Tag Archives: right wing watch

07.08.16
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The Dallas Backlash: Joe Walsh Makes It All Clear

H/T Slate

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I wasn’t calling for violence, against Obama or anyone. Obama’s words & BLM’s deeds have gotten cops killed. Time for us to defend our cops.

Joe Walsh is a dimbulb Tea Party punk who briefly became the face of yapping white suburban anger in Northern Illinois in 2010 before being put back in his place by Tammy Duckworth. He’s the voice of those who think that police don’t have enough power, who thinks that anyone of color who looks askance at a cop is a thug who deserves to get shut down, and who, it goes without saying, defends traditional family values.

The collar counties in Illinois go through spasms of reaction, like the seismic reverberations of white flight. Walsh rode that wave until it broke, but these horrible shootings (which now seem to be the broken reaction to police-based murder) are tailor-made for a racist like him. He’s one of those goons (who are also the entirety of the FOX News lineup, all of talk radio, and like 80% of elected GOP officials) who have wanted to bury Black Lives Matter since it came up, because an organized effort and consistent spotlight on systemic injustice makes them uncomfortable. It’s far better to imagine it a violent militant movement, with gun-toting cop-killing rapists around every corner. This plays right into his hands.

It also plays into the hands of Donald Trump, who has tried to rally the “Law and Order” white reaction to his side, with some success. Expect failed authoritarians like Rudy Guiliani to be all over tying this to Obama, and of course to Hillary, for not “defending cops”, as if anything Obama has ever said about it has been untrue.

What this does is allow any talk of black rights or black lives to be smothered in a sea of righteous anger. Your concern for your lives, it will essentially be said, is costing other people their lives, and their lives are, need we say, more worthy. They are the ones that matter.

Or, as Tommy Craggs said, ” A lot of subtext is going to become text in the next few days. Seems only right for Walsh to have gotten us started.”

Obama, and by connection Hillary, are “to blame” for this because they recognize that things aren’t right, and that we have a long history of violence toward black Americans. Black Lives Matter is hated because they refuse to conform to the official story, to the legend of justice. That’s why they have to be smeared. They have to be discredited. The mythology can’t stand up to the light.

The story is that official unwillingness to sweep police violence and the pervasive violence and injustice against the black community under the rug is un-American, and dangerous. Both might be true, but that tells you more about America than anyone is comfortable with.

06.29.16
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The Confederate Flag and Zika: They Know It’s Hitting the South First, Right?

 

Yeah, but you know in this case those are the same things, right? 

 

You know when you hear politicians say things like “Washington is broken- and I’m the man to fix it!” It’s pretty common in both parties, of course, but there is a certain strand of Republicanism that is more likely than others. It’s the whole “I was successful at business, so I clearly can be great at foreign policy. Just knock some heads together!” One might even say that such a theory is the driving impetus of the Trump campaign, if one wanted to ignore the racism. The Onion, of course, captured this perfectly many years ago. “Millionaire Vows To Do For Government What He Did For Turkey Ranches.”

Anyway, it works really well, because there is a lot broken in Washington. To wit:

House Republican lawmakers sought to reverse previously passed legislation restricting the display of the Confederate flag in federal cemeteries by slipping a provision stripping the legislation into a larger appropriations bill that included Zika funding. The House bill passed last week on largely partisan lines, but was blocked in the Senate Tuesday by a Democratic filibuster.

The Confederate flag language was just one of a number controversial provisions included in the bill, which also included an amendment cutting Planned Parenthood funding and other swipes at the Obama administration’s public health initiatives.

Republican lawmakers are warning that the American public will now blame Democrats if Zika becomes a full-blown health crisis.

I don’t know. It seems like they maybe wanted this to fail? By maybe putting in pretty un-Zika-y provisions, such as the flag of racism, slavery, and treason and also cutting women’s health? And then were pretty open about their reasons? Just maybe?

The GOP, of course, knows how to play this game perfectly. Block anything good and reasonable from happening in the most cynical way possible, sit back and let terrible things happen, and have both sides take the blame. But because they run on “government can’t work!” and Democrats on “let’s make government work!” it is a winning strategy, except at the national level, where the radicals and dimwits they parade can’t stand the light of day.

Oddly, the reason why they can’t deal with the national scrutiny is the reason why this is so scary. The new generation of Republicans have completely internalized this behavior. They grew up with it. There is nothing strange or cynical to them about it. This is simply how it is done. This is how you destroy the enemy, which is the government, and by extension, the Democrats. The whole point is to destroy the government so you can get more of your people elected so you can continue to destroy the government, and make it just a vessel for wars and for punishing internal enemies (Mexicans, ovaries, rappers, etc).

It’s fitting that the Confederate flag got involved. It’s not just because that is poison to decent-thinking humans. The entire GOP strategy is an extension of the Civil War by other means.

People could be very ill because of this. Babies could have their entire lives irrevocably changed. That shit like this isn’t front page news is a tragedy.

06.22.16
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Anti-Safety-Net Conservatives: Never Not Wrong

 

Lousy troublemaking veterans. Image from Chicago Tribune. 

In the Times morning brief, they always have a neat little “behind the news” section, called the “Back Story” pinned to a headline or an anniversary. I usually enjoy it, today more so than others. It starts with commemorations of WWI centennials (the 100th anniversary of the Somme starts in July), and mentions how the US is erecting a WWI memorial in Washington soon. We’re reminded that Great War vets had to march bloodily on Washington to demand rights, and how, to avoid a repeat of that, Roosevelt pushed the GI Bill, one of the great creators of equality in America, and one that, with the bracing comfort of Time, we assume was always universally loved. 

 

Right?

The G.I. Bill gave veterans low-interest loans to buy a home, farm or business; 52 weeks of unemployment insurance; job placement services; and up to four years of federal aid for learning.

When the legislation was introduced in Congress in January 1944, some lawmakers argued that the unemployment insurance would encourage veterans not to work. Others worried about the introduction of battle-hardened men to universities, at the time bastions of the rich.

Ignoring the predictable toffish bigotry of the latter (I’m sure the men of Harvard weren’t funding research into shellshock to mitigate war’s cruelty), doesn’t the first argument sound pretty familiar? It’s the battle cry of every conservative when faced with a program that might make people’s lives less miserable, that might protect them from the bitterness of the market. The “argument” that having basic protections will make people lazy, and is somehow antithetical to the magical free market, is still in play. It was for welfare, for Medicaid, for Medicare, and for Social Security. The argument carried into the Clintonian 90s, when welfare was slashed, to prevent lazy people from stealing from the rich.

Actually, don’t ignore the 2nd argument, because while I am sure it was also being made by ostensible liberals, or at least Wilsonian liberals, it is inherently conservative. These are “others”, the ones who are stealing from the makers so that they can be lazy, whether they are Jim Crowed blacks or brutish doughboys. One will note that the “guaranteed income makes you lazy” trope isn’t employed when it comes to the estate tax, but that’s because the worldview is that certain people are owed great fortune, and others should make do with a pittance. It’s basically mean, in the truest sense: small and base and vile, reducing any humans who aren’t us to gravel on the road. You see it in Scott Walker’s attempted evisceration of the Wisconsin Idea (in which the role of the university system becomes  “develop(ing) human resources to meet the state’s workforce needs.”).  And you see it in the Trump campaign, built on a snarling anger against everyone else, an anger all the more dangerous because it transcends class, and makes race the defining feature. It is a class-based argument as well, but one that says “you could be rich if it wasn’t for the others.”

That’s the thing about these arguments: they are always wrong. The GI Bill was one of the great achievements of the 20th-century. Social Security helps prevent the immiseration of the elderly. Welfare is a needed shield. The people arguing against them are always wrong, and are never arguing in good faith, but are preaching a twisted faith from a gilded altar in front of a bloody and charred sacristry.

06.07.16
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It’s Different Now: What Buzzfeed Gets About 2016

Ullrich has strong feelings about the way Hitler came to power in January 1933, enthroned by a ‘sinister plot’ of stupid elite politicians just at the moment when the Nazis were at last losing strength. It didn’t have to happen. He constantly reminds his readers that Hitler didn’t reach the chancellorship by his own efforts, but was put there by supercilious idiots who assumed they could manage this vulgarian. ‘We engaged him for our ends,’ said the despicable Franz von Papen. A year later, in the Night of the Long Knives, von Papen was grovelling to save his own neck.

Neal Ascherson, London Review of Books, June 2nd 2016

“What protects us in this country against big mistakes being made is the structure, the Constitution, the institutions,” McConnell told CBS News last month. “No matter how unusual a personality may be who gets elected to office, there are constraints in this country. You don’t get to do anything you want to.”

via Talking Points Memo

Neal Ascherson, the Scottish travel writer, wrote The Black Sea, which is my favorite kind of history book. It shows the long scope, how areas change slowly (and then very quickly) through migration, demographics, and the slow glacial push of cultural shifts becoming norms, and of violent revolutions mutating slowly into evolutions. It’s the long view of history, the kind that understands there aren’t black lines dividing epochs and periods, much in the same way that Masters of Empire explores how native culture didn’t hit a quick reboot when the Europeans arrived, and that understands (as we’ve argued) that the misery of Syria is part of the long night of Ottoman dissolution.

We tend, in this country at least, to see history as buried, and something that doesn’t impact us. It’s sort of the national myth, and it relies heavily on cognitive dissonance, since it is clear that our major issues still spring from the legacy of slavery and the historical memory and political divide of the Civil War. But we admire amnesia, and always look forward. This was accelerated by the 24-hr news cycle, and made manifest in the 24-second news cycle. When discussing yesterday’s tweets marks bloggers such as this one as hopelessly behind the times, understanding how we got to this point is an exercise in futility.

This isn’t just a little rant either; a lack of historical knowledge of American political trends has helped lead to the rise of the first openly white nationalist campaign we’ve seen in modern times. The elite media, and most of the non-elite, failed to understand how 40 years of Reaganite nonsense, 60 years of conservative takeover, and 150 years of post-Civil War resentment could factor into today’s election, and help facilitate the rise of Donald Trump. We live in the immediate present, which is where a man as completely removed from the truth as Trump thrives, and why he has, until the last week, managed to get away with whatever he wanted. It’s in this eternal present that it was believed that a man like Donald Trump couldn’t win simply because he was a man like Donald Trump. This is an ahistoric tautology, in the literal sense, because it ignores the factors that enabled his victory. It was obvious in August that he was appealing to the most violent lizard part of a broken party, one torn apart by geographic and demographic pressures. But he was still treated like a joke.

Now, as he shatters all norms, threatening to “look into” judges and to jail his likely opponent should he win (a statement that should be breathtaking, but barely makes noise), we wonder how we got here, and how we should react. It’s why it is interesting that Buzzfeed, who has generally symbolized the memory-free nonsense of the internet, has broken ties with the RNC over Trump’s nomination. (It should be noted that over the last 5 years BuzzFeed has created some excellent journalism, but its reputation is still that of the constant present, a man seeing the sunrise every morning and wondering what he could possibly be seeing.)

BuzzFeed, which accepts ads from GOP and Democratic candidates, had a $1.3 million ad deal with the RNC, but cancelled it, because Trump is beyond the pale. In a statement, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti said:

The tone and substance of his campaign are unique in the history of modern US politics. Trump advocates banning Muslims from traveling to the United States, he’s threatened to limit the free press, and made offensive statements toward women, immigrants, descendants of immigrants, and foreign nationals.

(cont)

We don’t need to and do not expect to agree with the positions or values of all our advertisers. And as you know, there is a wall between our business and editorial operations. This decision to cancel this ad buy will have no influence on our continuing coverage of the campaign.

We certainly don’t like to turn away revenue that funds all the important work we do across the company. However, in some cases we must make business exceptions: we don’t run cigarette ads because they are hazardous to our health, and we won’t accept Trump ads for the exact same reason.

This is a big deal. This is exactly how the media should be covering Trump. We’ve never had anything like this in our modern history, and he shouldn’t be treated as just another nominee, albeit a flamboyant one. We’re at a hinge in our country’s history. It could go either way.

I began this piece with a few quotes, one from a book review about how Hitler’s rise to power was facilitated by old-guard politicians who assumed they could let him ride popular anger into office but then control him for their ends, and one by Mitch McConnell, who represents Republicans who think the same thing about Trump. The thrust of the TPM article is that the old guard’s main pledge is that sure, Trump might be an authoritarian monster, but once he’s in office we’ll be able to control him.

This isn’t to say that Trump is Hitler. This isn’t Germany in 1933. It’s the United States in 2016, a country that isn’t sure of itself, feels like its best days are behind, and is sliding along a weird trail of economic dislocation and historical amnesia. That’s bad enough, and it can get much worse. That we have even gotten to this point shows how much worse it can get. Not understanding how we got here, and ignoring everything except tomorrow’s news, creates the possibility to slip past the point of no return.

05.20.16
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Oklahoma Abortion Bill Is Just Raw, Mafia-Like Intimidation

The Oklahoma Legislature on Thursday passed a bill that would effectively ban abortions by subjecting doctors who perform them to felony charges and revoking their medical licenses — the first legislation of its kind.

Pictured: Nathan Dahm, who clearly sees bigger things for himself. 

 

The measure passed by the Oklahoma legislature will be struck down by any court- it’s as blatantly unconstitutional as it is punitive. Senator Nathan Dahm, the sponsor, said he knew it would be challenged, but that he hoped it would lead to overturning Roe v. Wade. It won’t, or course- if Mary Fallin (who is openly angling for a Trump/Fallin ticket and has November on the mind) signs it, it’ll get slapped down by the first judge whose desk it slithers across.

 I don’t know if Dahm is stupid enough to believe his bill will make the Supreme Court, or just cruel, but it doesn’t matter. This bill isn’t about the law. It’s nothing more than intimidation, making it chokingly oppressive to provide women’s health services in Oklahoma. It’s about putting fear in the heart of anyone who wants to perform a vital (and as we seem to need to be reminded, legal) service.  It’s goons smashing windows and breaking kneecaps, and it is designed to encourage violence by legal labelling any abortion doctors as felons. You don’t want felons in your neighborhood, do you Clem? Of course not. Let’s go get ’em.

That defending the bill will cost money doesn’t make this less a mafioso tactic. The mob rarely did anything that didn’t turn a profit, but they knew that while war would cost business, it was sometimes needed. And that’s what this is: the biggest bomb yet dropped in the war against women’s health. Cost doesn’t matter. Can you really put a price tag on fear?

05.16.16
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The Right-Wing Martyr Complex, Nutshelled

Above: Glenn Beck

The brave, doomed, Lightweight Brigade  of the rightwing media charges on in the face of Facebook’s despotic decision not to promote the paranoid yippering of Newsmax as, well, news. Don’t worry. Mark Zuckerberg, showing more of an ability to stomach nonsense than I would have thought possible, is meeting with conservative thought leaders, including Glenn Beck, according to Re/Code.

Facebook has since argued, over and over, that the suppression charge isn’t true — or, at least, that it doesn’t have any evidence that it’s true — but the story continues to have legs.

See for example, Beck’s post, which says that Facebook has “the same problem that many in media and Silicon Valley face: suppression of conservative voices and ideas…How does a company who allowed voices to be heard in Iran and Egypt which sparked revolution silence voices of anyone here?”

I don’t think anyone who has been on Facebook would argue that conservative voices are “silenced”- Donald Trump’s fetchservant would probably agree- but this is absolute manna to the right wing. It allows them to try to distract from the Trump fiasco by turning their popguns on the most vulnerable targets: the media. The hated, disgusting, shameful media which refuses to ever let conservatives be heard, except literally all the time. You watch: they’ll figure out a way to tie this into the Rise of Trump, a grand scheme of how Facebook purposely silenced true conservatives and promoted Trump so that a New York liberal could pave the way for Hillary. This is just another thread in the tapestry of their minds, where they all envision themselves a mini-Churchill, fighting bravely against Saracen hordes. It all makes sense to them.

Also, don’t think Glenn Beck isn’t serious about getting something done. “Beck says he hopes that Carly Fiorina, ‘business icon and a woman with a spine of steel,’ will be joining.” I’m sure Zuckerberg can learn a lot about how to run a successful tech business from her.

 

04.25.16
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The Churchill Bust “Scandal” Was Peak Rightwing Dumbshow

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Inspiring, in a “melted lush” sort of way.  (Image from The Independent)

Boris Johnson, the weird-haired and meaningless Mayor of London with a certain oddball Tory charm (he did have the best description of the 2012 Olympics: As I write these words there are semi-naked women playing beach volleyball in the middle of the Horse Guards Parade immortalised by Canaletto. They are glistening like wet otters and the water is plashing off the brims of the spectators’ sou’westers. The whole thing is magnificent and bonkers.), helpfully revived one of the dumbest single controversies of the whole Obama Administration: the Bust of Churchill. To recap, George W. Bush, for whom Churchill ranked as the finest British leader (though if he could name any beyond Thatcher and Blair, I’d be stunned), was gifted a bust of Winston Churchill early in his Presidency, and he kept it on his desk for inspiration. Obama gave it back, or moved it, or something: the point was, he didn’t keep it on his desk. We finally got to the bottom of it this week.

What’s nice is that it reminded us of how ludicrous the opposition to Obama has been, and how ungrounded in reality the bulk of it is. In retrospect, it set the template for all the idiocy regarding his Presidency.

Continue reading →

04.18.16
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Dick Lugar Explains, At Length, Why He Can No Longer Win Elections In A Republican Primary

Well no, not really. But he did write an op-ed in The Times arguing that of course President Obama has the power to enact executive orders that deal with immigration resources, even saying that  the”nature of immigration enforcement and the resources (or lack thereof) appropriated by Congress necessitate exactly the type of choices that the president has made,” which is the same thing.

This isn’t counter-intuitive, or even good ol’-fashioned common sense: it’s just a basic understanding of how our country works, and the underlying assumption that since Barack Obama won elections, he should be able to govern as the President, which is the kind of apostasy that makes you lose primary election to lunatics.

That Lugar is writing this as an ex-Senator really tells you all you need to know.

03.29.16
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The Wisconsinization of Illinois

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“Nice work, Walker!” Image from ChicagoNow

I’ve always loved Wisconsin. It’s fun to make fun of, but I have never once not had a great time in the state, whether camping up north or near Kettle Morain, hanging out by the lake in Milwaukee, relaxing in Door County with my lovely bride, reveling in the weirdness of Madison, or spending time at scenic Lake Ripley, my favorite spot, Wisconsin is always warm and hospitable. It’s got a great drinking culture, which doesn’t so much revolve around experimental cocktails as much as “the more the merrier”, and a great attitude toward eating. If there is one thing over which Scott Walker and I can bond, it’s ham, and the desire to eat more of it, at all hours. Ham for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You can’t go wrong.

But ham is probably the only area in which Walker and I would agree on anything (although we could both confirm that empirical reality that he won’t be President, though I imagine we have different feelings about that). One other thing to love about Wisconsin was its progressive tradition, which came about naturally, from workers and farmers, as a reaction to the power of capital and its corrupting nature. That’s also why the backlash in Wisconsin was always so fierce, whether that was the union hating Herb Kohler Sr or the drunken lout McCarthy. Now, that backlash has reached its apex, as Walker and his pet legislature have turned this great state into their personal Koch-funded experiment, destroying voting rights, the social safety net, corporate accountability, and the environment. In short, trying to wreck everything that is great about Wisconsin.

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03.14.16
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From Fast Eddie To The Donald: Chicago’s Trump Supporters

The story over the weekend was of anti-Donald Trump protestors, particularly young students from UIC, forcing Trump to cancel one of his beer-hall rallies taking place on their campus. Trump’s people either feared a terrible scene (going so far as to lie about the police telling them to cancel) or were hoping to provoke one. Either way, they got what they want, as violence broke out when livid Trump supporters turned on the protestors. It was a watershed moment in this increasingly-terrifying campaign, as brutality has become part and parcel of Trump 2016.

As for the protests themselves, ideas are mixed. Charlie Pierce thinks that they should stay outside and not give the Trump people what they want, and Digby, taking the logic a step further, argues that the media will coalesce around these images, in a bout of “both sides are bad” idiocy. Already, as she points out, the right is muddying the waters, and if there is one thing the Republican party can coalesce around, it is painting themselves as victims of the elite (in this case defined as college students).

That leads us our main question: we’ve had days of asking who the anti-Trump people are, but not enough of asking who the huge contingency of pro-Trump people in Chicago are. It was satisfying to see that what worked in some cities didn’t fly here, but that didn’t mean no one showed up. Leaving aside the mix of the celebrity happy and addled curious, who in this Democratic city came to see this authoritarian blowhard? The answer can be traced to a former alderman and career crook named Eddie Vrodolyak.

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