5 XI 2020: There ought to be consequences

I’ve read about a “press conference” by Rudy Guilliani and Eric “Freddo” Trump that was in fact a propaganda event at which they repeated and embellished the misinformation being spread abroad by Trump and his collaborators. There seems to be swirls upon swirls of misinformation around us, and these are not cases of someone misunderstanding or being innocently mistaken, but they are calculated programs of lies, empires of fraud.

I do not believe that this should go unchecked, indeed, go unpunished. We demand truth in advertising, and so those who practice deceit in their adverts must answer to the Federal Trade Commission and often suffer the loss of large sums as a result of attendant lawsuits. If we can be so fastidious about false claims in commerce, can we not create some similar mechanism to control political discourse? This may well be impossible because in politics there are so many instances of lying that capacity of the courts would be far exceeded. But we must somehow get beyond our responses of “Sure, he’s lying, but that’s the kind of guy he is.” or “Don’t expect the truth, it’s politics!”

31 X 2020: Trump’s juvenile delinquent followers

I’ve read now about two instances of obstruction of the Biden campaign by menacing pre-adolescent supporters of Donald Trump. “We’ll show all them eeleets! We’ll blow air-horns and the hell with freedom of speech. We’ll show how we love our Messiah by attacking the Biden bus! Ain’t it fun!”

Well, it’s not. Down in Texas, the Rednecks-for-Trump crowd were clogging a federal highway with their pickups in an attack on the staff of a presidential candidate. Why didn’t the highway patrol do their job? I suppose they were understaffed and unable to deal so many semi-criminals at once. Well, there were a lot of four-wheel assholes surrounding the bus and many of these assholes were armed. Yes, this was no college prank or exercise of free speech, this was armed rebellion.

Biden’s local p.r. man lamented: “Rather than engage in productive conversation about the drastically different visions that Joe Biden and Donald Trump have for our country, Trump supporters in Texas today instead decided to put our staff, surrogates, supporters, and others in harm’s way,” Way too polite! Productive conversation is not an option for these meatheads. That’s why they are so devoted to Trump, who, of all the presidents we have had, is most like them in speech and spirit. As always, ignorance seeks its own level.

30 X 2020: Home of the brave, and of the childish

Today’s episode in the comic strip Pearls before Swine continues the story of Pig’s campaign to be elected Village Idiot. A neighbor nominated him for this office. Pig was deeply flattered and looked ahead to the election. But a rival emerged in the person of Larry the Croc who, with his family’s encouragement, put himself forward as a candidate. When asked in today’s episode how his campaign against Larry for Village Idiot is going, Pig says “Not good. But then we heard Facebook will run political ads even if they’re not true. So we started running ads about him.” “What are you saying?” asks Rat, and the Pig replies “Larry can read.” The Rat observes “That’s defamatory,” and the Pig explains “We think it will ruin him.” As so often, today’s Pearls before Swine portrays America in a microcosm.

I have always thought that the election of Donald Trump exposed the failure of public education in the United States. Successful democracy requires informed and thoughtful voters, but we have learned from the election and the continuing cult of the satanic Trump that a large part of our population have not passed out of middle school. Yes, maybe at one time they were able to read, but, finding that burdensome, they’ve turned to commercial and right-wing media with its unrelenting propaganda. Of course, their education gave them no capacity for critical thought, so they are unable to see how they are manipulated and abused by the forces of plutocracy. Thought involves some effort, but these are like the sort A.E. Housman once described, when he wrote

Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink

for fellows whom it hurts to think.

The peril of this condition has been made even more obvious by the reaction of these people to COVID19. Guided by their Great Leader, they rejoice in refusing to cooperate with the efforts of the medical community to keep the virus in check. For fear that the solitude and calm caused by the pandemic might give them an inkling of the extent of their folly, they insist on their delusional “rights,” the right to have fun, the right to crowd together and stroke one another’s egos, the right to show that they are tough and indifferent to prudence and truth. So, thanks to these childish and reckless citizens, the virus rages on and on. Under these circumstances, what claim has America to any greatness, how can America be regarded as anything but pathetic.

28 X 2020: Is Amy Coney Barrett still innocent?

In the History of Apollonius, King of Tyre, a novelistic tale from the sixth century C.E., Apollonius’ daughter Tharsia is carried off by pirates and sold to a pimp. But when she next encounters her father, she is able to describe herself as “an innocent maiden who keeps virginity inviolate amidst the shipwreck of chastity,” and sings a little song that begins:

I make my way through filth, but am unaffected by the filth,
as a rose among thorns is not pierced by their barbs.
Pirates carried me off when they attacked with wicked sword,
and now, though sold to a pimp, I have never sullied my purity.

I wonder if Justice Barrett can make the same claim. Borne along by the enthusiasm of religious extremists and manic reactionaries, she has made her way, guided by the Pirate, Donald Trump, and the Pimp, Mitch McConnell, through the brothel that is the Republican senate all the way to the Supreme Court. Has she come through all this filth without being affected by it? Justice Barrett is by all accounts an honest and moral person. Did she hold her nose as she passed through the nomination and confirmation process, or did she come to accept the smell of partisan dishonesty? We wait to see.

21 X 2020: Militias, really?

I’ve been thinking about the people that plotted the kidnapping of Governor Whitmer of Michigan. There have been “militias” in Michigan and other states for many years. We see photos of them from time to time doing training exercises or strutting around fully armed in city centers.

We have put up with this menace too long! America has outlawed organized crime and we should also outlaw armed gangs of rebels-in-waiting who have declared their intention to attack the government.

I put militia in quotation marks above because these gangs of thugs and poseurs do not at all deserve the title of militia, certainly not in the sense of the “well regulated militia” that the Second Amendment envisioned. They are not unlike the worst biker gangs. The biker gangs wear virtual uniforms (leather jackets and pants, etc.) and are always ready for a fight. Members of these let’s-play-war groups also wear virtual uniforms (so-called “tactical” clothing and gear), and have a permanent chip on their shoulders. The main difference between the two groups is that the bikers make a fetish of motor-bikes and these “play soldiers” make a fetish of automatic weapons.

7 X 2020: Manic Catholics for Trump

I found online at the website of Church Militant, an online tabloid for reactionary Catholics, an article about the “Nationwide Novena of 5,400 Masses for President Trump.” It is customary when you ask a priest to celebrate a mass for a special intention to give him a stipend or, as is now the preferred term, an offering. This offering is not required, but it is the traditional and common practice. The amount of the offering is determined by the local bishop. Checking online revealed that a lot of dioceses have set $10 for a mass offering. So, for 5,400 masses we are looking at $54,000. The Republican National Committee should be easily able to cough up $54,000. However, there is a less expensive way. In the Archdiocese of Cincinnati the sum set for mass offerings is $5.00. So if all the masses can be celebrated in the Cincinnati archdiocese, the RNC can get by with $27,000, a big saving. I should not perhaps ridicule the politics of right-wing Catholics, but readers of Church Militant are the ridiculous playthings of anyone who strokes their morbid fear of change by calling for a return to the “good old days” or, as our preppy Senator Hawley says, to “small town values.”

The ads on the Church Militant site are noteworthy. The Militants advertise subscriptions to their site: “GET THE TRUTH never miss a news update and deepen your faith Join Church Militant” and “sign up for premium access and become the best catholic you can be” There’s an ad from Real Estate for Life that urges “Find a Faith-based Realtor,” and, from Retreat at Sea, an invitation “Join us in 2021!” with a photo of a luxury cruise ship.

But it’s the articles that are really striking. The lead article is “SATAN’S SUGAR DADDIES: The Billionaires Funding the Left.” There are two pieces to relay warnings from the reactionary Cardinal Müller: “Cardinal Drops Bombshell on ‘Beijing’ Biden” and “Cardinal Warns of LGBT Endgame: Ultimate destruction of marriage and family.” Carlo Maria Viganò (the guy who is permanently pissed off because he didn’t make cardinal) also gets in on the action, claiming: “If Trump loses, the final kathèkon (“restraint”) [2 Th 2:6] will fail and a New World Order will be unleashed.” And the report on an “apolitical” letter of the Archbishop of Denver entitled “Religious Freedom is on Your Ballot” has the headline “US ARCHBISHOP: HUMAN LIFE IS ON THE LINE IN NOVEMBER” accompanied by a photo of someone holding a poster that says “MOST PRO-LIFE PRESIDENT. EVER.” with a portrait of you know who.

However, enterprises like Church Militant are not funny. The Catholic Right is a pernicious conspiracy of virtual schismatics, a group pathologically aggrieved by its loss of power and ready to do anything to get it back.

6 X 2020: Republican duplicity, again stoking fear and resentment

I’ve received a document: Catholic Opinion Research Survey. On its cover it says “Daniel Sheerin, which side are you on?” and reveals the bias of the survey. On one side is a photo of a beaming Trump, a beaming Reagan, and a somber looking John Paul II before a background of the American flag. On the other side is another photo showing Ilhan Omar, Nancy Pelosi, Charles Schumer, and Joe Biden before a background of black.

The survey contains a series of tendentious questions intended to measure the degree of my outrage at alleged slights, insults, and atrocities against Catholicism by the left. Most of the questions are, in fact, much better suited to reactionary evangelicals, but it is assumed that Catholics and evangelicals are undifferentiated components of a pro-Republican Brand X Christianity.

This document was sent by an organization called Catholic Vote that is “Mobilizing Catholics to Defend Faith and Family in 2020.” On their website they advertise a book entitled A New Catholic Moment | Donald Trump and the Politics of the Common Good by Bryan Burch, the president of Catholic Vote. There is a reactionary Catholic club called Legatus that claims to be “the world’s premiere [sic] organization for Catholic CEOs and Presidents.” In 2018 Legatus named Bryan its “Defender of the Faith,” a title he shares with Henry VIII and the current Queen of England. Catholic Vote is just another wing of the Republican Party, trying to camouflage itself with religion, evangelical and Catholic, another group struggling to defend the “American Way,” i.e., predatory capitalism, patriarchy, and bigotry.

5 X 2020: Is Hooliganism the answer?

We have hyper-aggressive demonstrators vandalizing public and private property and attacking the police with anything they can throw. These are hooligans. We also have groups of so-called “patriots,” clubs of reactionary working class people who have a taste for violence, like to play “army,” and are simply spoiling for any fight. They too are hooligans.

How can we contain all this random violence? I suggest we follow the example the United Kingdom and channel all this violent energy into football hooliganism. Yes, we’ve a long way to go. In the U.S., sports fans are generally well-behaved. There’s the occasional fight and spasms of vandalism, but we’ve nothing like the organization, commitment to violence, and militant stupidity of Britain’s football hooligans.

So what can we do? Hockey and basketball are very intense and sometimes give rise to violence, but they are played indoors, so there is not space enough for some real aggro, bovver, and riots. American football is the best option. Aggressive fan clubs, or “firms” as they are called in England, could be formed around professional football teams and violent hatred fomented between these groups. Football stadiums provide room inside for pre-game, half-time, and post-game fights; there is plenty of space for fighting and trashing in the concessions areas, as well as easy access to the environs of the stadium for expanded combat and vandalism.

Many questions remain. Could these clubs be multi-racial? The fan base of most teams is multi-racial, but would this collaboration endure among truly committed hooligan-fans? Would prohibition of weapons in football stadiums inhibit club members’ propensity to violence? Would all political groups be represented in these clubs, or would membership have to be limited to Republicans, reactionaries, and white supremacists?

Many questions and difficulties remain, but football hooliganism is preferable to random riots, so-called militias, and chest-thumping and menace associated with “gun rights.”

4 X 2020: Medical Bullshitin’

We’re all sorry to hear that the President is ill, but we do not know how sorry to be because we don’t know how ill he really is. It is no surprise that even the White House physicians are peddling bullshit because nothing comes out of the White House but bullshit. The President has trained his people never to tell the truth, not because the truth is necessarily damaging to him, but because he wants no wavering from White House policy.

4 X 2020: Patriotism vs. Boosterism

As the election approaches we see more and more of red, white, and blue, hear more and more talk about loving (or not loving) the United States of America, and we are supposed to be impressed by flag-waving righteous indignation. And yet, now especially, but also at any time, abuse of our flag is routine. No, I don’t mean the silly flag-burners, but the citizens (and Chinese manufacturers) who seem to put the red, white, and blue on everything except toilet paper.

Are folks exhibiting their patriotism in this way? They are not. They are claiming membership in a fan base. This is a phenomenon not of patriotism, but of boosterism or a kind of team spirit, e.g., like showing and wearing the University Notre Dame’s colors and logo. (These, by the by, are closely guarded by copyright so that the myriad tchotchkes and garments sold to fans will swell the University’s revenue.) On football weekends N.D. fans mob the University Store and carry out large shopping bags filled with Notre Dame stuff for themselves and the folks at home.

I do not know of any occasion or place from which people stream out carrying bagfulls of American flags, tchotchkes adorned with the flag, and clothing of red/white/blue plus stars for every part of the body. But just search online under red, white, blue caps, T-shirts, sweatshirts, shorts, pants, swim trunks, swimsuits, and red, white and blue bikinis, snowsuits for babies, and red, white, and blue shoes. And, of course, American flags of every size, shape, and material are available in quantity from numerous vendors online or at home.

Then have a look at the respect and care with which real patriots are expected to regard and handle the flag as described in U.S. Code, Title Four, § 8.Respect for flag (online at www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/4/8). Real patriotism, love of country, requires observance of these regulation and rejects the exploitation and vulgarization of our national emblem.

The words patriot, patriotic, patriotism are misused in the United States to camouflage nationalism, jingoism, male chauvinism, white supremacy, xenophobia, self-justification. Our ad-man President routinely abuses these terms, as do most right-wing parties and organizations. It is time to take the flag back from the hucksters and to take patriotism back from the anti-social and the reactionaries.