 18 years ahead? Do you think they’re planning for what's gonna happen in 3 months? Next week? It's absurd on its face.
And what if you are African-American? What if your ancestors had their native culture and language forcibly ripped away from them — while at the same time they were prohibited from learning to read English and from participating fully in the larger American culture at every turn? Do you imagine that such people — banned from fully joining the American party inside the house — would simply sit patiently outside on the porch until they finally had their chance to participate in America, or would they instead construct a party of their own right where they were? Did not African-Americans, shunned by the “melting pot”, develop their own modified version of the language using it to surreptitiously pass messages which would be seen as “merely gibberish” by the overseers? Some now call it Ebonics. Did they not adapt remnants of African cuisine into a rich array of Southern culinary traditions? Did they not transfer the grief and horror of their condition into joyous, melancholy, raucous music of Gospel, Ragtime, Honky Tonk, Jazz, Blues, R&B, Rock ‘n Roll, Funk and Hip Hop? Have they not become international cultural leaders in sports, fashion, and entrepreneurship — largely despite and in spite of their ostracization from mainstream American culture?
How exactly would you propose they now “melt” themselves into the pot?
The entire “melting pot” metaphor is deeply flawed. It presumes that the “newcomer” to the culture must limit and remove parts of themselves in order to “fit” comfortably with the proverbial larger — homogenous, generic, watered down, sanitized, safe, non-confrontational — culture. For those who essentially have nothing left to lose, whose original culture lives on elsewhere, that is an easy decision to make.
Less so for some others, as I have described.
We are not a melting pot, I prefer the analogy that we are more of a salad bowl. Flavor and elements mix and combine, but they do not “melt” — they are not, and should not be damaged or destroyed in the process. Some elements may clash, some may contrast — such as Islam and Judaism. But then again, if we are open to the possibilities if we are open to new combinations and new flavors these combinations can create something new — as we have seen between Protestants and Catholics. As we saw when the original Quakers and Puritan Separatists who fled the oppression of the Church of England to land on Plymouth Rock — we may gradually build a new hybrid culture, endlessly growing, endlessly changing.
When you get past the myriad paranoid delusions and hoaxes of the Replacement Theory, Qanon Adrenochrome Fantasies, Critical Race Theory, Rampant (Invisible) Voter Fraud, False Antifa Riots, Immigrant Caravan Terror, Ivermectin Madness, Tentacle Monsters, Mask and Vaccine panic — you are left with a group that is essentially scared spitless of change. They are frightened out of their wits that America is changing into a country that they no longer have primary influence over, where they are no longer able to call all the shots, where they may be asked to — gasp — adapt and accommodate to the preferences and will of others.
They just might, maybe, have to stop demonizing people and show some tolerance of other ideas, other cultures, other religions, and other people instead of the melting pot where the responsibility is entirely on those others to adapt and change to suit the prevailing majority. Frankly, it’s a two-way street. Everyone has to adapt, everything has to go through changes. A culture, a language, a cuisine, a religion, an ideology that does not change — is dead. Like Latin, it can be studied in the abstract — but it does not live and breathe.
Trumpsters want to freeze their lionized version of American culture— which again, never, ever really existed — in a jar of amber and put it on a shelf somewhere, away from everything else, away from outside influence. Isolated. Alone.
They want to run away and hide.
That’s why they want to secede. They want to repeat what the Confederacy attempted to do — to resist the influence of others, to resist adapting to the changing moral values that said Slavery was wrong. Well, oppression is wrong, discrimination is wrong, bigotry is wrong — and mark my words, all of that is the dark core that Trumpism is built upon — and you guys are going to have to adapt or ultimately your remnant of culture will die from your own hand.
Your choice.
Friday, October 22, 2021
Like nearly everything else, Trump made Colin Powell's death about Trump
One would think leading an insurrection against the nation you serve would represent an all-time low for a president, but former president Donald Trump continues to stoop to new lows. This time, he defiled the memory of the first Black national security adviser a day after his untimely death of COVID-19 complications.
“Wonderful to see Colin Powell, who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously, so-called weapons of mass destruction, be treated in death so beautifully by the Fake News Media,” Trump said in a statement on Tuesday. “Hope that happens to me someday. He was a classic RINO, if even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans. He made plenty of mistakes, but anyway, may he rest in peace!”
This is coming from a man who did worse than sit on his hands: He denied the threat of a virus that went on to effect a nationwide shutdown and pandemic resulting in more than 700,000 American deaths. When he finally did recognize the coronavirus, it was to turn it into a weapon of racist hatred aimed at people of Asian descent. “By the way, it’s a disease, without question, has more names than any disease in history. I can name ‘kung flu,’” Trump said at a rally in July 2020. “I can name 19 different versions of names.”
As of late, he spends his time addressing lawsuits. On Monday, that meant more than four hours answering questions under oath. This deposition is in response to a lawsuit launched when “human rights activists of Mexican origin” protested Trump’s racist statements on immigration.
Trump’s full quote as part of a speech announcing his presidential campaign on June 16, 2015, was: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Of course, the racist rhetoric led to protests. One protester, Efrain Galicia, alleged in the lawsuit CNN reported on that Trump’s former head of security Keith Schiller hit Galicia in the head when he tried to block Schiller from stealing one of their cardboard signs reading “Trump: Make America Racist Again.”
Attorney Benjamin Dictor, who represents the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, told CNN, Trump’s testimony was less than surprising.” The President was exactly how you would expect him to be, he answered questions the way you would expect Mr. Trump to answer questions and conducted himself in a manner that you would expect Mr. Trump to conduct himself,” Dictor said.
It’s my exact sentiment regarding Trump’s statement of Powell. The former president said exactly what anyone who’s been paying attention would expect for him to say. He was disrespectful, narcissistic, and unapologetic.
He was Donald Trump.
Thursday, October 21, 2021
Sinema sells out to GOP donors and Mark Kelly still eclipses her fundraising numbers
Republican donors who have provided ample backing to GOP lawmakers, Donald Trump, and a super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have found a new fixation: Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
Sinema, who raised $1.1 million in the third quarter, apparently thinks she can buy her way to reelection with the backing of corporate America and GOP donors while pissing off those that brung her. Lots of corporate lobbyists from the pharmaceutical and finance sectors took an interest in Sinema, as she and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia continue to erect roadblocks to President Joe Biden's potentially transformative agenda.
But in many ways, the real eye-poppers are the Sinema benefactors who have spent the past couple of decades primarily backing the GOP's congressional PACs, campaign committees, and/or the presidential elections of Trump.
According to reporting from Mother Jones magazine, they include:
- Stan Hubbard, a Minnesota billionaire and prime backer of the Republican National Committee who supported both Scott Walker and Trump for president, and donated $2,900 to Sinema, the maximum contribution a donor can make to a candidate per election.
- Jimmy Haslam, owner of the Pilot truck stop chain, who along with his wife gave Sinema $2,900 a piece. Over the years, Haslam shoveled at least $425,000 into the Senate Leadership Fund along with maxing out to the GOP's House and Senate campaign arms.
- Marc Rowan, billionaire private equity investor, who along with his wife maxed out to Sinema by each writing two $2,900 checks a piece for a total of $5,800 each (since the primary and general count as separate elections, individuals may give $5,800 per candidate per cycle). Rowan has been a major donor to the Senate Leadership Fund, sometimes writing quarter-million dollar checks. He also backed both Scott Walker's presidential bid and Trump's reelection bid.
- Anthony De Nicola, another private equity investor who has funneled hundreds of thousands to the Senate Leadership Fund and Senate GOP campaign committee, also gave Sinema $2,900.
All of those donations to Sinema were made on either Sept. 29 or 30, presumably after she had adequately proved her obstruction bona fides.
And while it is en vogue these days for lawmakers to tout their homegrown grassroots fundraising and the contributions of low-dollar donors, Politico reports that roughly 90% of Sinema's haul came from outside her state.
But perhaps what is truly amazing about Sinema selling out her party for dollars is just how anemic her fundraising numbers look next to those of her fellow Democratic Arizona senator, Mark Kelly, who amassed $8 million in third-quarter fundraising.
Kelly, who doesn’t accept corporate PAC donations, is facing a tough reelection bid next year while Sinema’s seat isn’t up until 2024. But still, apparently, you don't have to flit off to Paris, gouge your party's agenda, and sell out your voters to reap a windfall in donations and fuel your reelection to office.
Sinema apparently thinks she can buy her way to reelection with the backing of corporate America and GOP donors while pissing off those that brung her.
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Yale professor and expert on authoritarianism says 2024 Trump coup is 'underway'
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