America, You Break My Heart

Meet Your New First Lady

I don’t think I can stomach all of the think pieces about “economic anxiety” and “demographics” and “the anti-establishment vote” and all the other bullshit punditry we’re going to see over the next few days.

No. Just shut up. Shut up about all of that. Here are the facts:

1- Republicans control all three branches of government now. The last time that happened we got two wars, a record high budget deficit, a crashed economy, and a government so inept that it let one of this country’s greatest cities drown. So congratulations, America. You bought it, you own it.

2- It’s not a vote against the “establishment” when you send the same assholes back to Congress. See item 1.

Seriously, shut up about that. I saw a Trump supporter on TV last night say she wanted to “drain the swamp.” It’s not “draining the swamp” when virtually the same swampthings are headed back to D.C., except now with an authoritarian Putin wannabe at the helm. You’ve basically turbo-charged the swamp.

I mean, come on. They sent John fucking McCain back to Washington, you guys. John McCain was first elected to Congress in 1982. He’s been in Congress for 34 years. You don’t get more establishment than that.

3- Racsim is a real thing and it’s stronger than you know. Please stop denying the deep, rotting undercurrent of racism in this country just because we got two terms of a black president. Here’s a fact: America’s first president to follow its first African-American president was sued for discrimination and endorsed by White Nationalists. Last night’s vote was a vote about white fear. Own it.

Republican racism is now mainstream, has been for a long time. When Chief Justice John Roberts gutted the Voting Rights Act, states like North Carolina wasted no time enacting new policies that targeted people of color. This was craven, political opportunism, and it targeted voters of color. It targeted black people. That is the literal definition of racism.

4- Third parties were spoilers. Again. They always are, people. What have I been saying? We have a two-party system. That’s reality. Don’t like it? Move to fucking Britain where they have a Parliament. We don’t have one, so learn to count. Option one is the Republican candidate. Option two is the Democratic candidate. That’s it, folks. There is no third option.

I’m talking to every single one of you people intelligent enough to see that a President Trump would be a disaster. Yes, you folks on both the right and left: if you failed to vote for the only viable alternative to Trump, then you can go fuck yourselves. Yes, fuck you Susan Sarandon, Viggo Mortensen, Sen. Lindsey Graham, friends of this blog, and my own financial advisor down in Brentwood, Tennessee, who said he was voting for Gary Johnson because he wanted to “shake things up.” You voted for these people, even though Gary Johnson is a blubbering idiot who knows nothing, and even though Jill Stein, aka Tofu Palin, is an equally incompetent nincompoop who pops up every four years like a bad case of herpes. And in so doing, you elected Donald Trump. If you cast your vote for these people, you own the results.

I especially want to give a stiff middle finger to the folks who voted for Gary Johnson or Evan McMullin and voted to send their Republican Congress critters back to Washington (See Item 2). You basically cancelled out your “vote against the establishment” by empowering this idiot with a full Republican majority.

4- The Fourth Estate is dead. The American institution known as the news media has failed. It failed by promoting candidate Trump, promoting a bullshit Clinton email story, and filling the airwaves with behind-the-curtain “process stories.” Instead of informing the American people, they talked about the horse race (is feature not bug, I know, I know). Sorry, Steve Kornacki, but when MSNBC put you in front of your little map to do your mathematical jujitsu, it was a waste of everyone’s time. We don’t need to know the finer points of electoral math, demographic shifts, and turnout comparisons to 2008 and 2012. We need to know what it means if a President Trump renegs on our NATO obligations. We need to know what will happen if our trade agreements are suddenly null and void.

And another thing: news media, you spread fear and promote racism. You know you do. It can’t be a coincidence that Scott Michael Greene’s name has virtually disappeared from the papers; if he’d been Abdullah Mohammed we’d still be talking about him.

5- Evangelical Christianity, now with extra hypocrisy. Seriously, nothing screams religion is dead louder than a guy as morally repulsive as Donald Trump grabbing the vote of the Jesus people. You are completely dead to me.

6- Our system is broken. For the second time in the modern era, it appears the Democrat won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote. And it went so well last time, didn’t it? (Again, see Item 1.) This is the kind of thing that would have had Donald Trump calling for revolution and lawyers and Second Amendment Solutions had the shoe been on the other foot. So no, Republicans, you do not have a mandate, what you have is a broken system you were able to manipulate.

I really fear for this country. I fear for my students, who have names like Ahmed and Mohammed, who are black and Muslim and come from war-torn places like Syria. I fear for the people I know who are Hispanic. I fear for my gay-married friends. The few bright spots — legal cannabis in California, Massachusetts and Nevada — cannot overcome the seriously bad news that yesterday brought. Because what America did yesterday was endorse hate, racism, bigotry, and intolerance. We said that it’s okay to hate your neighbor. And that is not my America.

Rep. Martin Daniel: Worst Person In The World

[UPDATE]:

Martin Daniel tried to delete his racist Twitter rant. Sorry, buddy. The internet never forgets. Ha ha ha ha:

 

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Tennessee Republican State Rep. Martin Daniel of Knoxville took to Twitter last night to spout a string of racist Tweets about Muhammad Ali, whom he insisted on referring to by his given name, Cassius Clay. Some examples:

Interestingly, Daniel is a big supporter of Donald Trump, who received a whopping five deferments, and then lied about it until he got busted by ABC News. Daniel also does not appear to have served. But hey, nothing says “support the troops” like using them as shields for your racism.

The response on Twitter was swift and severe, prompting Daniel to dig even deeper:

Yes, some anonymous person saying something mean on Twitter is totally the same as a member of the state legislature being racist and offensive about an American icon.

If this social media shit storm plays out in the usual manner, I predict Rep. Daniel will claim he received death threats, because of course he’s the real victim, right? Republicans always are.

By the way, Rep. Daniel was recently in the news for expressing his outrage over a Civil Rights reading exercise his fourth-grader brought home.

It’s Always About Disaffected White People

The same disaffected white people who listen to Rush Liumbaugh and rail against “political correctness” are flocking to Donald Trump and his promise to “Make America Great Again.” Problem is, America has always been great … for them:

Which America is he promising to us? If you ask his supporters, they say life has gotten worse for people like them over the last 50 years. It seems safe to assume that, in the eyes of Mr. Trump’s overwhelmingly white male fans, America was greater a half-century ago. Indeed, it was pretty great — for them.

It’s not just that factory jobs were more plentiful or that women and minorities were largely kept from positions of power. Large national programs that radically changed the country kept America great specifically for white men. New Deal-era systems like Social Security and unemployment insurance; rules that demarcated minimum wages and maximum work hours and protected unionization; and the G.I. Bill at the end of World War II substantially transformed the country and created a booming middle class. But they all purposefully left out most women and minorities.

It’s a little-remembered fact that the social safety net, that product of the Great Depression, initially was available primarily to white working-class men. Social Security excluded domestic and agricultural workers until the 1950s — jobs held largely by people of color and women. Ditto unemployment insurance and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Gays and lesbians, excluded from the right to marry until last year, of course were denied all of the legal benefits of such contracts: inheritance, property settlement in divorce, insurance benefits, Social Security spousal benefits, etc.

So yes, America has always been great for white men. Particularly straight white men. And these are the folks whining that America isn’t great anymore because they have to share their piece of the pie after 240 years? Get the fuck outta here.

I know this isn’t any groundbreaking news to liberals. I’m just really happy to see the paper of record acknowledge what’s really going on with this “Make America Great Again” nonsense. I’ve heard far too much about “wage stagnation” and “income inequality” as if it’s really economics driving the rise of Trumpism. I don’t think that’s it at all. I think it’s the same old shit that it’s always been: loss of white privilege. The news media seems awfully loathe to call out the racism in our electorate, as if it’s impolite to call things what they are. But there you have it.

Here’s something else I learned: watching one of the weekend MSNBC shows, I learned the last Democratic president to receive the majority of the white vote was Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. Gee, now what happened in 1964? Thinking … thinking …

From a presidential perspective, that doesn’t seem to matter: we’ve had several Democratic presidents who managed to get elected without white peoples’ votes. Here’s a nice little run-down. We even managed to have majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate during that time period. So I’m really not too worried about my party losing white voters. If all they want to do is whine about how they have to share their toys, well, let the Republicans have them.

At some point this is all going to change, though. The generation that remembers when they owned the playground is going to die off and a new generation will take over. These will be people who grew up at a time when everyone played together; they weren’t alive at a time when others suddenly got the same rights and privileges they’d been enjoying for decades. That all happened long before they were born. It will be interesting to see what America is like when that happens.

Is There A KKK Member In Congress? UPDATE: PROBABLY NOT!

[UPDATE]: 2

And there you have it:

Starting to think this was an attempt to discredit the pending real release.

[UPDATE]:

In vetting the list, several people have found some rather unusual names, including openly gay Lexington KY mayor Jim Gray and Knoxville, TN Mayor Madeline Rogero, a gay rights advocate. Both have vigorously denied any KKK connections (Gray here, and Rogero here.)

Many others whose names appear on the list have also denied any connection to the hate group. That the list contains the names of Latinos and GLBT advocates has called into question the veracity of the list and its sourcing.

Meanwhile, Anonymous is on Twitter, still naming names and defending the list itself. So I am very curious to see how this all shakes out.

Is this a hoax? An attempt to discredit Anonymous? Or just some really bad hacktivism?

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Anonymous has begun outting members of the Ku Klux Klan and the first list of names has appeared here.

Notice any familiar names? How about this one:

Well slap the dog and spit in the fire, this appears to be Congressman Joe “You Lie!” Wilson! I always knew he was an asshole; I don’t recall hearing he was in the Klan.

I don’t know how Anonymous came by its information or how it’s been verified. I eagerly await a response from the Congressman from South Carolina’s 2nd District, who ran unopposed in 2012 and received 96% of the vote. Is he going to say it’s not true? Probably. Or, who knows, maybe not. Since Rep. Wilson’s most notorious act thus far has been to call the first African American president of the United States a liar to his face, on national television, I think our national news media should at the very least get a response from his office.

And a question for Reince Priebus: will the RNC disavow Rep. Wilson? It will be very interesting to see how the party handles this news, seeing as how they keep telling us that minority outreach is so important.

Is the Republican Party palling around with domestic terrorists? It would be irresponsible not to speculate!

“Real Black”

[UPDATE]:

Rupert Murdoch regrets the error.

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Rupert Murdoch on Twitter last night:

Nobody knows how to be a “real black” person like an elderly white media mogul whose business model consists entirely of using pretty blonde things to scare the crap out of other elderly white people.

I Don’t Understand This Activism

[UPDATE]: 2

So here’s the beef:

“Every time race is brought up, he pivots to the economy, which obviously a lot of racial disparity comes via economic means, but some of it is just flat out racism and discrimination,” Morrow said. Sanders’s view that “if we had more jobs in Ferguson, this wouldn’t have happened, I’m not sure that is valid. I mean, Mike Brown was on his way to college. It’s not just a jobs thing.”

I missed the part where Bernie Sanders said it was just a jobs thing. Sorry, I’m just not seeing it.

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[UPDATE]:

As always, John Cole put it much better than I ever could.

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Can someone explain to me why the Black Lives Matter movement has been targeting Bernie Sanders? This is the second time that Black Lives Matter groups have shut down one of Sanders’ rallies:

Event organizers allowed the period of silence, as some in the large crowd booed and shouted for the protesters to leave the stage. Afterward, Marissa Janae Johnson, who identified herself as a leader of the Black Lives Matter chapter in Seattle, asked the crowd to “join us now in holding Bernie Sanders accountable for his actions.” She motioned for Sanders to join her at the microphone.

After several minutes of frantic conversations, Sanders left the stage and greeted people in the large crowd who had turned out to see him. Many chanted his name.

In the hours that followed, several activists took to social media to question whether Johnson was speaking for the broader Black Lives Movement.

The tense scene in Seattle was reminiscent of one July 18 in Phoenix, when a larger group of Black Lives Matter activists disrupted a Democratic presidential forum at the liberal Netroots Nation gathering that featured both Sanders and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley.

I don’t get what specific actions Sanders needs to be held accountable for. Have I missed something? Why aren’t they targeting Republican candidates? Republicans are still steeped in denial that racism even exists in America, and that police brutality unfairly targets people of color. Why pick on Sanders? He’s not in denial about systemic and structural racism in this country. He’s no Scott Walker, saying police brutality is just a matter of a few bad apples that can be corrected with “better training.”

I don’t understand a movement that seems all too ready to alienate allies.

Bad For Business

I’m not giving Gov. Nikki Haley and South Carolina Republicans any Profiles In Courage awards for their about-face on the Confederate flag: clearly they heard from business leaders in the state, who gave them their marching orders. I can almost hear the conversation now: “Do not make us the next Indiana!”

Ditto Walmart, which announced it will no longer sell Confederate flag merchandise, and Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn: nobody wants to be the target of boycotts. The Confederate flag has had its last stand, so to speak.

It’s amazing to me that this is what it took, though. The brutal slaughter of nine innocent people in their church, targeted for no reason other than their skin color. That it took something this heinous to finally get Southern stalwarts to see the light just makes me hurt for humanity.

I also think the Confederate flag has been a comparatively easy response for us. When tragedy strikes, Americans want to do something, and removing a symbol of hate from the public square is both easy and a no-brainer. Dealing with more pernicious issues like gun violence or the racism that is deeply embedded in American culture? Not so easy.

President Obama told Marc Maron that Congress’ inaction after Sandy Hook “disgusted” him. It disgusted a lot of us.

He said of gun control efforts post-Charleston:

I don’t foresee any legislative action being taken in this Congress, and I don’t foresee any real action being taken until the American public feels a sufficient sense of urgency and they say to themselves, ‘This is not normal.'”

I agree with the President. He’s absolutely right. Removing a symbol of hate from the public square is the easy response. Dealing with gun laws? Much harder. And as a commenter recently pointed out, if gunning down some little kids in their school classrooms didn’t shock us into action, nothing will.

Guns are going to have to be bad for business, the way the Confederate flag is bad for business, before anyone in Congress decides the NRA needs to go the way of the Stars and Bars. And make no mistake: the event that sparks that profile in courage will be truly horrific. We’ve had mass shootings at a movie theater, shopping mall, grocery store, fast food restaurants, you name it. None of that has ginned up sufficient shock and outrage to stop the flood of guns into public life.

But that day will come, it always does. And it will be truly awful, in a way these things are always truly awful. America’s gun lunacy isn’t going to fade gently into that good night. No, it’s going to have to be stomped out, not just in anger and outrage — lord knows we’ve had plenty of that — but by corporate CEOs and Chamber of Commerce types, who finally realize that a populace too afraid to leave their homes is bad for business.

Top 5 Ways The State Of Tennessee Welcomes Racists

Betsy at Pith has a post up about how communities provide cover for racists. She writes:

It’s not too much to ask that we look around our communities and ask ourselves if there are ways we’re signalling to dangerous racists that we support their cause. Are there ways that we’re normalizing and making ordinary and mundane things that should be read as warning signs?

Good point. Not to toot my own horn, but I made a similar observation back in 2013 when the League of the South announced plans to hold rallies in Shelbyville and Murfreesboro. At the time I wondered:

What is it about Tennessee that draws the hatemongers out of the woodwork? Thinking … thinking ….

But all sarcasm aside, maybe it’s time to revisit the topic. What signals are we in Nashville and across Tennessee in general sending to racists that their ideas are welcome? How does our state government send the message that we tolerate racist ideas? Let me count the ways.

1- When the Memphis City Council voted to rename city parks named after Confederate figures like KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest, the state legislature responded as it always does: by passing a law preventing municipalities from renaming city parks named for military figures. Not included in that legislation: a provision preventing municipalities from also renaming parks and monuments named for civil rights leaders. The measure passed overwhelmingly in both chambers:

The measure sponsored by Republican Sen. Bill Ketron of Murfreesboro was approved 26-3 by the Senate on Thursday. The companion bill passed the house 69-22 last month.

Approved 26-3 by the state Senate. Wrap your head around that for a second. Did our noodle-spined governor sign it? Of course he did! Why do you even ask?

2- This hideously ugly assault on common decency off I-65 just south of Nashville:

This is a privately-funded statue of the aforementioned Nathan Bedford Forrest, KKK founder and Confederate general, clearly visible as one drives I-65 between Brentwood and Nashville. Besides being hideously ugly, and honoring a hideously ugly idea, it’s also (usually) surrounded by a display of Confederate flags. Anyone driving into Nashville from the south sees this entirely inappropriate “welcome.”

While the nightmarish statue is privately funded and sits on private land, TDOT has right-of-way alongside the Interstate. Why the hell a massive tree screen wasn’t planted to prevent this assault on the senses from being the “welcome” visitors see as they enter our state capitol, I have no clue. (UPDATE: an effort to restore a vegetation screen has begun.)

3- When racist groups like the Southern National Congress, Stormfront and American Renaissance hold their annual conferences in our state-owned facilities like Montgomery Bell State Park and Fall Creek Falls State Park, it not only goes completely unremarked from our spaghetti-spined Republican governor and legislature, some of our state reps even speak at the events.

As I wrote at the time:

It’s amazing to me that our state legislature can hold pointless, grandstanding votes on anti-UN nonsense like Agenda 21, but a bunch of intolerant bigots and extremists hold a gathering at a taxpayer-funded state facility and no one can be bothered to make even the slightest gesture in objection.

When these things happen and our government can’t even be bothered to issue a declaration of protest, it sends a signal to hatemongers and racists that they are welcome.

4- When empathy-challenged Tennessee legislators troll people of color to garner headlines for themselves and are not rebuked by their caucus.

5- When shit like this happens, and no one is fired.

At what point will the state address the intolerance it endorses?

Annals Of Bad Ideas

It was planned a long time ago and it was supposed to be sarcastic anyway so it’s totally okay, you guys:

An event called “Caucasian Heritage Night” to be put on by a Utah minor league baseball team, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim-affiliated Orem Owlz, has been cancelled following severe social media backlash via #CaucasianHeritageNight, particularly in light of the recent admittedly racist shooting massacre in South Carolina.

The Orem Owlz baseball team in Utah scheduled Caucasian Heritage Night, or what some are calling a “white appreciation event,” long ago, before the racially-motivated South Carolina shootings, and that the Caucasian Heritage Night event was meant to be a “lighthearted” roast of Caucasian people, poking fun at white stereotypes, reports CNN,

But when the Orem Owlz put up a Caucasian Heritage Night post on Friday, promoting what they perceived to be an event mocking the behaviors and likes of white people, social media blew up, many, such as a woman calling herself Melanin Monroe, apparently offended and angered by the Caucasian Heritage Night event, thinking white people get enough attention as it is.

A “lighthearted” roast of Caucasian people? “Poking fun at white people?” How exactly does one do that, show up with a jar of mayonnaise? Caucasians don’t have a heritage. For that matter, why? Who says it’s okay to make fun of white people any more than it’s okay to make fun of any other ethnicity? Sorry, but that’s not okay!

Anyway, I’m calling bullshit. No matter how much you may claim your intentions were good, there are going to be people out there who will think you’re condoning white supremacy.

Stupid.

Take Down That Racist Flag, South Carolina

Un-fucking-believable:

The Confederate flag flying at the Statehouse in Columbia became part of the Charleston church shooting story Thursday after the U.S. and South Carolina flags were lowered in mourning but the rebel banner was left flying at its full height.

[…]

Officials said the reason why the flag has not been touched is that its status is outlined, by law, as being under the protected purview of the full S.C. Legislature, which controls if and when it comes down.

Gov. Nikki Haley ordered that the state and American flags be lowered, but the Confederate flag flies at full staff over the state capitol. And that, in a nutshell, tells you everything you need to know about this symbol of racism and white supremacy.

Fuck you, South Carolina.