Politics Plus

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

We spoke last week about language, and its use to communicate – and, more importantly, NOT to communicate or to miscommunicate and deceive. Also, to send messages that are implicit but not spoken; such messages are usually emotional rather than rational in nature, and received by the amygdala rather than the rational brain. For this reason, though they are transmitted by language, it’s not easy to counter them with language. Anyone who is sufficiently competent to recognize them as the deceptions they are is going to be competent – and inclined – to use language rationally, and that is just what does not work against these messages.

I think it may represent a recognition of that truth which leads Chauncey DeVega to write in the tone he uses addressing Trump’s comments on football, football players, the flag, and protests. I suspect he is going to get labeled “hysterical.” He isn’t. He is trying to reach sane people by communicating at least some of the raw emotion with which Trump fills his followers.

Here’s part of what Trump said this week:

You have to stand — proudly — for the national anthem or you shouldn’t be playing, you shouldn’t be there, maybe you shouldn’t be in the country.

Here’s a hint from DeVega on what this implies:

Patriotism is compulsory. Freedom of speech is undermined if not wholly overturned — especially for those who dare to criticize or otherwise oppose Donald Trump, his allies or his public. In a version of “blood and soil” racism, those who protest or otherwise dissent are to be expelled from the country — especially if they happen not to be white.

I am aware that there is no way in law that an American who has birthright citizenship can be stripped of it, and no way that a citizen can be legally deported. But – so what? We have laws against profiting from public office. We have laws against accepting any form of aid from any non-Americans in election campaigns. We have these and other laws which are being broken in plain sight every day. Why should we think this person who sits in the White House will not strip people of birthright citizenship by executive order? There is no guarantee of that.

DeVega quotes from Talia Levin on dissent, and also from Masha Gessen – actually from the same article I refer to (almost) every week in the first paragraph of this series – the section he quotes here is “Believe the autocrat.” And he raises – or attempts to raise – the alarm that Trump – and the Trump followers – are not just going to go away somehow. Authoritarian doe not JUST mean the person in power. It is a known personality type which also has follower sub-types, and it always has been and always will be with us. And in groups, it can wreak immense havoc unless it is stopped first.

Meanwhile, over at Mother Jones, there’s an interview with former FBI Special Agent Clint Watts, who, along with colleagues JM Berger and Andrew Weisburd, was among the first to notice what was going on with Russia and the Internet.

Watching this troll army inundate social media into 2015 and 2016—including rising attacks on Hillary Clinton and promotion of Donald Trump for president—Watts realized a new information war was underway. As he tracked false news stories from Russian state media that were repeated by the Trump campaign, he was surprised to see that Kremlin-linked disinformation was sometimes even driving the campaign’s own narrative. Two days before Election Day, Watts and his fellow cybersecurity analysts JM Berger and Andrew Weisburd warned that the Kremlin wasn’t just backing Trump but was seeking “to produce a divided electorate and a president with no clear mandate to govern. The ultimate objective is to diminish and tarnish American democracy.”

Mr. Watts has a book out now, Messing With the Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians, and Fake News. And possibly the most important thrust of what he has to say is – don’t get too hung up on the Russians. Yes, they started it. But what they started was a tidal wave in which every authoritarian in the world is now getting involved.

[W]e are incredibly stuck on 2016. Russia is not going to be the biggest player in this space. Russia kicked off the tidal wave, but now they just ride it. There have been a lot of authoritarians who’ve adopted their approach, with more devastating effect on their domestic populations. Cambodia, the Philippines, and Myanmar are three great examples.

And then there’s what I call “trolling as a service.” If our politics take on this information annihilation approach, we are in real trouble…. That’s the real fear everyone should look at: not Russian active measures, but American active measures through the hiring of cutouts, contractors, and tech companies.

It’s been a bumpy ride for the last year and a half – three and a half if you count the 2016 campaigns. And it’s only going to get bumpier. I can’t ask the Furies to do for us what we need to be doing ourselves – but Alecto, Megaera, Tisiphone – I can ask you to work through journalists to alert us to the dangers we are facing as they come up (or maybe just a little before they come up). And what we need to know even more is, how we should meet these dangers. Because what we are doing now is not working very well.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

I’m confident everyone here is familiar with ALEC – the American Legislative Exchange Council – which has for decades (45 years, to be precise) been drafting what they call “model” legislation at the state and to some degree local levels and getting it passed while we weren’t paying attention.

In fact, the only sense in which ALEC legislation is “model” is in that it’s what I would call “horrible examples.” Or possibly, in the words of an old joke, “a small and inferior copy of a real thing.” But by golly, they get it through. However, they may have to move over – there is a new kid on the block – “Project Blitz.”

Now, you might be forgiven for thinking that Project Blitz is a men’s clothing retailer, because it is that too. But the Project Blitz I am referring to is the one being pushed by the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, in coalition with the National Legal Foundation and Wallbuilders (which seems to be a subsidiary of the ProFamily Legislative Network.)

What Project Blitz aims to accomplish is to do for Dominionism what ALEC has so thoroughly done for Corporatism – or was, until we found out about it and started fighting back.  And they aim to do it by using “religious freedom” language. Because of course they do.

Though it was only launched in February 2016, it is being taken very seriously by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Starting with allowing or requiring schools to display posters of “In God We Trust” alongside any motto the State has adopted, which we all know is as likely as not to mention “God” in some way (this being in what they call “Category 1,”) they plan to work up through 116 pages of playbook to Category 3-c legislation such as the “Teacher Protection Act,” which would require the state to foot the defense bill for any teacher or school sued for making religion compulsory, or discriminating based on their “sincerely held religious belief.”

Speaking at the launch of the Project, and referring to Category 1 issues, David Barton (whom you may have heard of – he’s with Wallbuilders) said the bills in this category are

“kinda like whack-a-mole for the other side. It’ll drive them crazy that they will have to divide their resources out in opposing this… they won’t know what to do with this and it’ll be great!”

What a mensch. /S

One expert, Dr. David R. Brockman, is a Nonresident Scholar at Rice University’s Baker institute for Public Policy. He sees Project Blitz this way:

 … a covert campaign for conservative Christian dominion over law and public policy.”

“As I’ve written elsewhere,” he added, “dominionism as I understand it seeks to align law and public policy with conservative Christian beliefs.” Part of the significance of the Project Blitz playbook is that it links Christian nationalism with the antiabortion and anti-LGBTQ agenda, and finally with a broader and deeper theocratic vision called Dominionism, which has been the subject of much interest in the political, journalist and scholarly communities in recent years.

Brockman observes that the authors frame religious freedom resolutions (on heterosexual marriage, birth gender, and adoption) as intended to advance “biblical values,” although, he says “they caution policymakers not to frame legislation in biblical terms,” because “courts have frequently found such justifications ‘unreasonable’ or ‘irrational’ and not based on ‘reason’ or ‘science.’”

“They contend,” Brockman says, “that the state has a ‘compelling’ health and safety interest in promoting heterosexual relations, maintenance of birth gender, and adoption by married heterosexuals. Whatever the merits of those health-and-safety arguments, what is critical is intent. And the authors make their dominionist intent quite clear: to ‘define public policies of the state in favor of biblical values concerning marriage and sexuality.’”

Tisiphone, why don’t you get started on David Barton, the slimy sadist, and Megaera, you can look for others who are prominent in this “Project.” Alecto, you’ll probably need minions, but someone needs to keep an eye on the state legislators who are open to this seduction – and un-seduce them.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

We’ve talked here, and probably all of us have read elsewhere, about why “conservatives” think the way they do, if you can call it thinking – since it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense most of the time. I keep coming back to the concept that they don’t have a moral code, not in the sense that we do, but instead substitute a hierarchy which tells them what to do. Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and author whose description of conservative thinking presents the concept of this hierarchy in the context of a story, which she calls “The Ancestral Story,” and if I may put it this way, she adds a lot of meaty story to the bare bones hierarchy, so that it looks like something resembling human. She used to be, but no longer is, an Evangelical herself, so she has some pretty intimate knowledge.

In a short paragraph which (intentionally or not) responds to the question we so often ask of “Why do Republicans so consistently vote against their own interests?”:

Liberal social policies benefit many conservative voters, especially those who are struggling to get by, but they almost all, to some degree, threaten the conservative cultural narrative. To people who have internalized that narrative and played by its rules, expecting specific perks from society in return, that threat can feel personal and visceral. 

But Ms. Tarico goes beyond analyzing the conservative story to looking at the liberal story – and has discovered that there isn’t one. Most simply put, there are two, and those two stories go a long way toward explaining why we couldn’t get it together in 2016 – and why getting it together in 2018 is NOT going to be simple or easy. But we need to do it, and I think we should give her a look.

I truly hope to inspire everyone who reads this to read both articles in full, doing whatever the online equivalent is of highlighting passages which induce that “click” of recognition of truth. For that reason, and for the reason of fair use, my quotes will be short.

The liberal stories, as I said, are two in number; the one which is perhaps a little more obvious is “The Social Liberal Story.” It is primarily through doing their best to live this story that activists of the 60’s. 70’s, 80’s came to be (or maybe I should say “become”) liberal.

Dig deep enough into a liberal activist, down to what one might dare to call the spiritual level, and I often heard something along these lines: We’re all in it together. There’s no such thing as a self-made man. I actually am my sister’s keeper. Everybody needs a hand up sometimes. One local leader, Eric Liu, contrasted a rightwing icon, the cowboy, with the image of a barn-raising — rugged individualism in a world of gunslingers vs. collaborative construction in organized community. Many of those interviewed thought of their activism as giving back or paying forward what had been given to them….

In contrast to the common rightwing metaphor of government as an authority figure, thought leaders on the left depicted government as a tool—one we use to create inclusive wellbeing and build shared assets that get handed down to future generations.

Of course we (and I say we, being in and of that generation) didn’t invent any of this. It goes back to ancient Athens, to the words of Jesus (such as the words in Matthew 25), to the Magna Carta, to the Enlightenment, even to the French Revolution (before that Revolution ran up against the other story.) And throughout history, it was not always taken literally! The words of the Declaration of Independence, for example, did not exactly mean to our founders what they mean to us. But we embraced it, continued to strive for it, and still continue to strive for it. I see that striving in myself, and I also see it in the actions, past and present, and the words of many others here.

The other story Ms. Tarico calls “The Structural Oppression Story,” and it goes like this::

All prosperous capitalist societies—including, especially, the European democracies and the U.S.—were built by oppressors on the backs of the oppressed. Modern America was built by stealing the land of American Indians, commandeering the sweat and blood of black slaves, keeping women in the kitchen, oppressing brown-skinned immigrants, and exploiting Europe’s former colonies. Virtually all societal ills derive from this one fact—structural oppression—and redressing this wrong will fix most others. “Everything flows from racism,” a young white activist commented on Facebook. Many of her peers agree.

Well, I believe this story has a lot of validity too. But I didn’t always see it. I had to become “woke” – and, believe me, if my striving to live the first story is a work in progress, this story is a work which for me has barely begun.

It’s no [redacted] wonder, as Ms. Tarico doesn’t exactly say, that activists who are coming from this story sound exasperated, and raw. This is a story of people who are “done making nice, done waiting politely,” and of others “who are horrified at their own history.” Well, color me horrified. Just don’t color me white. I am lavenderish-pinkish-beige, thank you, and my race is “HUMAN.”

With the Social story as a basis, we did accomplish things. But we didn’t accomplish enough. And what we did accomplish was so fragile that all it took was one Trump to blow it away. I feel strongly that we still need it. But we need the Oppression story too. For one thing, we desperately need the light of truth – and the Oppression story is filled with truth. We need it now more than ever.  I think most of us have both stories in us to some degree, but nuanced.  And we really need to get our act together – not to agree on everything necessarily, but to work together.

If you have any doubt that this is a serious divide which has the potention to trip us up, read what Democrats are saying about Conor Lamb’s special election victory in Pennsylvania. Lamb, you may remember, is the candidate who was the target of quite possibly the worst political ad in all of recorded history. (If you decide to watch, do turn the volume down. I can only describe it as “shrill.”)

He also is close to the definition of a Blue Dog – and Blue Dog Democrats think that every Dem candidate should be exactly like him – regardless of the state or the district’s particular makeup and views. No, no, no. But he is better than a Republican!

Alecto, Megaera, Tisiphone, this week I think you should come after us (please be gentle.) Prod us to the soul searching that we need to do so that we can both make peace, and encourage the best candidates for every district and state, in every district and state. Because, if we ever needed to win nationally by a landslide, now is the time.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

These days you can hardly throw a stone without hitting a story of how someone (immigrant or not, actually) is getting harassed, physically abused, locked up, or whatnot, and many people are questioning whether ICE should even exist. (Don’t look at me – I’m not convinced it should exist at all, and certainly, under the current regime it’s more of a liability than an asset. But more about that later.)

For one thing, it duplicates other agencies’ work, and apparently that’s a feature, not a bug. The full name of ICE is Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Everyone probably knows it comes under the Department of Homeland Security – now. It was established March 1, 2003. But didn’t we have people working on Customs before ICE? Didn’t Nathaniel Hawthorne start out working in customs? Well, yes, he did, and yes, we did.

The U.S. Border Patrol was founded on May 28, 1924, under the Department of Labor (“They’re taking our jobs!” is nothing new, apparently. Oh, and booze. Prohibition resulted in a lot of alcohol being brought in from Canada in the twenties.)

Then there was the INS, formed by FDR in 1933 by combining the Bureau of Immigration and the Bureau of Naturalization, which was also under the Department of Labor, but was moved to the Department of Justice in 1940, where it stayed until 2003, when it was replaced by ICE, and the Border Patrol was also moved to DHS, but still includes “Customs” in its name and its missions. I might parenthetically comment that in moving from “Naturalization” to “Customs,” and at the same time from “Service” to “Enforcement,” we were NOT moving in the direction of greater humanity. Whether that was something government was imposing from above, or more of a recognition that more people in the US felt less human under Republicans, I can’t say.

But, in any case, we now have both ICE and the Border Patrol. You might say the Border Patrol is trying to keep people out who are already out, and ICE is trying to throw people out who are already in (after, of course, keeping them locked up in private prisons to reward billionaires.) The Border Patrol is the one which is criminalizing citizens with hearts who are putting water and other necessities out into the deserts so people won’t die – people who the Border Patrol wants dead.

ICE has national authority, but the Border Patrol doesn’t JUST work the border. They have a zone of 100 miles from the border within which they retain all authority they have at the border. Some people refer to this as the “Constitution-free zone.” And two out of every three Americans live in it. (You can click HERE for a larger, more legible image.)

It includes several entire states. My first glance told me it includes the entire state of Florida, but that’s not all. Besides the obvious Hawai’i, it also includes the entire states of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Michigan. And most of Vermont. And anywhere in it Border Patrol agents can, and do – well, as Yes! magazine says –

In Hartford, Vermont, last year, U.S. Border Patrol agents boarded a Greyhound bus as it arrived from Boston, asking passengers about their citizenship and checking the IDs of people of color or those with accents. In January, they stopped a man in Indio, California, as he was boarding a Los Angeles-bound bus. In questioning him about his immigration status, they told him his “shoes looked suspicious,” like those of someone who had recently crossed the border….

In Florida, a coalition of immigrant advocacy groups in February issued a Travel Advisory warning people to “reconsider traveling to the state because of the increased likelihood of racial profiling and abuse of civil liberties.” One of those groups, the Florida Immigration Coalition, whose members shared videos that went viral of January border patrol raids, has begun an online petition asking Greyhound to stop allowing the agents onto its buses.

The videos of officers removing from a Greyhound bus a Jamaican grandmother who had been visiting her granddaughter and later of a Trinidadian man being led away in handcuffs got nearly 1 billion combined views, said Melissa Taveras, spokeswoman for FLIC, which advocated on behalf of the passengers.

ACLU is in the process of a campaign to get Greyhound to require that anyone who wants to question one of their passengers must have a warrant. If you click through to Yes! magazine, you can read much more about that. We’ll see how that works out.

But I don’t want to leave out ICE. ICE is the one who is deporting everyone it can get its claws into, including military veterans, and even active duty military, as I have previously asked the Furies to look into (and they keep reminding me that they aren’t citizens themselves so can’t vote, and Republicans must be voted out first of all.) Just in the first three months of their fiscal year, ICE has deported 56,710 people. Theoretically, the goal of their campaign is to deport convicted criminals, but 46% of those deported have never been convicted of any crime (and I have no data on how many of those actually convicted have bogus convictions, but you know there are plenty.)

But there’s one person they will not deport. And that is Jakiw Palij. It has been fourteen years since a court ordered him to be deported. He is the last Nazi war criminal living in the United States. And he will not be deported. Why?

While innocent people are being deported by the thousands, Palij is living out his last days in the United States because the State Department hasn’t made him a priority and no other country wants to take him. Nazi war criminals cannot be prosecuted in the United States, and while Germany has, even recently, done a good job prosecuting Nazi’s [sic] found on German soil, they have not complied with the U.S. government’s requests to take Palij.

The U.S. cannot just drop an individual into a sovereign nation which isn’t willing to accept him, and so Palij will probably live as a free man in his New York City home until the day he dies.

I do understand why no other country wants him, and I have two possible suggestions. Since the US is so cozy now with Israel, maybe someone could get them to take him. I’m sure the Israelis would know how to deal with him. They have experience. But if that doesn’t work – with Bibi under investigation and all – Agent Orange and his senior staff all have many, many great and good friends in Russia. Let’s send him there. And get him out of here! Alecto, Megaera, Tisiphone, you have persuasive powers second to none (even if not as pleasant as some.) Please use them.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.