White Supremacy and the GOP

The modern GOP knows that they're sunk without white supremacists and thus white supremacy. That's why that memo that leaked about deflecting blame towards left-wing "extremism" and doing anything needed to pull focus from white nationalist terrorism was written in the first place––if they had nothing to do with white supremacy and didn't want white supremacists in their party, such a memo would be an awfully strange thing to write.

But they do and they do.

They need white supremacists. They can't live without them. Their pencil thin margins of victory (even after all the disenfranchising and gerrymandering and not stopping Russian interference and cheating they can muster) absolutely REQUIRE the white supremacists for political support. They jumped in bed with virulent racism during the Southern Strategy and now they CANNOT win without courting it.

The 2016 election defied the wisdom (of the GOP leadership, I might add) that they could no longer win while focusing exclusively white voters. Basically everyone thought the "wink wink nudge nudge" days of racism had to be dialed back so they could pull more women and non-white voters on board. They were prepared to expunge some of their dog whistling and broaden their coalition in order to survive.

But it was never JUST a strategy.

Instead Trump went all the way in. He dropped the euphemism, just said the quiet part out loud, he won the primary as "their guy" and now they HAVE no choice. If they lose the white supremacist vote, they lose. That's all there is to it. White supremacy, always more powerful than white America would admit, has hijacked the Republican party. THEY are the mainstream now.

That is who the Republicans are now. (That is who they have been for my lifetime with a tacit nod and a conspicuous silence, but now they are out and open about it.) And while some of them don't appreciate having the quiet part said out, their struggles have been superficial and tepid at best. White nationalism is the no-longer-deniable moral stain and legacy of their party all grown up and calling the shots.

Hobbs & Shaw: Reviewish

Hobbs and Shaw is pretty much exactly what it looks like it's going to be in the trailers. It's big. It's ridiculous. It's a couple of ripped dudes trying to out "lone wolf" each other and learning that the real anti-terrorism is the friends they made along the way.

Go see it if you like popcorn movies with driving stunts that make you say "Yeah, that's not really possible by the laws of physics."

Now for the (mild) spoilery part.
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I've noticed a lot of movies lately have an "ends never justify the means" villain. They're basically RIGHT, but "that's NOT how one goes about getting change."

In Hobbs and Shaw, the genocidal virus-unleashing Idris Elba played bad guy was ostensibly an anticapitalist environmentalist who was terrified that humanity was on track to wipe itself out by 2090. Of course, if he had stopped riding motorcycles off of skyscrapers for a second, he probably would have realized that the power his boss had to control literally ANY story would make for a useful tool in getting some green legislation passed, but maybe that's just me bringing my brain to a movie where it clearly isn't welcome. Still, I've been hearing "calm down and MAYBE we'll listen to you*" for my entire life, so it's pretty easy to imagine a political landscape in which eventually that doesn't work.

*They won't, by the way. They want you just "calm" enough that you can be ignored.

Entertainment is often cultural anxiety turned up to eleven. (There's a reason that for fifteen years after 2001 a LOT of blockbuster movies had an antagonist-ruined cityscape and protagonists basically going to get some payback.) But boy, it's going to be a plot twist to people who consume mainstream media when they find out which ideology is actually on track to trash the planet and kill billions––no super virus required.

The Gravity House Effect of U.S. Politics

You know those gravity houses? The kind that tip you one way and your mind technically knows what's going on, but you also sort of adjust to it despite yourself. So even though you know why it is working that way, your brain still tricks you and you kind of freak out when it looks like shit is falling up or rolling uphill.

Yep. I'm going to make a metaphor. About Republican cheating. Because we know it's going on, and we've been dealing with it for decades, but our mind also kind of adjusts to it. And when we lose elections by narrow margins, we kind of don't realize we probably should have won. Or when we win, we kind of don't realize that it should have been a blowout.

If you think about how long the cheating has been going on (at least here in the U.S.), you'll realize that the left has actually been winning the war of ideas for a long time––we're just up against those who feel they have a moral imperative and are perfectly willing to toss every underlying principle of democratic government to maintain a minority rule and get what they want.

About twenty years ago, they started computer-assisted gerrymandering to maintain their control. This creates "safe" districts and dilutes the power of their opponents. Then about thirteen years ago, they started voter ID laws, essentially creating a poll tax. Ostensibly this was because of fraud, but in-person fraud is extremely uncommon and the more common form of it (mail in ballots--though still rare) was left alone because the military uses them and they tend to vote conservative. In some places DMVs were even closed en masse to make getting ID far more difficult. Just a couple of years ago, they ramped up the process of purging voters from registrations. These efforts, of course, are ALWAYS in places with certain "kinds" of voters (and it's not middle-class white folks). They are proposed by, endorsed by, paid for by, campaigned for by, passed by and defended in court by conservatives, and overwhelmingly hurt liberals.

You don't need a degree in rocket science to put together what is happening. Just because they've rolled out the cheating slowly, so they win by plausible margins and loose from time to time doesn't erase what they're doing. The room is starting to tilt, and even though we can see it, our brain is also starting to adjust to it despite us.

Yesterday Mitch McConnell stood in front of the American people and openly, shamelessly said with his facehole that they won't pass a law to fix election security in order to prevent interference from a foreign geopolitical enemy we KNOW has interfered, is interfering, and will interfere again and who wants the GOP to win. They won't do this because because free and fair democratic elections would give Democrats "political benefit."

Here. Let me translate that for you just in case you didn't catch it over the sound of all the jaws hitting the floor: "Our prior levels of cheating are not cutting it anymore, so we need this outside interference or we're going to lose."

What surprises me, honestly, is not the behavior of the GOP. I became politically aware during Gingrich's "scorched earth," so I pretty much expect them to lie, cheat, and steal for power grabs at any opportunity. They lost any vestige of personal ethical high ground they may have had thirty years ago when they offered up their integrity on the alter of a Faustian deal to win at any cost––it's just taken this long for most of the country to get the memo.

What surprises me is how many liberals and moderates still act like we have a fair democracy. It's not that they don't see it. It's just that their minds have also kind of adjusted to it a little and it sort of looks like votes are "rolling uphill."

Progressive ideas should be kicking ass, but instead we've got minority rule by a party increasingly willing to hide their cheating in plain sight. And instead of treating them like exactly that, we're still hoping they can be convinced of their own moral turpitude and will have a "coming-to-Jesus" moment.

They won't.

They have no shame.

It's time for plan B.

You'll Never Convince the Racists That They're Racists

About 30 percent of the country (almost all white) will never admit that Trump is racist. They never ever will. We should divest ourselves of whatever fantasies we might have that some day Trump will do something SO outrageous that they will finally realize it. It is in their interest not to see his racism, and so they will not. Not ever. These people lost the ability to control the narrative that racism is okay (about forty years ago), and so they embraced the secondary ability to smirk and say, "That's not *really* racism."  At least until they can embolden white nationalism enough to come right out and say it as they could before––something they are dying to do.

And the scripts of white supremacy (even on the left) support them. Every time a liberal white person says, "Sure I hate racism, but THIS is not an example of it" to a person of color who is pointing out racism, or a white liberal goes to the mat for a six-hundred-comment thread in the name of "intellectual integrity" to say that some act with racial impact wasn't INTENDED and could have had something (anything) other than stark, naked racism that motivated a person to do something racist, they are enacting this same script. Bigotry is "bad" so no one can ever be labeled as a bigot without some "soulbeam" mindreader bullshit proof. Instead of just acknowledging that we are all racists (even we liberal white people), we all do racist things, we all have work to do, and the people best able to explain it to us are the folks who live with our fucking bullshit every day.

So the well-meaning often provide plenty of ground cover for the smarmy insistence (now that people at the tops of social hierarchies can't just BE bigots) that marginalized people have no say in what counts AS bigotry. Men, white people, heterosexuals, cis...they will be the arbiters of what counts.

And we're NEVER going to convince them that what Trump did is racist because they know EXACTLY what will happen to their entire paradigm if they, even once, say "Maybe you're right." Like Trump himself, there will be no moment where they feel shame. They have abandoned this. Because then they might have to question a lot more than just this one moment of abject racism.

We don't call these things for them––not for those 30%. They are wrong. They are callow, obstinate, and wrong and they will probably die callow, obstinate, and wrong. Maybe some of them will change, but not from one shining moment of "Oh shit, he really IS a racist." They already know. Their moral and ethical die has been cast.

We don't scream and point at every "go back where you came from" or "shithole countries" or his casino records on racial issues or his property records on racial issues or his attacks on the Central Park 5. Or from his followers the "he says what I feel" or the "he's not hurting the right people" or most recently after his comments that four US citizens should go back where they came from: "this is why we voted for him."

We're never going to "prove" it to their satisfaction. That's because we live in a country with an ongoing legacy of white supremacy and a cultural bedrock of bigotry, and it'll take white people confronting that to undo it. Don't forget that the first thing the Mel Gibsons and Paula Deens and Tim Burtons and Hulk Hogans of the world say after they get caught being unequivocally racist is to look at the camera and say, "I'm not racist." That's all that's happening here. It's the Nigerian Finance Minister email that says in the subject line, "This is not spam!"

They have picked their moral quality. We shall never sway them. Time to work around them.

We DO it for the 1 or 2% of those who will peel off from the right. (Maybe who will abstain from voting in 2020 for moral reasons.) We do it for the outliers for whom this might be the last straw. For those who, while I adamantly disagree with them, really ARE Republicans because they want smaller tax burdens and who are not comfortable with the Faustian deal their modern party has made with white nationalists and bigots.

We do it to scream that this is not normal. Or more accurately that it kind of is, but we're not going back to a time when saying it out loud was okay, or that we won't stand up and speak out against the regressive blowback to any vestige of progress. And we're not going to give up until it really ISN'T normal.

We do it to be counted, both by those we face down and the ones we stand beside.

Dear Fellow Dudes: Shut Up About How This is No Biggie

Image Creator:Brian Snyder Credit:REUTERS

[Note: Formatting is weird on this article because I brought it over from the old site and I didn't want to redo all the links.]

To all my fellow dudes who are just calm as a cucumber that the recent rash of laws is never going to get past SCOTUS, let me put this as diplomatically as possible:

You need to shut the fuck up with that bullshit.

For starters, by and large, you've been wrong since about 2015. You've been wrong about the degree of bigotry fueling the right. Like really wrong. You've been wrong about the white nationalists not really being a thing. You've been wrong about the wall being a weird crowd-pandering thing that would never happen. You've been wrong about the concentration camps being harmless and the most sympathetic policy we plausibly could enact and that it's over because of the protests. You've been wrong about the travel ban. You've been wrong that there aren't literal fucking Nazis in the street. You've been wrong that it wouldn't be so bad and people would survive this.

So it is time to stop imagining yourselves the rational überpundits of political thought, look into the veritable avalanche of your fucking WRONGNESS, and admit that you do not POSSESS the ability to predict the perturbations of an approaching threat the way that those directly affected by it do. And that your calm, collected, rational demands that everyone around you chill the fuck out about laws that are never going to affect YOUR body autonomy are not just WRONG (but holy shit are they ever wrong), but are also gaslighting those who are affected that their spider sense isn't really tingling.

You blew off those who study dictatorships, legions of historians, political scientists, communications experts, folks who have LIVED in dictatorships, countries we're allied with, POC, LGBTQIA+ folks, immigrants, Muslims, Latinx folks, most Germans, and pretty much all Jews who lived through the Third Reich––all those folks were jumping up and down and screaming. And yet here we are...with a constitutional crisis every week, a president cosying up to dictators, and suggesting that he's owed a couple of extra years, and watchdog groups saying American democracy is more threatened than ever before.

And right now you are missing the bigger picture. Right now you're in the process of being WRONG again. Because if you were listening to any expertise beyond that which you arrogantly pulled out of your own ass (because of [I guess] your considerable experience dealing with legal abortion politics?), you would know that forced birth extremists have been putting these pieces into place for decades. If you read beyond the preview text or paid attention past where you were sure you had all the answers, you would see over and over the concerns of those groups that have been fighting this fight this since Roe v. Wade and before are not so cavileer.

1- None of these experts is even remotely as cocksure as you are that this court will not uphold one or more of these laws. Kavanah (despite the assurances of uterus-less dudes, whose bodies are not the one being legislated, that he is mostly harmless) was literally appointed, among other things, to undermine Roe. That was one of the gold stars on his resume.

2- That THESE laws may not pass, possibly even all of them, is not the point. These laws are designed to get to SCOTUS. They are a "probing of the defenses." This is the velociraptors testing the fence perimeter. A lot of very powerful forced birth extremists want to know which arguments are going to gain traction with the new SCOTUS makeup and, to mix metaphors, these laws are throwing spaghetti at the wall. They want to ARGUE it. They want to see who leans forward and who rolls their eyes when they make certain points. Once they know what'll stick, they go back to their desks and write the exact, precise laws with the legal wording that will exploit the weaknesses they discovered.

3- Between the passing of a law and its eventual SCOTUS challenge (possibly as much as a year later), real people get hurt. It's not just an intellectual exercise of armchair legal expertise. THIS WILL ACTUALLY AFFECT REAL PEOPLE.

4- There are dozens of ways proven conclusively to reduce abortion much more effectively than outlawing the safe and accessible kind. Cheap and easy access to birth control, for example. (Spoiler: they're coming for that too because of "religious freedom.") There are hundreds of ways to respect children's "sanctity of life," from free access to prenatal and postnatal care to fixing lead-contaminated water to ensuring that children from poor families always have shelter, food, electricity, and running (clean) water. But largely when these ways of being pro-life are brought up, the same group of lawmakers and a 90%+ overlap of supporters are staunchly against such things being "the role of government." There are even fertility clinics with fertilized ova given a "Meh..." shrug/pass even though the unused embryos are tossed into the trash. And these laws always target women and the doctors who treat them but never the men. This isn't about "Won't someone think of the little souls!" It's about controlling the bodies of people with uteruses. And if some group out there were working FURIOUSLY, day and night, with an army of lawyers, enacting the endgame of a plan in the works since 1974, to mandate control of YOUR body so that you had to be an incubator to another organism no matter WHAT the extenuating circumstances were, you would probably not be so goddamn fucking blasé about it.

So shut the fuck up about how none of this is a big deal because your vast constitutional scholarship and extensive political abortion law activism somehow also includes psychically knowing the minds of nine high court judges. (Not to mention your boundless expertise on fetal development, late term abortions, and prenatal care.) And listen for a fucking second to the people who are actually affected by these laws tell you that they are terrified as shit because they just heard the branch crack underneath them. Because poo-pooing their feelings like you can oracularly view the future of abortion jurisprudence, know better than battle-hardened activists, and aren't concerned about that thing that won't be directly affecting you not only makes you an insensitive, gaslighting fucknoodle, but history suggests that you're going to be WRONG.

Again.

I Want the Truth!

"Our Black president isn't a U.S. citizen."

"I just want the truth!"

"He's a Muslim from Kenya."

"I just want to know the TRUTH!"

"Obama wanted people to die in Benghazi! Clinton basically murdered people.”

"I have questions I want answered!"

"It was actually Obama's fault there was a shutdown. He secretly wanted it."

"Let's get to the bottom of this!"

"There's a 22nd hearing on Benghazi targeting Clinton.

"I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHAT REALLY HAPPENED!!"

"Her e-mail server was sending state secrets to Anthony Weiner."

"I have legitimate intellectual inquiry that I won’t be satisfied about until I know all the facts."

"Hillary Clinton is running a human trafficking ring out of a pizza parlor and advertising it in code."

"I JUST WANT TO KNOW THE TRUTH!"

"Russian propaganda psyops attacks affected our democratic election, and half the major players in the new administration met with Russian agents and at least two were Russian assets. Collusion can’t be proven, but Trump acted in obstructionist ways at every turn. Basically every federal prosecutor says that the only reason he didn’t get charged with obstruction is because he’s the president. We’d like congress to see the full report and interview a couple of witnesses”

“This is just a goddamned partisan witch-hunt. Let’s focus on running the country, m'kay?"

Nurturing Your Persecution Complex 101

How to pretend your free speech is being infringed upon when it is not:

Step 1. Say some outright bigotry bullshit under the cover of your constitutionally protected right to do so. It doesn't even matter if you use a bunch of supremacy symbols that people are "wink wink/nudge nudge" about. Be sure to be privileged and say it about groups that are already marginalized. (Otherwise this could backfire.) But if you do it right, folks–even on the left–will insist on the need to hear you out and provide you with microphones and podiums and sites for your hate speech as part of their deep value of free expression.

Step 2. Once you are known for exactly the sort of message you will deliver every time you open your mouth, schedule a venue in a super liberal area. You might even consider nudging that hate speech needle over toward inciting violence JUUUUUST a little. I mean you still want plausible deniability of course. Bring a gang that likes to provoke people (but of course you can't possibly control them DIRECTLY). Don't worry, this won't be held against you in the final analysis. Hopefully you can provoke someone into taking a punch. No nuance will be examined about high running emotions or the level of provocation you and your people used. No matter what happens (including often if your folks throw the first punch and your opposition had the temerity to fight back), people will think you just came there to talk and be reasonable and the evil leftists showed up just spoiling for an anti-first amendment fight.

Step 3. Some progressive protestors will then exercise their OWN freedom of expression to protest your event. Don't worry that their speech is as free as yours–you have this wired. You live in a land where the perception is that anger isn't free speech, but urbanely espousing bigotry is. They may do so by trying to appeal to the venue or arrange a concurrent event. At this point, you've already won, no matter what happens.

Step 4. The venue will then decide whether it is worth it and/or if they have the security necessary to host your event. If you are lucky, you will lose your venue, but the beauty of this is that it will work even if you are allowed to speak but someone dares criticize you. You're already in the clear.=

Step 5. At NO time will the government send agents to intervene in your free expression. No one will arrest you for speaking. Your published materials will not be seized by agents of the state and destroyed. If there is a policing presence at all, they will let you say anything you want short of outright imminent threats, and may not even intervene then. This doesn't matter.

Step 6. If you had your venue cancelled, or even if you didn't, you can whinge about how unfair the left is and how they stood in the way of your free speech with their overbearing opinions, and so much for their vaunted values of tolerance and free expression. Even their own people will wonder if they're "hurting their own cause."

Milk it like you're a men's soccer player who actually got kicked.

Rinse. Repeat.