Not to disagree with the rest, but the rally is in Virginia, not WV. Sparked by the city's decision to take down confederate statues.
Whoops. I knew it was Charlottesville, I just freuded.
It's localish for me; everyone is upset and weirded out and wondering how it got so bad so fast, both those at the counter-protests and those of us who wimped out.
Apparently it turned violent before it even officially started and now the governor has declared a stat of emergency.
I'm shocked by this development.
Just out of idle curiosity, is there a charity for arming/dressing in semi-official clothing a large contingent of non-white and/or non-male "militia" people?
I had an idle thought which didn't quite rise to the level of a post which was entreating women and minorities to have a white male alter ego on Twitter to berate the fuck out of any trolls who come their way. That there should be a fictitious army of white men to countertroll, until the original idea of white male trolls has lost its power. In other words, this is the only thing I can think of to drain their power, short of police and politicians taking an interest.
I remember someone, I think Bitch PhD, making the same point a few years ago -- that racism is one strategy to conserve scarce cognitive resources, it provides a shortcut that lets the brain think about other things.
Someone drove a car into a crowd of people. What's up with that?
Someone drove a car into a crowd of people. What's up with that?
My ultra-lefty friends report that the person killed was a woman with the IWW.
More seriously- the crowd was anti-racism counterprotestors so a good bet it was someone on the Nazi side. Drove into a crowd and rammed other cars causing them to hit people, then reversed and fled the scene. Tons of video of the car and probably driver so I assume they'll catch the fucker soon.
I assume they'll catch him and that nobody in the Justice Department or White House will note that it is terrorism.
How many of these neo-Nazi pricks do you think actually speak fluent German? Like 2-3% at the most? So if they went back to the Fatherland, they'd be the exact kind of immigrant they profess to despise so much.
Oh, he's well caught now. I also see references at the other place to the dead woman being a Wobbly. But nothing with any sourcing. If so, people are going to flip. their. shit.
13: Well, it's terrorism on many sides.
And now a state police helicopter crashed a few miles away.
Some are saying that the driver is claiming self defense, was scared of the protestors. If the cops or prosecutors fuck this up there's gonna be some serious burn shit down protests.
Is sputniknews.com one of those Russki propaganda sites? They've got a headline claiming a car rammed into PRO-Confederate protesters.
Yes, sputnik news is Russian propaganda. Not reliable.
Shit is definitely worse than in The Shockwave Rider now, but with less routine space travel.
Thinking of going to the local downtown counterprotest impromptu organized in a couple of hours. Any sign suggestions? I thought of a pyramid where the bottom half is "White Silence" and the top is "White Violence," but there's a back side.
This white supremecist rally in WV is really shocking. It just seems so anachronistic.
I said almost exactly this (although I was more explicit about acknowledging that of course there has always been widespread systemic racism and individual interpersonal racism) on twitter and had a bunch of people jump down my throat about what an ignorant privileged white person I was, because the kkk has been having unmasked rallies every year forever, etc. Which I guess is all true. But I'm glad at least someone else perceives this as... different... than the sort of racist incidents that were getting media attention a few years ago. (And for most of my life, really, a few isolated incidents aside.)
Most of the time in the recent past, the only time you'd see that many Nazis together was on private property for a show or barn dance or whatever the hell they do when they're being homosocial and stuff.
Republicans are so committed to the logic of the public-private partnership they're extending it to the state's monopoly on legitimate violence.
I followed through! Pretty good attendance, at least several hundred with rally and march. A lot of DSAs in the crowd, not too dense with antifas, although they hung on longer as things thinned out so who knows what's happening now.
On the reverse of my sign I put the basic Black Lives Matter, and in smaller letters above that "whiteness is a racket - one that's killing people".
Related - how do people feel in general about the decision to remove confederate statues? Is this always the best solution - or should other options be considered? Relocation, putting up additional educational material or other monuments celebrating equality, or other options? Does even asking this question reveal how unwoke I am? If this has been discussed in previous threads, I missed it (I did look).
Related - how do people feel in general about the decision to remove confederate statues? Is this always the best solution - or should other options be considered? Relocation, putting up additional educational material or other monuments celebrating equality, or other options? Does even asking this question reveal how unwoke I am? If this has been discussed in previous threads, I missed it (I did look).
Someone drove a car into a crowd of people. What's up with that?
What's up with that is that they're morally indistinguishable from ISIS and that needs to be shouted from the mountain tops at every possible opportunity.
remove confederate statues? Is this always the best solution
Yes. Statues commemorating Confederates can be understood as closely analag... uh, parallel to statues commemorating Nazis. The fact that one of these has been allowed to exist and the other hasn't speaks directly to the cultural health of the respective societies involved.
And there's no legitimate claim to preserving history either -- most or all of the confederate statues in question now appeared a good hundred years after the South's ignominious loss, erected as state-sponsored middle fingers to the civil rights movement. So fuck those confederates and their statues and pull them all right down.
remove confederate statues? Is this always the best solution
Yes. Statues commemorating Confederates can be understood as closely analag... uh, parallel to statues commemorating Nazis. The fact that one of these has been allowed to exist and the other hasn't speaks directly to the cultural health of the respective societies involved.
And there's no legitimate claim to preserving history either -- most or all of the confederate statues in question now appeared a good hundred years after the South's ignominious loss, erected as state-sponsored middle fingers to the civil rights movement. So fuck those confederates and their statues and pull them all right down.
That was me, and what is up with me and the double posting recently?
28: Make yourselves one of these. I'm thinking somewhere nice, like the Houston Ship Canal.
If the argument is that it's really, really important to people in the southern states of America to have lots of statues around of mid-19th century military heroes who happened to be born in those states, they could always put up statues of Winfield Scott and George Thomas and Crittenden and Herbert and so on instead. Heroic Southerners and patriots, every one of them.
Why so many Lee and Jackson statues? I prefer generals who WON. Lee = BIGGEST LOSER. SAD!
There seems to me literally no downsides to tearing down or moving Confederate statues. If there are some of special historical or artistic significance (are there?), then maybe. But I don't see any reason why we are committed to commemorating somebody just because previous generations wanted to.
The thing about Confederate monuments (or a thing) is that lots of them were put up (if you look at the time and circumstances) not purely as war memorials but as a statement about the post-Reconstruction re-establishment of white supremacy. So, literally intended not just as sorrow for dead ancestors, but as a statement about racist ideology.
I guess I can imagine a world where, whyever they were originally built, no one on either side was that exercised about white supremacy any more, so knocking them down wouldn't mean anything, but also no one would mind much. In the world we live in, where people feel really strongly about leaving them in place, I think they should go.
Stone Mountain is kind of remarkable. But its artistic merits would be more than outweighed by the symbolic value of blowing it the fuck up.
In a world where things were gradually, quietly, getting better on racial issues and we were just waiting for the last few pre-Civil Rights era relics to die, I could imagine there being no need to make a few old people sad by picking a fight over Confederate monuments.
In the world we live in, though, with white supremacists having torchlight parades, I think there's a real value to establishing that as a society we don't value the commemoration of white supremacist ideals: those monuments don't represent American civic values.
Multiple friends were standing on that street very close to the car attack. Scary stuff.
I mostly agree with LB in 37. I say that as I look at the Stonewall Jackson Monument that is directly next to my house. Most Richmonders in my demographic (and I suspect most Richmonders) view these monuments as beautiful monuments of men on horses. Cool spaces on a beautiful street. Perhaps the good thing about the horrific situation in Charlottesville is that more people will view these statutes as active beacons for those who hate.
39:
Darn it, LB!!!! Get out of my brain. I would guess that moving the statutes to some museum would be a lot easier in another 5 to 10 years as a percentage of the vocal group of people would start to die off. But 39.2 is important.
It looks to me from Wikipedia that the great majority of the monuments were erected between 1880 and 1920, FWIW. (There are, of course, some notable exceptions.) Not that I think that justifies glorifying the Confederacy, but for better or worse these statues have been a part of our public spaces for a hundred years, and that does say something important about why we are where we are today - I do agree wholeheartedly with what you say about our cultural health. But while Germans never erected Nazi memorials in the first place, we did continue to erect these statues for decades after the war was supposedly over. I am not suggesting a dialogue with the alt right, but rather using these memorials to demonstrate how poorly we dealt with the fallout of the war, demonstrating the errors in thought, celebrating the many advancements we have made and making it clear how far we have to go. I think this is very much about our history, a shameful part but a very real one. Surround each statue with 10 of civil rights activists, put up plaques that discuss the history of the war, and why that particular statue was erected when it was, put them in a civil war museum as a demonstration of how divided we remain 150 years afterwards, or come up with a more creative way to address it. (I believe that the plan for the New Orleans monuments is to eventually display them in a museum.)
I just wonder if we could use these memorials to advance our own citizens' understanding of our history. I am not the first to suggest these ideas, I know, but I think this space could come up with other options besides removal.
Seems to me that it could be worth putting them in a museum with historical background about the fact that they were a statement of anti-Reconstruction ideology.
There was an exhibit a few years back of photographs of lynchings. Presumably, the people who took the photos were celebrating the lynchings, but I think it was worth putting the exhibit on so that we didn't forget the history. In fact, some of those lynchings were in the North, and I think it's worth remembering that it wasn't an exclusively Southern phenomenon.
The biggest Klan group in the 20's revived Klan was in Worcester, MA. The members were not primarily motivated by anti-Black racism. It was an anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic group.
I do dislike the loss of public art (however mediocre), and generally would like to see the statues replaced, perhaps with new statues of civil rights icons.
I could imagine leaving a few token confederate statues around if they were repurposed as designated places of public urination.
43: But--as evidence in support of gswift's claim that some of this Neo-Nazi stuff stems from wage erosion among middle-class whites-- I'll note that part of the animosity directed against the French Canadian Catholics was due to the fact that the Quebecers were willing to work in factories for lower wages; essentially they were crossing picket lines.
42.1: the statue that was removed from the town where I live was relocated to another nearby town/battlefield where there is an annual civil war reenactment and a lot of other statues and informative materials to give historical context. (I don't think this is all ideal context--much of it is more neutral- to pro-confederate than it should be, although not really more pro-confederate than most of our country's high school history books are, but that a side point.) I'm essentially fine with the statue being there, even though nazis can still theoretically visit the statue to give themselves erections. But these things have no business being in general civic spaces, in city centers or in front of courthouses or universities, etc., which is where they are generally located. (Because, as everyone knows, they're not *really* about "preserving history", they're about honoring the confederacy. And that's wrong.)
I saw some Shaun King thing about someone refusing to stand for the national anthem last night.
Would you all sit for the national anthem or pledge at this point? I can't remember if we sing/pledge at the beginning of the school year at convocation.
I sat for the pledge in high school and don't think I've ever been somewhere it was performed since. I stand for the national anthem but I sure as hell don't stand for God Bless America which pisses off a lot of people around me at baseball games where they play that pseudo-patriotic drivel.
History is important, but you can't and shouldn't preserve everything. There are so many of these statues and they just don't have much independent historical interest. Maybe a couple should be preserved somewhere, maybe Stone Mountain is important enough, but the remaining hundreds should just go. At the risk of violating the analogy ban, keeping them is the same kind of impulse as when NIMBYs are trying to declare every old piece of crap historical and preserving it forever. We should preserve enough of the past to retain some important information, but we can't keep every stupid piece of crap just because it's 100 years old.
I was a delegate at the state Democratic convention yesterday and the day before, and we started both days with the pledge. I never recite the whole thing, and wasn't feeling it at all this weekend.
Some talk yesterday about reviving the movement to get rid of the Confederate monument in Helena.
God Bless America is just a way for the Yankees to cheat and ice the opposing pitchers in a way that no other team gets to do.
As usual, a smattering of people said "some day" and the end of the pledge.
Oh god, Hawaii showed me this art project from xmastime last year, that they'd done at school. It was:
1. clever
2. exceedingly formulaic
3. a bit offensive
It was a book. Every page was a printed-out script, with 3-4 fill in the blanks for the kid. The pages were made out of brown paper sacks, so each page was a little pocket. They'd cut out preprinted little pictures that went in each pocket and accompanied the little narrative for that page. So there was zero creativity, just a lot of cutting stuff out, but it was a clever idea.
It was called something like "World Traveler". The first page was, "Here's how Christmas is celebrated in Norway." Each page was Christmas in a different country. A little obnoxious, but within the Christmas Nationalism that I take for granted.
I started to get seriously irritated when we got to Christmas in India and Christmas in China. There were things like, "It is a small festival in China," which to an adult plausibly reads like, "...because it is not the main religion," but to a kid just sounds like, "Oooh, a festival!" and so on. It never actually stated that most people are not Christian in these countries, nor what the major holidays are.
This is perhaps not the right thread for this small scale outrage.
51- See, that I can at least admire as strategy, they do it every game, but other teams around the league do it only during Sunday games which means they really believe in it and/or think their fans want it.
BTW it was Marshawn Lynch who sat during the anthem.
The Kaepernick blackballing blows my mind- if there's one thing I thought was higher than racism in the kleptocracy that runs the NFL, it was winning games so they can make money. Maybe they're making the calculation that not having a decent backup QB outweighs the lost revenue of a possible fan boycott, but it's totally clear they're willing to hire inferior talent. Also, the fact that Kaepernick has become such an ongoing symbol of evil for the right. On multiple blogs ever since the thing started there are those bullshit ads featuring his SCARY BLACK FACE and mocking how his career is over- which is funny because they ran the same ad during the NFL season last year when he was actively playing.
Anyway, I'm pretty much done with the NFL this year- I used to occasionally turn on games if I had nothing else to do and would watch most rounds of the playoffs, but after the CTE study and the NFL pulling their blood money research funding I can't do it any more.
As I learned reading about the (I think successful) campaign to move the Lee and Jackson monument here in Baltimore, most of these statues are municipal or state property so it's not clear how legal it is to actually destroy them.
So when people talk about "destroying historical monuments", what they mostly mean is relocating them to some inconspicuous spot as opposed to, say, dynamiting them. Not that dynamiting them wouldn't be kind of cool.
On the subject of statues, when I was in the military history museum in Barcelona, there was a statue of Franco right outside the entrance to the men's restroom. Apparently that was the compromise reached, since there was a genuine case that a military history museum was an appropriate place for a Franco statue.
Why is there a Confederate monument in Helena?
We also need a bunch of public art commemorating black liberation - struck chains and so forth. There's a lot of that in the Caribbean and virtually none in this country.
the great majority of the monuments were erected between 1880 and 1920, FWIW
I knew I should have looked that up before I said "civil rights era;" there was another wave of middle-finger-pretending-to-be-historical policies enacted in the Confederate states then that I am confusing (and still too lazy to look up). If anything this makes it worse, though; between 1880-1920 would be fresh off the failure of Reconstruction and the height of early spread and legitimisation of Lost Cause mythology. The success of the defeated to reclaim some sense of honour for the side that fought a war to protect the enslavement of humans is, in my view, a fundamental reason America is still so fucked up about racial politics today. So, still: tear those statues down, post haste.
I will say that I too dislike the idea of destroying historical artefacts even when hateful, but when I advocate for removal, I don't really care what happens to a statue afterward. I just think think a stature of Robert E Lee belongs in an American public space the same way a stature of Hitler belongs in a German one.
some of this Neo-Nazi stuff stems from wage erosion among middle-class whites
And the even more pronounced wage erosion among middle-class blacks over the last ten years has led to... what, exactly? I mean, I'm an outsider here, but it is not my impression that there are a huge number of black Nazis in America.
59:
In Richmond, there has been some discussion about how scant evidence there is about the massive slave trade/markets here. That perhaps we should memorialize the horrors of that.
Maybe if they stopped spending their money on expensive guns, cosplay supplies, sporting goods, and tiki torches, they'd be better off financially.
62: It led to the election of a KENYAN SOCIALIST ISLAMO-FASCIST TERRORIST. It's like you're not even paying attention.
It was put there in 1916.
Although the failure of Reconstruction is definitely a thing, I would count anti-immigrant sentiment as a factor as well. With Helena, it's likely more personal: the children of Confederate vets who drifted West after the war are themselves passing from the scene, and this was their monument to their own heritage, which wasn't as big a part of the histories. There's a large general-on-horseback statue of Gov. Meagher right in front of the capital. He's an interesting historical figure; yesterday, I was sitting with a Native legislator who called him an 'Indian-killing machine' but that's far from the whole of it.
I think this is very much about our history, a shameful part but a very real one. Surround each statue with 10 of civil rights activists, put up plaques that discuss the history of the war, and why that particular statue was erected when it was, put them in a civil war museum as a demonstration of how divided we remain 150 years afterwards, or come up with a more creative way to address it.
Not sure if you're still reading, but I think this is, at least if it were possible to abstract such things from the context of contemporary politics, a pretty good solution.
Just to clarify, I take Dr. Oops to mean that those monuments are reminders of how much hatred and white supremacy are part of our history. And I'd say that in a different world, they should be reinterpreted and then left to stand for that reason. I also -- pretty obviously -- think the effort to turn the Union into pillar of rectitude (that sounds dirty, doesn't it?) and the Civil War into an unalloyed good war is badly misplaced and ahistorical.
I am still reading, but I am having a giant fight with the neo-nazi's of medicine on the American College of Surgeons blog regarding the necessity of national healthcare - are you supposed to fight a war on two fronts? This is always the way - I was the jock of the philosophers and the philosopher of the jocks in college, now I am the reactionary of Unfogged and pinko-liberal-Eleanor-Roosevelt of surgeons. Is there anyone out there making T-shirts for me?
Anyway, thanks!
And right, that definitely sounds like as good or better a solution than simple destruction. What I'm thinking of as the desirable outcome is an unambiguous physical public statement that these monuments don't represent a moment in American history to be honored.
Destroy them; surround them with educational materials about how they were erected at the time of and part of the project of instituting legal white supremacy and Jim Crow; paint them silly colors with clown hats; move them to civil rights museums as relics of a racist system, anything like that is good with me.
In Helena, the plan is to put up a sign. This text might be too long: https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/helenair.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/6/95/695fd421-5be2-54a5-bb8f-600bb3eed7d6/591fa6e6b112f.pdf.pdf
Speaking of carved mountains: Charley, Wafer and others, what's your sense of what Natives think of Mount Rushmore?
I've never had a conversation about it with any Native. I cannot imagine that Lakota folks appreciate the placement of the thing.
The Confederate monument in Helena could be relocated inside a giant handbag.
73: This is one of those things where the devil is in the details. But leaving a Confederate monument grossly undisturbed with a sign with a couple of paragraphs of fine print explaining that there are reasons to disapprove of it seems insufficient to me. In an ideal world, I'd want some kind of obvious physical alteration making it clear that the monument is no longer intended to serve the same purpose it was erected for.
61: Blacks always had to deal with unfair treatment due to their race and the legacy of chattel slavery. The white people used to feel safer and more comfortable. Stuff that may have always been there bubbles up when they feel threatened, and part -but only part- of why they feel threatened is a loss of economic security. You don't really have the freedom to act out like that if you've always been oppressed.
74: My sense is that it is pretty roundly despised. Or rather, the alterations to the mountain are despised.
I also -- pretty obviously -- think the effort to turn the Union into pillar of rectitude (that sounds dirty, doesn't it?) and the Civil War into an unalloyed good war is badly misplaced and ahistorical.
I think I understand enough to get why, but if you have to boil down the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln to a small child with no historical context, ie you're giving a simple foundation for their future learning, what else do you go with?
Especially given that I want them to raise a critical eyebrow when they get fed the State's Rights bullshit in school.
Or rather, the alterations to the mountain are despised.
I think circumcised-George Washington is a very definite, if subtle, improvement.
I found it interesting that the Vox "explainer" (lord I am coming to loathe that term), well, explains that the Charlottesville rally was actually taken over by white supremacists, over the original intention to make it just about the removal of a Confederate statue:
Political researcher Spencer Sunshine of the firm Political Research Associates told the Guardian's Jason Wilson that while the rally was originally intended to attract a broad coalition of right-wing groups, it had become "increasingly Nazified" -- with some primarily anti-government "patriot" groups refusing to sign on, and explicitly fascist groups like the National Socialist Movement getting on board instead.
The arc of the Unite the Right rally -- from an ostensible attempt to bring a broad coalition of conservative groups together to protest the controversial removal of a statue, to a "Nazified" rally for "the pro-white movement in America" -- mirrors what's been happening to the alt-right as a whole.
I'm reminded of the big D.C. anti-Iraq War rally in 2002 which was ... infiltrated? influenced? by A.N.S.W.E.R., who have some anti-Semitic tendencies. Not everybody was happy about that, various groups withdrew their sponsorship. A big deal at the time.
At any rate, it seems from this that discussion focusing overly much on the removal of the statue gives cover to the neo-Nazi/KKK factions, misunderstanding what was really going on.
81: I agree there. National myths are important whether we like it or not. And if the good guys don't engage in myth making, the bad guys certainly will.
There's time enough to complicate things in college. But at the secondary school level, we could do a lot worse than "The Civil War was about slavery: the Confederacy was for it and the Union was against it". I know that the "the Union was against it" part is only partially true, but still.
I think I understand enough to get why, but if you have to boil down the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln to a small child with no historical context, ie you're giving a simple foundation for their future learning, what else do you go with?
I hear there's a pretty decent graphic history of the Civil War. I'd start there.
National myths are important whether we like it or not.
Even if I'm willing to grant this premise, I still don't think that means we have to prop them (national myths) up. I also think kids are often surprisingly capable of handling complexity. In fact, I think we sometimes do kids a disservice when we default to simple explanations -- which, in my own parenting, I typically do when I'm ignorant.
A lot of the statues probably don't look like the person depicted. I vaguely remember hearing the original Dupont Square Dupont was going to look like Admiral Dupont, except he was deemed too ugly.
So if you want to keep the equestrian statue, you could change the labeling to "Man on horse, but not in the good riding to help people way."
74: I know you know this, but it's still maybe worth saying out loud: Native people aren't unified in thinking any one thing (no more so than non-Native people). That said, many of the Native people I talk with about questions of memorialization think the placement of Mt. Rushmore is intentionally and profoundly disrespectful. They see the monument as emblem of American imperialism and white supremacy. But again, that's just a few people from a few tribes, and all of those people are activists of one kind or another, all of them are reservation Indians, and all of them are traditionalists.
I tried the graphic history approach, but then my children ended up with surprisingly detailed opinions on the Mutant Registration Act.
I'm in the midst of getting myself all worked up and angry about this. Lost Cause mythology is a particular bugbear of mine, a reliable button-pusher, and of course fuck Nazis, and I guess I'm subconsciously preparing myself for my next conversation with family, which is going to be awful and upsetting.
So before I collapse into emotional rantiness about all that, I just wanted to register:
1) Tiki torches can be so nice in different contexts
2) I keep fantasising about joining Antifa, if I were younger, so I could bash Nazi skulls, but aside from the ethical question of skull-bashing, even-if-Nazi, I have this nagging sense that there's probably something rotten about Antifa anyway and I shouldn't be indulging in this fantasy. And I'll bet this place has commenters who can tell me why.
Is Antifa a coherent organization, or is it just a generic term for left-wing counterprotesters prepared to be violent (or, some better definition)? I thought it was the latter, but is there an organization to join?
I'm going to the rally today, organized by IWW and DSA. Even -- especially! -- if it's still raining. After 45 days without rain, and 44 where the daily high was over 80, 57 and raining is awfully nice weather.
They've closed US12, and evacuated folks along a fair stretch of it on account of one of the fires. This'll really help with that.
I think the fact that I don't know the answer to any part of 92 is kind of my problem with this.
At least here, I know from what I've heard that they have groups that explicitly organize actions and raise money. (In a half-assed way, I heard, at least in that one instance.)
They are also the ones who wear masks.
Like, bandannas though. Not Guy Fawkes masks.
(I saw in last night's march a quite large Trans Pride flag with a hammer and sickle over.)
Not Guy Fawkes masks.
Why not? I would like to support both antifascism in America and a return to Catholic monarchy in England.
Anti-Fascist Action was certainly a real organisation here in the UK, for a long time, and 'Antifa' and Anti-fascist Network in the UK is a successor, but I've no idea how organised that is.
https://antifascistnetwork.org/
I never figured Moby for Jacobite.
I do have the graphic novel! But I'm asking for a hypothetical liberal parent who is trying to give their four or five year old a short explanation of the civil war.
The Shithead Tour is coming to Boston next weekend.
I'm not sure I'd want to join an opposition-type organization whose charter is to react to offenses on the far right, since the far right seems so deliriously happy right now to be calling those shots. They're also planning something for SF & Berkeley soon, and it would be really nice if it didn't follow the usual script this time. Clearly they are shopping for victimization/violent opposition/martyrdom on camera at this point. I don't know what the next step is once the photogenic sacrificial stage is over.
a short explanation of the civil war
I think it's totally fine to say that slavery caused the Civil War! I just don't think it's even a little bit okay to paint the Union as a region of unalloyed righteousness, a land of heroes, or Abraham Lincoln as an American Christ, which is what popular culture (mostly) and public memory (or maybe official memory is more accurate) would currently have our kids believe. And I think it's worth making it clear that there are no good wars, including the Civil War. But seriously, you know your kids and you're a thoughtful parent. I trust your instincts more than I trust my own.
103: This time in Berkeley there seems to be some learning from last time: there's a large coalition having a "non-violent rally" several blocks away. Look on FB for "Bay Area Rally Against Hate". (And a fbriend-of-a-friend is condemning disengagement tactics as collaboration in another thread...)
Uh, the most charitable thing to say about the self-defense in 102 is that these people are terribly naive, "disingenuous" of course far more likely. I would be tempted to hang a huge colorful banner reading WELCOME TO THE FESTIVAL OF POINTLESSNESS! over all the Free Speech branding.
What exactly are "disengagement tactics"? Ideally, I'd like to see the entire population of Berkeley in the streets...
Apologies for 106, which was idiotic.
I don't know if that's a term they use, I just meant what appears from their self-description to be a deliberate plan of keeping their distance and just demonstrating greater numbers and all-around betterness.
The FB argument was prompted by this campus response guide from the SPLC, which says things like "organize a joyful protest away from the event" and "avoid confrontation with the alt-right speaker and supporters", because "the alt-right thrives on hostility".
It's Going Down seems to be the best Clearinghouse for antifa news and actions right now.
I dunno. It's a weird time to be a premature antifascist alright.
42: but rather using these memorials to demonstrate how poorly we dealt with the fallout of the war, demonstrating the errors in thought, celebrating the many advancements we have made and making it clear how far we have to go. I think this is very much about our history, a shameful part but a very real one. Surround each statue with 10 of civil rights activists, put up plaques that discuss the history of the war, and why that particular statue was erected when it was, put them in a civil war museum as a demonstration of how divided we remain 150 years afterwards, or come up with a more creative way to address it.
On the one hand, I really like the idea of public history as an unsettled, and sometimes unsettling, series of narratives which "[sacrifice] comfort for complexity."
On the other hand, the memorialization of past errors in memorialization just sounds a bit too meta to achieve with a statue in a public square.
For many people (who know nothing -- nothing! -- about the work of historical interpretation), a statue of a man on a horse says, "important man, exemplary public figure, recognized by History," and they're not going to read the surrounding plaques that suggest otherwise. Or, even if they do read the plaques, it's the guy on the horse that they remember.
Also, what LB said in 37 and 39.
1) Tiki torches can be so nice in different contexts
Too late.
Every New England town has a little obelisk or plaque or statue of a soldier on the town green with the names of the local Union dead. I don't really begrudge southerners their memorials of a similar type, though a monument honoring the locals who were enslaved would also be in order. The statues of Lee and Jackson are a bridge too far.
113: I double checked and my county has nothing but the next over has a cemetery with both a Union monument and another listing those on both sides who died, which seems understandable even if the "war between the states" language could stand to go or be mocked.
The terrorist's mom said he had a black friend. I think she had to for narrative purposes.
a statue of a man on a horse says, "important man, exemplary public figure, recognized by History,"
If you haven't set up a Kickstarter for this I will.
And not a plaque saying that. A speech bubble.
My city has a municipally-managed GAR cemetery, which I suddenly feel I should walk by and keep an eye on. Along with all the neighbors who have for generations now.
How about a Kickstarter to put up an equestrian statue of General Sherman in the terrorist's hometown?
Where's the monument to the white nationalist who couldn't complete military basic training but who was so oppressed he could afford a $25,000 car at age 20?
119: They were both born in Elephant Tranquilizer State.
Elephant Tranquilizer the State? When did you become so libertarian?
120: I think I read somewhere that he bought the car with money that had been kept in trust since his dad was killed in a car crash when he was a baby, which adds a certain supervillain/Gift of the Magi edge to it all. Apparently his mother is paraplegic but I don't know whether for car-related reasons too.
He's from here, from the shitty racist suburbs where all my daughters were fostered before they came to us. I'm seeing comments about what a scary creep he was as a high school student. I'm not sure that will make people more introspective.
Lee is usually portrayed in a positive light. He's the Erwin Rommel of the Civil War: the "acceptable" face of an unacceptable regime. I don't recall seeing any monuments to Jefferson Davis (I guess he's on Stone Mountain, though).
For the sf fans among us, I recall that one of the many grievances of the lead character in one of Poul Anderson's stories, a story set in a future where the USSR had won the Cold War and the US was run by them or their puppets, was that the new regime had blown up Stone Mountain (or maybe destroyed it with heavy artillery).
The town I grew up in (in Maryland) had a monument in the center of town, a Confederate soldier in uniform, facing north, with the inscription "That we shall never forget the thin gray line." It was moved to a more inconspicuous location in the 60's or 70's but for all I know is still extant. TBH, if you are going to memorialize a Confederate, a foot soldier might be a better choice than a general or a politician. Where I live now there one of those lists of the dead, from the Civil War and on. If you've ever been to Sanders Theater (aka Memorial Hall) at Harvard, on the walls they list the Harvard graduates and students who died in the war and where they died. Gettysburg, Antietam: hecatombs, but also the little places that I had never heard of: one or two dead.
(or maybe destroyed it with heavy artillery)
That would be kind of neat to see. I bet it would take a lot of shots and if they let the dust clear enough between each salvo that people could see the mountain, it could pass a whole afternoon.
One of the towns near here has a list of soldiers who died in battle, soldiers who died of disease, and soldiers who died at Andersonville.
The funny thing about these kind of monuments is that no one pays any attention to them until someone starts talking about taking them down. I wonder how many residents of Columbos know who is memorialized by the state capitol. Of course there's a statue of Columbus by City Hall. I guess he could also be included in the pantheon of Slavery.
ISTR that somebody raised the problem of Columbus about 25 years ago, and a whole lot of Italian American organisations that nobody had ever heard of came out of the woodwork to defend him.
130: yes, that was a big deal here in 1992 when the city fathers put together a huge celebration of the 500th anniversary of Columbus discovering the Bahamas.
My town has a south-facing statue of a confederate soldier that (a) has been hit by cars a few times and (b) is protected from relocation (though not traffic) by a VA law. There's a city museum within sight of it - great storage display place if they ever manage to move it.
Lee is portrayed pretty positively in Harry Turtledove's Civil War AHs, which I assume based on their very long run sold a lot of books. In the standalone Guns of the South, after the South is rescued by time-traveling Afrikaners, Lee finds out the truth about them, campaigns for confederate president on a gradual-abolition platform, and wins, Then in the long Southern Victory series, 11 novels with a different timeline and no time travel, they formally manumit in the 1880's to maintain foreign support while maintaining bondage/peonage (forget if Lee was made to be involved in that).
Full disclosure, I bought the first 5 or so of this series - sometimes new in hardback! - but fortunately aged out of liking them.
I must admit a soft spot for Stonewall (truth be told, I know close to nothing about him), because of his cool nickname, and because along with Jesse, Reggie and Samuel, I consider him a member of my proud clan.
134: Also Michael, and his many distinguished siblings.
I read Guns of the South a long time ago and liked it FWIW, but I've never read any of Turtledove's other novels. In addition to Lee it also portrays Forrest and Davis very positively. I don't know if there's anything flatly false in it unrelated to the time travel stuff, and the most important incidents about their character happen long after the time travel event, but still, very positive. OTOH, it's very clear that the Afrikaners and modern versions of racism are inexcusable, and in addition to a racist ideology also rely on a whole bunch of lies about basic facts of history.
As a book with stuff to say about politics and history, it's uneven? It's an alternate history that diverges implausibly quickly and drastically from reality?
it also portrays Forrest...very positively
I'd say that's a bigger departure from reality than the existence of time travel.
... but I've never read any of Turtledove's other novels.
I gave up on them somewhere during the 11-novel series, but dipping into the Amazon summaries/reviews of his later stuff indicates they are still replays of WW2 with different geography and lots of roman à clef characters and plot elements. He has written several shorter works of "the-Nazis-won" alt-history that are surprisingly moving portrayals of Jewish survival in such a milieu.
I don't recall seeing any monuments to Jefferson Davis
My home address is on Jefferson Davis Highway (a segment of US Route 1). The name is set by state law. Locals cannot change it. Every piece of mail I get memorializes him.
139
I forgot about that one. Was thinking of statues and such. Good catch and bad on me as I used to be in that area a lot.
Start a campaign to rename it after Ronald Reagan. Wedge issue!
That would make NoVa even more Reagan-dense than is now, on top of the airport.
Doesn't matter. At least he was actually on the US side in the war he was in.
The Republican Party used to be reasonably smart, but then it became Reagan-dense.
At least he was actually on the US side in the war he was in.
"in"
Somewhere in North Carolina I saw a Confederate memorial with a random soldier on it and the lines from Charge of the Light Brigade ("Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die,") which I thought was a neat job of disavowing responsibility for anything. That I might leave in place as appropriately shamefaced.
I liked Turtledove's first? I think? set of alternate histories about the Byzantine empire if there were no Islam. But he really does seem to systematically favor alternate histories that are going to be politically worrisome.
He had a series of short stories on the premise that the Americas were inhabited not by Native Americans, but by a species of non-human hominid more intelligent than apes but less so than people, that's all addressing the issue of "So, if there were things out there that were kind of people but definitely biologically inferior to us, what then?" And, on one level, interesting, I guess. And on another level, if this is what strikes you as interesting enough to focus on for a long time, I'm worrying about you some.
I like the cut of ajay's jib. my sister and I are a little at odds on this issue what with the whole great-great-great grandfather gen. edmund kirby-smith thing. last general to surrender during the civil war! of course, because he was running an unsupervised fiefdom too far west to know what the fuck was happening, and when informed apparently absconded with the payroll to mexico. heroic.
148: That's true, that was cool. Actually took some new directions. (His one with Neanderthals was an early work too.)
One of his more recent series apparently starts with WWII kicking off 1938 and dominoes falling such that sides break out differently. Seems intellectually interesting, but not enough to slog through six (?!) books.
147, 150 - jesus fucking christ interesting??????? I am stretching to extend you the generosity of not knowing much how native americans were categorized by the govt & white society for much of this country's history but let's just say "So, if there were things out there that were kind of people but definitely biologically inferior to us, what then?" Covers it pretty much.
There's a (privately run?) Jefferson Davis Presidential Library and Museum in Mississippi. I know it's not federal, anyway.
151: That would be the more strongly worded version of "I'm worrying about you some," yes. That is, the whole premise was "What if the world were such that the most incredibly racist ideology out there was just true!"
Because counting right is for liberal elitists.
151, 153: I remember a conservative buddy of mine dismissing criticism of Starship Troopers by saying that Heinlein was just imagining a future in which fascism was the appropriate response in a crisis. In theory, I'll actually buy that kind of argument, but in practice, science fiction of this sort is inevitably written to justify a viewpoint in the real world -- anyway, that is certainly what Heinlein was up to.
I heard he just wanted a movie with topless Denise Richards.
I dated someone who worked on that movie. At a studio party I briefly shook hands with Verhoeven. Wow, that's like the least interesting Hollywood story ever.
Somewhere is a man who nodded curtly at Verhoeven, who beats you.
I suppose I should also have thought more closely about the implications of writing extensively of a world where Muhammad became a Christian saint and hymnwriter and the main enemy of the Romoi is the villainous (Zoroastrian) Persian Empire.
We live in a world where the restaurant in which I saw Michael Keaton is now a former Pottery Barn.
160: You know, that didn't click for me until earlier in this thread. Pretty much all of his alternate history premises look to be picked to piss people off. (There's a short story of his as well. It's about aliens. But the premise is that there's an ethnic group (of aliens) that's been persecuted for thousands of years in ways that meant that they had to excel in intellectual occupations to stay alive. And when the human explorers get there, they find out that the persecuted ethnic group is genetically distinct and significantly more intelligent than the rest of the aliens. To which the reader responds "Okay, if you're saying that maybe Jews have evolved to have higher IQs than everyone else, sure, whatever.")
On the veldt, people with more than one god were more likely to be eaten by a lion.
In other cultural appropriation news, on Facebook I see a pair of newborn white twins named "Heaven" and "Neveah."
"What if the world were such that the most incredibly racist ideology out there was just true!"
I mean, in theory, you really could write a story premised on inferior humanoids -- though putting them in the pre-Columbian Americas seems inevitably fraught.
It really is possible that a similar humanoid species could have evolved on earth, and you could use that counterfactual to examine human responsibility both to other humans and to animals, for example.
But yeah, it's like the Googledouche memo. You could intelligently ponder issues of gender essentialism, but somehow, nobody who wants to hold forth on such issues in a public forum ever wants to do so intelligently.
"One of his more recent series apparently starts with WWII kicking off 1938 "
My Czech wife gets quite annoyed at the suggestion it didn't.
That part of so-called scientific racism never makes any sense to me whatsoever.
The variation between racial groups -- even on the most charitable pro-racial difference interpretation of a bunch of highly suspect and contested stats -- is what, a couple of percent? How that is supposed to ground anything at all, when the average amount of within-group difference is vastly higher, and tiny percentage differences make shit all difference anyway.*
I mean, I get it, it's a pathetic post-hoc attempt to justify their racism. But it's not even remotely convincing as an argument even if you bend over backwards to grant as many of their stupid premises as possible.
* even leaving aside the total lack of justification for treating people differently on the basis of supposed intellect.
I don't actually _believe_ there are any such differences, of course, but even if there were ... let's say for the sake of argument we could prove the people from Essex, Kent, and Berkshire were less intelligent than people from Glasgow and Edinburgh ...
... what would follow?
Wow. Protestors in Durham just toppled a Confederate statue guerrilla-style. (Looks to be this one in particular. Nameless armed uniformed soldier, CSA seal on plinth, cannonballs at base, dedicated 1924.)
168: New communications strategy: "Look, asshole, even if the average black person turned out to be 2% dumber than the average white person, he'd still be a hell of a lot smarter than you!" That ought to settle them down.
Democracy! Whisky! Sexy!
Pretty much all of his alternate history premises look to be picked to piss people off.
I've always appreciated that Steven Barnes really leaned into that one (and one imagines that, as an African-American SF author he's encountered more than his share of obnoxious alternate history ideas). I haven't read the books, however.
Belatedly, Heinlein's Starship Troopers isn't fascist in any straightforward way. It's weird and ridiculous and probably evil (being Heinlein) but not fascist.
The statue in Alexandria is an unarmed soldier contemplating the horrors of war, erected by the comrades of the fallen. The one in Durham has none of those mitigating qualities. Nice topple.
It's weird and ridiculous and probably evil (being Heinlein) but not fascist.
True, but it does press hard on the idea that only people who have served in the military be allowed to vote, which is not fascist, but also not neutral (I remember when I read it thinking that it was a semi-interesting idea to play with. Now that I'm older, I'd say that it's based on a fundamental misunderstanding of Democracy -- it isn't primarily a way to arrive at the best decisions, but a way to build legitimacy for the decisions).
I have just learned from Twitter that a lot of these Confederate monuments were mass produced very cheaply in the early century, the bleakest most dystopian Jim Crow years, to pepper the countryside as a sign of the new order. So this one wasn't even mortared on, just resting, so all anyone needed to pull it down was some rope.
Yglesias has a good piece on the racism-as-scam angle heebie mentions in the OP.
179: How many others are like that? I guess maybe we'll find out soon enough.
I believe somewhere in the archives is some brief discussion, or maybe just mention, of how the KKK operated in some places like a pyramid scheme.
Just for pedantry's sake: the racism isn't always and everywhere a scam. In SA the National Party got elected promising to end white poverty and it did, through redistribution, affirmative action and screwing black people. Superficially at least the New Deal to Johnson period looks kind of similar.
It's not inherently a scam, sure, and in various places and times it has followed through, including some in the US. Not with Trump, though.
178: it's based on a fundamental misunderstanding of Democracy -- it isn't primarily a way to arrive at the best decisions, but a way to build legitimacy for the decisions
This is a very interesting point. Though that certainly isn't how it's justified; the idea of democracy as being a safeguard against oppression and tyranny is a very common way of advocating for it. Democracy's justified as making sure that the concerns of the people (well, those people who have passed various tests which allow them to gain citizenship... hmm...) are heard and acted on.
186: I think one might see more justifications if one looks further back. Like Rome adding tribunes to represent the plebians, maybe.
183: slolernr. I was thinking about that and pondering the idea of hunting down the citation, but I am too lazy.
But wasn't the justification for the tribunes that they could act to protect the plebeians? I admit I am not an expert here, but wiki points out "For most of Roman history, a college of ten tribunes of the plebs acted as a check on the authority of the senate and the annual magistrates, holding the power of ius intercessionis to intervene on behalf of the plebeians, and veto unfavourable legislation." And the founding myth of the tribunes is very much a story about their job being to stop the patrician senate and consuls riding roughshod over the plebeians.
188: I don't know either, I pulled that out of the air. But I'll bet the patricians wouldn't have conceded the creation of tribunes without a revolt or three.
They didn't - the plebeians actually went on strike en masse. Not only that but they actually left Rome en masse and went and set up on a nearby hill and refused to come back until they got some representation.
153. I once read a short story in which there was a human nation that kept Paranthropus slaves. But it was incredibly superficially written and ignored all the interesting questions. [I hate it when somebody takes an interesting premise and ruins it, since nobody else can then do a better job without being sued for plagiarism.]
167. And here's me thinking WWII started in 1937 with the Japanese invasion of China.
So this makes some points about the parallels between neoliberalism and fascism. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-supermanagerial-reich/#!
Not that how we got here is a mystery or anything.
Utterly, utterly wrong in its description of the Nazi economy and how the Nazi state was run. Tooze, "The Wages of Destruction" is a good starting point, but they ignore it.
191: Anyway, I was right. I should be a pundit or something. Also, IIRC the lesser guilds in Florence also got representation after a revolt in the 13th century.
Has anyone linked this yet? Via BitchPhD.
http://storify.com/brighton_jock/tiki-torch-nazis
201: It's exactly these sort of smug liberals who created the Trump phenomenon. The condescending Twitter guy is mocking simple folk, the common clay of the New South, who have been victimized by neoliberal policies and radicalized by liberal contempt.
We should sympathize with their plight. Many of these people probably voted for Obama, but Hillary's neoliberalism was just a bridge too far for them. Despite outward appearances, they aren't Trump supporters because of racial resentment. They voted for Trump in order to limit the power of undeserving billionaires.
Regarding the discussion above about Confederate statues, I am a little surprised to see how my shriveled little procedural liberal soul has evolved since the election. I can't even manage any real mixed feelings about this. It just makes me happy.
Similarly, tell me it doesn't warm your heart just a little to know that people out there are willing to punch the occasional Nazi.
I mean, sure, I suppose the issue is more complicated than I am allowing. In my search for the above items, I found this nuanced bit of discussion about things you ought to consider regarding the issue of Nazi-punching.
So hope to see the rallying Nazis prosecuted aggressively for any violence, and shamed or fired for any public participation in rallies like these.
Possibly the actual swastika and spectacle of a night rally will make some of those who passively support racism reconsider. I am still convinced that many Americans who are kind of apolitical and have an ethos of self-determination, who refuse to think about social issues systematically, are politically salvageable. They'd better be because there are really a lot of them, many more than the beady-eyed shitheads who showed up in VA.
I don't personally know any way to salvage the ones at the periphery of my social circles though.
And here we are, re Helena: https://twitter.com/GFTrib_PDrake/status/897509989278916608
I am still convinced that many Americans who are kind of apolitical and have an ethos of self-determination, who refuse to think about social issues systematically, are politically salvageable.
What I struggle with is even if all neo-Nazis/Confederates laid down their flags and went into anchoritism, but we still didn't restrengthen the VRA, public education, etc., basically halted all affirmative action against structural racism, which is the likely net impact of four years of Trump, the effects will be almost as bad overall. And most people/platforms can easily balance "these hate groups are disgusting" with pseudo-race-neutral resistance to any constructive policies for change.
Yes. In fact, I think that's a plurality of white America.
The "in fact" was not, in fact, necessary or useful in that sentence.
207: Plurality? That's a modest assumption, I think.
I figure there are too many "these hate groups are just fine" to make it a majority.
Clickhole got there first, of course.
210: It probably depends on how you count the people who are merely slow to condemn and but-actually the question to death.
206. Strengthening public education makes the US better though, and that's pretty easily perceivable. At some level, places like Kansas that are dismantling education are going to lose people, both literally and as policy ideals. I am hoping for a resurgence of interest in reality-based policies; my main personal fear is deranged policy and repression rather than free-market policy.
The contrast between batshit propaganda on Fox and reality will start repelling normal people. I hope.
I am very glad that I've finally given up talking about politics with my parents. It would make me deeply sad to hear my mother making excuses for Charlottesville and I'm afraid she might.
Jesus fucking Christ. What the hell is wrong with him? Out-Nixoning Nixon doesn't even begin to describe it.
I'm going to go ahead and assume that 202 is trolling.
What a complete and utter piece of shit is our president.
I'm honestly stumped by who is the bigger shithead in the Alabama Senate primary.
I guess the "Robert Kennedy, Jr." running in the Democratic primary isn't the person I was thinking of.
I was already developing a theory that vaccines cause moving to Alabama before I looked it up.
222: Based on his strength in polls, a lot of Alabamans seem to be making the same mistake.
Though the famous one does have some connections to Alabama through his environmental activism, so it's not a completely absurd assumption, just a wrong one.
Anyway, he lost, so the next round won't be quite as crazy as it could have been.
I guess a pewter lining of the present age is that while Republicans are still pretty uniformly horrible, they come in wider, odder varieties. Not as interchangeable.
I have just come into possession of a copper lined tobacco stand. I guess it's from before tupperware.
220 gets it exactly right. Unfortunately the Republican party still feels more allegiance to him than to the rest of us.
A black acquaintance told me that three different people have lately told him that white men have it worse than anyone else. The evidence of black privilege cited by one? B.E.T.
If the privileged have to watch Tyler Perry movies I'll just carry on being oppressed.
This was worth stealing: Roger Taney statues have no rights decent people are bound to respect
215: Boy do I hear you. I just made it through, last night, a skype call with my dad which I had been dreading. It was a relief but also a real surprise that politics didn't come up at all. My parents don't have anything else to talk about except politics and bring the subject up habitually despite *years* of effort on my part to train them out of it. The fact that at long last we skipped the subject altogether feels meaningful.
But I'm still dreading my next call with my mother. It's a pretty weird feeling to imagine calling your mother a fascist to her face.
And I know we've all long been at the point of "how can anybody not be repulsed by this guy," but the thing that came to me watching that shitshow yesterday was that even if you take out the despicable *content* of what he said, the emotional incontinence on display in this bloated Nazi toddler is so repellent that I'd think he would gross out even a certain number of fellow fascists. Authoritarians are supposed to consider emotions weak, right? This guy is like constantly in the state of a 4 yr old who's missed his nap.
Authoritarians are supposed to consider emotions weak, right?
Not Nazis, though. They're all about the Romantic. Intellect and rationality are all a bit Jewish; you want to go by your gut. Look at Hitler, ranting and screaming at people.
Bush 41 and Bush 43 have now stepped up. How long can he last?
Bush 41 and Bush 43 have now stepped up.
Eh, press release not naming names just puts them in McCain "sorrowful" territory.
Four Confederate statues were taken down in Baltimore City overnight. This is so interesting: the issue had been under debate for over a year, mostly to do with whether to destroy them or move them to historical museums or some such.
My housemate has been a bit exercised about this: as a sculptor, he's annoyed that apparently the city has been concerned about the projected cost of removal, something like $200k per statue. My housemate, who works in this field, had been proclaiming that, Jesus christ, he could do it for $10k each, it's not hard.
Today, our local NPR station has had a discussion with a prominent local theater person, who pointed out the power of a just plain empty pedestal. (See, if you remove the statue, you've got a pedestal which looks ugly - pulling that out gets expensive.)
It hadn't occurred to me that, yeah, actually, just leaving the bare pedestals there is a statement in itself. A monument, if you will.
Also. While I'm on a roll here:
I haven't seen many people pointing out that, regarding Charlottesville, there's a distinct difference between the violence that occurred and the initial, original and originating alt-right demonstration.
Trump and his supporters are insisting on pointing to the violence -- casting equal blame on what Trump's now calling the alt-left, as we know -- but *that's not the point*. The point is that the original march/rally/demonstration by white nationalists and neo-nazis was, in itself, reprehensible.
This is obvious; the Trumpian narrative is supposing that the violence and nothing but the violence is or was the problem. They need to be called out on this, in these terms.
217: Poe's Law. I knew when I wrote it that it would be mistaken for the real thing -- after all, it is at most only a slight exaggeration of things actual people say. So there's little reason to suppose that I wasn't being serious.
pf, I didn't mistake it for the real thing, because it would be extremely out of character from you.
Personally, I think Trump is deliberately trying to start a race war as the best means of staying in office.
242: That's one of the grimmest things I think I've ever read by you Moby.
I honestly don't think Trump has plans at all, as such.
For a long time, I had trouble reconciling Trump's obvious stupidity with his impressive success as a politician. I think I've figured it out.
The process that created Trump was impersonal. The media, the electorate and the political economy in general were demanding a certain thing, and Trump happened to be that thing.
This is how natural selection works. A creature suited to a particular environment will thrive there. Giraffes didn't plan to have long necks and elephants didn't intend to have trunks. It's just how it worked out because of the prevailing conditions during their evolution.
I don't know that he has detailed plans, but I know that he always comes back to racism when he's in trouble or behind.
I want to develop 245 a little more, and ponder a few of the factors in the environment that created Trump.
1. The media used to penalize lying. In the last 40 years, that has lessened to the point where honesty became nearly irrelevant. The result: Trump was viewed by the electorate as being more honest than Hillary.
2. The media further decided that scandals must be equally distributed among "all sides," so behavior doesn't matter. See: emails. (This, by the way, is why Trump was never going to usefully "pivot." If he cut out 99% of the craziness and did only, say, one insane thing a week, the media would still give that thing the same attention as it would have given 100 things.)
3. The public conversation has moved away from racism as a problem. For big chunks of America, it either doesn't exist, we're glad it exists, or it only exists to handicap whites.
That's off the top of my head, but I'm sure there's more to say. Heck, I'll even grant that the "neoliberalism" of Trump's opponents probably fits in there as an environmental factor, except I fear that might lead to a really stupid conversation.
246: He goes with the racism regardless of his standing in a particular moment, and did so long before he was a presidential candidate. My theory: He's a racist.
There are armed men in military-style uniforms intimidating police while men chanting Nazi (not Confederate) slogans beat black people and Trump says "there are problems on both sides". If that isn't deliberately trying to start a race war, what is?
248: There are lots of racists in America. Very few who are willing to equivocate on Nazism. My conclusion is that he's not just a racist, but a racist who believes that racial violence is a necessity and good for white people.
Further to 247:
4. Money buys credibility in America. Trump had to be rich or otherwise have access to big piles of money.
5. He had built-in name recognition as a media presence before he was ever a politician. He instinctively was able to use the media in a way that had not yet occurred to traditional politicians, though Reagan pioneered some of that.
249: It's blundering into a race war. "I said it was on many sides. I wasn't taking sides!" I think he believes that. I know a lot of his supporters do, and I don't think he's any more aware than they are.
I oscillate between three theories to explain Trump.
First, that the skills needed to become elected have always been a bit different from those needed to govern effectively. Our culture, politics, and media have degenerated to the point where we elected someone with a whole lot of the former and absolutely none of the latter. This is the "reality TV president" theory.
Second, that he and the Republicans are getting what they want in some sense. He may not be as popular as he'd like but they're still gutting taxes and regulations and putting fans of the Confederacy in charge of the Justice Department. This is the "it's all a distraction" theory, a.k.a. the "we're all doomed" theory.
Third, that he has a unique constellation of traits that make him look like a buffoon, but also make him well-suited to getting and using power in ways no one would expect. This is the "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe" theory, a.k.a. the "Greg Stillson" theory, a.k.a. the "no, literally, doomed" theory. It's the one I believe the least often but can't be removed from the list entirely.
I think he's never been unaware of who the sucker in the room is regardless of whatever else he doesn't know.
David Roberts at Vox is somewhat helpful but goes too far with the goldfish theory when he says "he lacks any ability to hold beliefs, commitments, or even deceptions in his head across contexts". Racism is something he has been consistent about (something Roberts admits elsewhere in the same article!).
Hadn't seen that Roberts piece, but I think it's great and it fits neatly into my own theory. One can be a racist and still have a striking lack of beliefs or commitments across contexts. Complete indifference to racial justice is also racism.
Trump intuitively gets that one grotesque offense against decency is a crime; a million of them is a statistic.
Pence is cutting short a trip aboard and cancelling appearance so he can meet with Trump and discuss "national security matters."
Complete indifference to racial justice is also racism.
No, I think he actively believes in innate racial superiority (he talks about his good genes all the time) and buys into GOP anti-anti-racism. His viewpoint on most else is not nearly so fixed.
OMFG: Pasty white guy strips off his polo and baseball cap to escape counterprotesters. Direct quote as he strips: "Don't hurt me, please don't! I'm not really a white power man, I just came here for the fun, fuck!"
60 seconds later when he's out of danger and talking to the cameraman:
"So you're not a real white supremacist?"
"Barely. It's kind of a fun idea, just being able to say 'white power', you know?"
259: Yeah, I'll grant that if he's got a commitment beyond the ones dictated by narcissism, that's it.
"Barely. It's kind of a fun idea, just being able to say 'white power', you know?"
I am completely unsure about how much antifa-type counterviolence is a good idea. But man, do I want that jerk scared of having his face broken. He doesn't have to actually get hurt, but stripping his swag off and fleeing seems about right.
If he learns anything from it. Probably won't.
I just noticed somebody painted "antifa" on a traffic-light box* near my office. I think it has been there for a while, but I never noticed before because the graffiti is done by somebody who doesn't understand how fonts work.
* I'm sure there's a better word. I mean the metal box holding the electronic works for the stoplight and is stuck to the pole that holds up the traffic light. Not the little one with the button you push to cross the street, but a biggish thing that is more or less at eye level.
263.2: I think lots of young male rage is driven by a fear of being found ridiculous/cowardly/powerless and that the spread of this story will discourage some people who wouldn't care about being called a Nazi because they don't get past the tough-man in jackboots visual.
When he gets home he'll have rescued an innocent white women from the ravening antifa BLM hordes.
(SwiftKey almost made me type "raven infection"!)
237 I think we need to be more willing to take yes for an answer. I'm fine saying that both Bushes have repudiated Trump, and let Trump's partisans try to argue they didn't.
267: I am coming around to the view that liberals have been too dainty about tactics (see 203), so I don't object to lying about what the Bushes did if it's tactically useful.
But I do think it's really important for liberals to remember that the Bushes -- W, particularly -- were part of a movement that paved the way for Trump by normalizing overt lying, racial discrimination, and political norm-busting. Though the Bushes actually have effectively repudiated Trump in the past, this particular statement was the lamest possible kind of repudiation.
Likewise, Trump should be tied around the necks of every Republican congresscritter and they should all be thrown in the ocean to drown together. They should not be permitted to separate themselves from Trump unless they actually, you know, separate themselves from Trump.
(SwiftKey almost made me type "raven infection"!)
Like a thrush infection but more gloomy.
man, do I want that jerk scared of having his face broken
If you haven't seen it already, you might enjoy this video of the Nazi shit from that Vice piece that's been going around, sniveling now that's he's had a taste of what it feels like to know that people you encounter on the street might want to do you harm.
I feel like I should know the person who left the first comment.
271: Hadn't occurred to me to look at the comments. That's magnificent.
It's not the first comment anymore, because life is such that joy must be snatched quickly.
268 You don't think they're each more vulnerable separate than together?
I'm not talking about having W's babies -- any club with which to whack Trump is worth whacking him. With.
Is that the same guy who was in the video saying Trump was ok, but should never have let his daughter marry a Jew?
I bet there's lots of guys who said that.
There's something to be said for this idea for those Confederate statues you can't get rid of.
271, 272 Which comment was that then?
I am surprised to say this, but the clip from Fox & Friends that Kevin Drum just posted is worth watching.
Does YouTube moderate comments? I don't see it now. It was "This is surprisingly easy to masturbate to."
Fun fact: the asshole in 270 was one of the people who moved to New Hampshire to try to ruin it, but got kicked out of the Parking Meters are Tyranny group.
OT: https://twitter.com/NWSMissoula/status/898014560547778561
This is shot about 2 miles from my house.
I'm not saying you're racist, Charley, but that smoke is remarkably white.
Why is Montana electing a new pope?
They're ultramontane. It's right there in the name.
279: Wow. Some Fox producer is out of a job.
I said a couple weeks ago that we haven't even come close to the limits of bigotry and violence that Trump supporters will sign up for, and Trump shows no sign that he's willing to pull back before he gets there. The worst-case of a Trump administration looks like business as usual in most respects, except that things could get very ugly for minorities, both as a matter of official policy, and through the legitimation of violent nativism.
ogged, when you're right, you're right.
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2015_12_13.html#015091
This seems pretty optimistic. https://thebaffler.com/latest/goodbye-pepe
274: It's tough to know when to emphasize Trump's continuity with the Republicans, and when to emphasize the break he has made with the Republicans, but I think this is a time to emphasize continuity.
The leadership of the party, including the Bushes, has made a forceful statement that race relations in this country should be returned to where they were a week ago, when decent people didn't say these things out loud. That's totally unacceptable.
The party leadership shouldn't be let off the hook. The Republican line for decades has been that racism is over because we don't have the KKK meting out extrajudicial killings. We can't allow people like the Bushes to hide behind that bit of misdirection again. We can't allow them to say that murder and Nazis are where we draw the line on racism. That's what got us here.
There is only one thing the Republican Party can do to be legitimately absolved of responsibility for Trump: They must repudiate Trump. The Republican Establishment can try to salvage a more subtly racist party out of the wreckage of Trump. That ain't the liberals' job.
284 - the one they elected in 1998 died nearly a decade ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian_Pulvermacher
This in the NYT gets at what I was going for in 289:
It is easy to denounce Nazis. Republican lawmakers, if you truly repudiate this march and this violence, then repudiate voter-ID laws. Repudiate gerrymandering. Repudiate police brutality. Repudiate mass incarceration and private prisons. Repudiate the war on drugs. Repudiate the fact that black Americans have still not been compensated for the unpaid forced labor that was foundational to white financial stability. Repudiate gun control obstructionism. Repudiate the Muslim ban. Repudiate the wall. Repudiate anti-abortion legislation. Repudiate abstinence-only education. Repudiate environmental deregulation. Repudiate birtherism. Repudiate homophobia and transphobia. Repudiate your own health care bill, which would have led to the deaths of thousands more people than a Dodge Challenger driven into a crowd. Repudiate your president.
OT: So, in the house the exploded in Lincoln, they have now sent in the police to look for evidence of a crime. Which I was suspecting might happen because two people were in the house when it exploded and it seems very unlikely that they wouldn't have noticed enough natural gas building up to completely demolish their house and render several adjacent houses uninhabitable.
292: Am I guilty of stereotyping if I just assume "meth lab accident"?
I sort of doubt it because I think they would have figured that out easily. Also, that's a very nice area (if you're into the whole new house-big yard thing). I'd think that anybody who could afford to live there would make their meth elsewhere.
True, but that's the kind of street where neighbors might call the cops on a funny smell.
I might at that. There were supposedly hundreds of rounds of ammunition that went off from the heat of the fire, but I was assuming having that much ammo in the house isn't really unusual.
I totally get 289. The thing about Trump is that we're never going back to 2014, last year, last month, or last weekend. Republican power since Nixon has been based on a fusion between explicitly racist working class voters and economic elites. It was always a shaky coalition, because it only really delivered for the latter, while, at best, slowing (long term, net) progress viewed by the former as adverse. Each has some level of contempt for the other -- certainly it's much more long lasting and much stronger going one way than the other. Bannonism is the attempt to reverse the poles in the coalition, and is especially unstable because of the asymmetry in contempt.
Events have given us a wedge.
Neither part of the right coalition can have power without the other's full (even if wincing) embrace.
...a fusion between explicitly racist working class voters and economic elites
Yes, and I've been trying to think of the best ways to apply pressure (beyond moral pressure) to those economic elites. Because they have more to lose than I do if the economy falters and they need people like me to run that economy more than they need people like the assholes marching with swastikas.
And there are other wedges. Like West Virginia wants a $15/ton subsidy on coal from the Appalachian region. Wyoming is very opposed to this. Without some direct subsidy, Trump can't keep his promise to the coal miners of this region.
(Needless to say, the subsidy is a stupid way of helping West Virginia in terms of dollars spent per job saved.)
"You move 16 tons and what you do get? Another day older and $240 in federal debt."
In local news, I'm now receiving unconfirmed reports that the Lincoln house explosion was a murder-suicide attempt.
They should have shot the dog first.
I've now heard from two sources that it was a murder-suicide attempt. So, if my cousin is reliable, it's now confirmed.