Republicans are persecuting trans people, their families and physicians as enthusiastically and comprehensively as the Nazis went after the Jews. The Nazis enacted their Nuremberg Laws of 1935 and Republicans in state legislatures are enacting their anti-trans laws of 2023, both vicious, reprehensible, intolerable.
19 III 2023: Mike is Mike
Mike Pence has not strayed very far from his old self. He is denouncing any indictment of Trump as “politically motivated,” and asserting Americans’ “right to peaceably assemble.” This is based on Instruction #4 of the Trumpian Handbook: “Don’t say anything that might offend any part of the base, for there are good people on both sides.”
And just as Trump stood up for the Nazis of Charlottesville, Pence is, by way of anticipation, standing up for people who would protest the arrest of an insurrectionist, Russian tool, and traitor.
The right wing has had plenty of time to form a selection of dodges around the Stormy Daniels affair.
1) Stormy is lying, as is everyone who takes her seriously, for Trump would never involve himself in anything so sordid, just as he has told us.
2) It could have happened, but that would have been before Trump was “saved.”
3) O.K., it happened, but it’s a free country where a rich man can do anything he wants, just as I would if I were rich.
4) Who wouldn’t pay hush money, do anything at all, to remove an impediment to the progress of the MAGA Movement?
I would prefer that prosecution of Trump in connection with the Stormy Daniels affair, the least of Trump’s crimes, be postponed after prosecution for greater crimes, sc., his attempts to subvert the Constitution and his theft of government property. But as the cliché goes, “They got Al Capone for tax evasion.”
Of course, it may be that no amount of prosecution can be counted on to prevent Trump’s re-election. America cannot commit suicide without him.
18 III 2023: If a former president is a criminal, we must indict him or fail as a nation
For a long time now people have been carrying on as if the President of the United States were not a citizen who once held office, but a sacrosanct king who could do no wrong. A criminal is a criminal and must be prosecuted, and if this criminal is some sort of muckety-muck, someone notorious and wealthy, there is all the more reason that he must be prosecuted.
Oh, but Trumpy is anticipating the next stage of his persecution. As if it had been divinely revealed to him, he is predicting the date of his arrest and his mistreatment at the hands of the high priests and pharisees. He is summoning his worshippers to come to his aid, telling them “Protest, take our nation back,” which, being interpreted means: “Stage a revolt and keep me out of jail.”
And if his devotees riot because of his shocking grievances, and do violence at his bidding as on Jan 6, he won’t be to blame. No, he’ll again follow the Nazi public relations model. They denied party responsibility for the manifold brutality of Kristalnacht, and attributed the beating, pillaging, and murder of Jews to the righteous anger of “racial comrades” among the German people.
16 III 2023: “Parents’ Bill of Rights”
There is a bill before Congress that its authors and proponents call “The Parents Bill of Rights Act.” They claim this novel legislation will provide parents with a greater say in what educators teach. The authors of this bill are pandering to people whom they themselves have frightened by misrepresenting current trends in education.
They are trying to disguise their bid for hegemony by misappropriating the title Bill of Rights. Parents do have a right and a duty to provide and direct the education of their children. However, they have no right to force public school curricula to coincide with their own beliefs or prejudices. Our public schools are responsible to the entire pluralistic community, not to any sect or political party.
If parents find public school curricula offensive or inadequate they must found their own schools. Nineteenth-century Roman Catholics considered the public schools incompatible with Catholic teachings and educational philosophy, and so they created an alternative school system. Segregationists reacted to mandated integration of schools by founding their own segregated schools or “Christian academies.” Advocates of educational methodologies and curricula unavailable in public schools have founded their own schools, as have parents who were simply not content with the quality of education provided by public schools.
This “Parents Bill of Rights Act” is an attempt to provide the cover of law for efforts by Christian nationalists to impose their beliefs and their will on their fellow citizens. They like to claim that “America is a Christian country,” but if America is subjected to the control of these people, it will no longer be the United States of America nor in any way Christian.
15 III 2023: The vicious and stupid at play
1) “San Francisco Considers $5 Million Reparations Payouts To Eligible Black Adults.” OK, but I think that in a Western state first consideration should be given to the few native Americans that remain. And, come on, $5 Million is chicken feed.
2) A state legislator in South Carolina (the home of the Confederacy, remember) has proposed a bill that would impose the death penalty for abortions. He had 23 co-sponsors for the bill. Imitators in the other barbarian states will probably try to outdo South Carolina by enacting laws that anyone who has an abortion will go to Hell.
3) Minnesota state senator Steve Drazkowski voted against a free lunch for children bill because “I have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that is hungry.”
14 III 2023: Republicans and Appeasement
DeSantis says that supporting Ukraine is not a vital national interest of the U.S.A.
Does he, like Trump, have a passion for totalitarians?
Does he believe Russia cannot be defeated?
He is maybe re-enacting fascist Joe Kennedy who knew that England could not defeat the Nazis and the U.S. should stay well away. Or maybe he feels Neville Chamberlain’s reluctance to become involved in a “quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing.”
Hard to know for sure. But this I do know: If Biden were to declare that we should have nothing to do with Ukraine, this wannabe dictator DeSantis would be howling that Ukraine’s freedom is essential to America’s well being.
9 III 2023: Second-Amendment Chaos
The undefined right to freedom of speech has been misunderstood, misapplied, and abused. So also has the Second Amendment’s “right of the people to keep and bear arms.” America, with its 122 guns for every 100 souls is a paradise for firearms manufacturers and the horror and laughing-stock of the civilized world.
The Second Amendment protects a right to keep and bear arms in support of “a well regulated Militia.” Nothing is said about stand your ground, open and closed carry, automatic weapons, butt stocks, and all the other excesses of American gun culture, but the Second Amendment has been stretched thin to cover all these and much more, and more energy and cash have been expended in defense of an inflated and elaborated understanding of “gun rights” than in defense of any other rights guaranteed us by the Bill of Rights.
The consequence of this has been a neglect of regulation of firearms that would be unthinkable in any sophisticated society. Did the founding fathers even imagine that America would become so degenerate that its courts and legislatures would turn a provision meant to create a militia into a license for childishness and criminality?
4 III 2023: Free speech, however foul?
Yesterday’s Huffpost carried an article by Christopher Mathias: “Exposed: Dallas Humber, Narrator Of Neo-Nazi ‘Terrorgram,’ Promoter of Mass Shootings.” It describes the extensive use of the internet by this deranged woman and other neo-nazis to report, praise, and inspire racial conflict and murder. These people have created what Mathias aptly calls a “hagiology” of mass-shooters who are actually hailed as “saints.”
It seems that very few legal actions can be taken against these perverts. Their online activity is clandestine, or stops just short of actionable incitement to violence, and the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech is interpreted as protecting even criminals like these.
The First Amendment’s “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech” is not accompanied by any indication of what is meant by “freedom of speech.” This has led to extension of the protection speech beyond what good sense could imagine, to include pornography, out-and-out lies, blatant grifting, gross ignorance, verbal assaults, incitements to violence, and all but the most demented utterances of racism and misogyny. Naive understanding of freedom of speech has always been a problem, but this problem, like so many others, has been exacerbated and made more obvious by the evolution of the internet.
Of course, the argument is usually made that any attempt to limit speech will have a “chilling effect” on freedom of speech. This may be. But utter failure to limit the use of speech denies the potentially destructive power of words. Verbal aggression can be as violent as physical aggression, even though it is more easily disguised. Lies can be dangerous. Misinformation can be dangerous. The magical rhetoric of advertising can be dangerous. Incitement to religious or political frenzy can be dangerous.
I can think of no way to limit speech without risking deleterious side effects. But I believe it should be possible to hold people responsible for the consequences of their speech. This would require a more extensive definition of fraud and a more honest and sensitive understanding of the varieties of violence. Yes, any constraint on speech runs the risk of the “chilling effect.” But it has been clear and is becoming clearer that some constraint is required, since citizens insist on freedom of speech without accepting the duties of self-restraint that accompany this right.
25 II 2023: Another sleaze seeking attention
We have heard from a Rep. Lance Gooden from Texas who is accusing his fellow representative Judy Chu of disloyalty to the U.S. and collusion with Communist China because of her defense of a Biden appointee.
Good Ole Lance is quoted as follows: “Gooden said in the interview, “I think that Judy Chu needs to be called out. … I question her either loyalty or competence. If she doesn’t realize what’s going on, then she’s totally out of touch with one of her core constituencies,” he said. “I’m really disappointed and shocked that someone like Judy Chu would have a security clearance and entitled to confidential intelligence briefings until this is figured out.”
“He’ll huff and he’ll puff ….” He says “Judy Chu needs to be called out,” but what he is really saying is “I need some attention paid to me, so I’ll do what the rest of the Republicans are doing and claim there is scandal where there is none.” He says he is “really disappointed and shocked that someone like Judy Chu ….” Is he “really” disappointed and shocked or isn’t he imitating the theatrical indignation of other Republican wannabe muckrakers? And I’ve got to wonder if a Republican congressman from Texas can really be disappointed or shocked by anything at all?
12 II 2023: Nuts and crooks own the news
I looked at the Huffpost website this morning with some disgust. Admittedly, Sunday is a poor news day, but instead of news of cute children, local tragedies, rescued pets, and little known facts, I find, instead, that the webpage is a fascist news sheet manipulated by rightwing nutters to keep themselves before the public eye. Reports about these monsters are rarely complimentary to them, but that does not matter, for they know they are winning so long as their photo and name make the frontpage.
So, in today’s Huffpost I found the following children of notoriety (I give the number of their mentions in parentheses): Donald Trump (5), Marjorie Taylor Greene (4), George Santos (3), Ron DeSantis (3), and one mention each for Mike Lee, Jim Jordan, Ron Johnson, Matt Gaetz, Sarah Huckaby Sanders, Kari Lake, and of two salaried fonts of misinformation, Lisa Kennedy Montgomery and Tucker Carlson from Fox News.
Why is this? Well, scandal sells, and the behavior of these figures is scandalous by design. Indeed, some of them compete in conjuring up ever new and more shocking scandals. And the media, keen to maintain their own notoriety at any cost, keep playing right into the hands of these bogus people, become less and less trustworthy, and provide some credibility to the accusation of “fake news.”