totalitarianism today

Links on a theme: Bubbas pulling themselves up by the bootstraps.

 This is not really a Bubba. 

Yee-haw! Bibi reveals his inner Bubba.

Bubba fighting to being back the war on weed.

Resistance extends to include inferior chocolate. Bubbas are pissed.

That photo you take is a form of dissent. Bubba is watching.

The naked boy brings us democracy. Bubba likes it.

Bubba Sessions: the senator who hates amnesty.

Bubba Pryor likes his ice tea extra frosty.

Alabama's primary export: crazy, power-hungry Bubbas. 

The problem with women for Trump.

The Bannon administration has long sought to re-establish "penis power" in the flagging states of America. Back in May 2016, Adele Stan warned us not to under-estimate the "man card". "Surely," we thought, "those Values Voters would be disgusted by the reality of Trump". As it turned out, the Values Voters brought him to power as the rest of us sat on our hands and tried to restrain ourselves from verbal confrontations with privileged female family members.

But reality exists, and we are trying very hard to reestablish it in these days of Bannonite autocracy.

Reality is this: Trump has a problem with women, namely, women that don't consent to his projections of power. As Rebecca Solnit observes, the final debate was disturbing for many of us who've been dealing with the rise in public and private misogynies: 

In the ninety-minute debate, Trump lurched around the stage gaslighting, discrediting, constantly interrupting, often to insist that she was lying or just to drown out her words and her voice, sexually shaming (this was the debate in which he tried to find room in his family box for three women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment or assault), and threatening to throw her in prison. 

When a man's ego is the measure of how safe and secure female citizens can feel, national security itself becomes a puerile and penile problem. Hillary's loss was blamed on her elitism and failure to "reach out" to the males whose hatred of females masquerades as a mild Duck Dynasty patriarchy:

The We Must Pay More Attention to the White Working Class analysis said that Clinton lost because she did not pay enough attention to white men since the revived term ‘white working class’ seemed to be a nostalgic reference to industrial workers as they once existed. Those wielding it weren’t interested in the 37 per cent of Americans who aren’t white, or the 51 per cent who are women. I’ve always had the impression –from TV, movies, newspapers, sport, books, my education, my personal life, and my knowledge of who owns most things and holds government office at every level in my country – that white men get a lot of attention already.

From the get-go, Hillary was damned if she did and damned by what she didn't.

Suzanne Moore explains, again, why white evangelical females continue to be complicit in their own humiliation and self-debasement. When you attend a church that consistently prevents females from occupying a position of leadership, Lord knows you need some excuses sharper than stilettos and come-hither pumps:

For power is never simply a possession but an exercise; power is about how we understand ourselves. Feminism seeks to unpick all the tiny ways in which we are bound. Everywhere we look, there are women hating other women for business or pleasure: those who don’t want a female boss; who don’t want positive discrimination; who like strip clubs and porn as much as the boys; who don’t want to worship in churches with female priests; who want to force other women to give birth to children they don’t want; who say FGM is “cultural”; and who get off on body shaming. On and on it goes. How can we be surprised that misogyny is not a male-only attribute?

But it's difficult to address Trump's misogyny problem given a populace of bobble-headed females who crave nothing more than an excuse to stay married to their domestic angry white tyrants. How many women voted for Trump BECAUSE he spoke like their husbands and normalized the sexism that they need to overlook? How much of white middle class Trump female support comes from desperate readers of "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" How many of us secretly hope that those breast implants will make our husbands stop ogling alternate cleavage at football games? How many more women will their bodies (and those of their daughters) for an excuse to stay married to the enemy?

According to election polls, the question has been asked and answered. 

7 things to expect when the emperor wears Armani.

Here's a list of seven things I started writing the week after the election-- thoughts I had then, thoughts to which I return while watching the Great America meltdown.

1. You can bet Charles Koch enabled Trump.

In August 2016, Charles Koch told donors to his annual conference that supporting Trump was not worth the price of lost integrity. He convinced donors Trump would be a loss to the country.

"Today they gave a great explanation," California real-estate attorney Tim Busch said, referring to discussion in sessions closed to the press. "Charles said 'I've been at this for 50 years. It's a crisis today and it's going to be a crisis in four years.'" 

"If they did [contribute to Trump], they would compromise their values and they would never be able to hold any politician accountable," Busch said. 

Charles Koch, who runs the conservative donor network that has raised three-quarters of a billion dollars from its members, emphasized and clarified his own personal position, including that he would not support Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Charles refused a meeting with Trump in July and his position was lauded by conservatives as a principled one.

Alas, Charles changed his mind. He must be rather excited that he was able to purchase a fine candidate like Donald Trump. Interviews aside, it seems Mr. Koch is more of a populist than he appeared. Or maybe he's excited about bringing coal back.

Personally, I'd prefer Koch Industries focus its attention on the failing Colonial pipeline in Alabama because the massive gas spills of the last two months are both inexcusable and careless. The pipes are old, ailing, and likely to spill again soon. If the Kochs devoted their lobbying money to cleaning up the environmental disasters they leave behind, they might not even need lobbying groups like Americans for Property which brought Christofascists to power at local and state levels across the country. 

I'm tired of free-market environmentalisms in which the only ones who get off are the industries. If you make a mess, CLEAN IT UP. Compensate the citizens whose properties and investments you destroyed. Stop trying to find loopholes to avoid personal responsibility. It's soooooo unKochy. 

2. The national debt is going to get bigger. 

This isn't a problem, really. Under Emperor Trump, we have new policy tools at our disposal, including random declarations of bankruptcy and the ongoing mental derangements known as Sarah Palin. 

[Source: CRFB]

Sarah will continue to make loud, senseless proclamations on everything from Russia to abstinence and how much Jesus Christ loved him some semi-automatic firepower. These noises will comfort certain  Americans while disturbing others. The comforted ones will get angry if the disturbed ones say, "That mammal is crazy as a bat." The comforted ones might feel threatened by such statements. They will form coalitions to preserve their right to shoot persons who dislike Sarah Palin. The whole thing will be very democratic. 

3. Jared Kushner is your man. 

It seems that Jared Kushner will be playing a large role in the coming administration. He is the power broker no one expected. See Politico: 

But perhaps the biggest power base is Trump’s own family. His adult children and especially his son-in-law Kushner have unrivaled clout with the president-elect, and have not shied away from using it to spur personnel changes.

Two people familiar with the transition said Christie’s top deputy, Rich Bagger, had run afoul of Kushner.

“That’s a fight you can’t win,” one of the people said. “The Christie people are from New Jersey, they act like they’re in charge, and Jared Kushner is like, ‘You're not really in charge.’”

The other pointed out that Kushner’s father was prosecuted and convicted for tax evasion, illegal campaign donations and witness tampering by Christie during his time as a U.S. attorney.

“Jared doesn’t like Christie,” the person said. “He’s always held that against Christie.” 

4. It takes more than one kingpin to fluff a thousand-dollar toupee. 

Who else might be on the toupee-fluffing radar? If I was the sort of mammal who envisioned a career in corporate lobbying, I'd have my eye on Phillip Ellender and Michael Cantazaro right now, as well as persons affiliated with Americans For Prosperity and sweet lil ole Giuliani. The following list of lobbyists will probably be somewhere in the dressing rooms, working behind the scenes to make sure Emperor Penguin Trump looks presentable to a deeply divided, angry, and cynical American public. Google a few names and see what you find.

5. The Clean Water Act, quite possibly the weakest environmental protection to demand a name for itself, will be attacked and slowly gutted. 

Major agricultural groups, like the Farm Bureau, National Corn Growers Association, American Soybean Association and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, all said they plan to cooperate with the Trump Administration — and are encouraged by Trump’s support of the Renewable Fuel Standard, his desire to keep farm and nutrition programs together in the Farm Bill, and his call to repeal EPA’s Waters of the U.S. rule and other environmental regulations.

6. War crime porn will make a come-back. 

Live action. Further discrediting our reputation as a international broker. But who needs a UN when you don't believe in the existence of "human rights"? Who needs multilateral agreements when you're planning a Putin?

7. US taxpayers will pay for any walls we build.

And the money will go straight to the corporations who lobbied Trump exclusively for this wall-building privilege. 

Here's the man you elected...

Alas, I have a family to comfort and some streets to plaster with #notmypresident signs. The nice person in me is tired of trying to save your freedom while you sit and fumble through Breitbart. The mother in me is tired of fighting against Republicans for the freedom of a country that they run via corporation. The human in me will do the right thing and defend what is great about America. 

Screw Trump's ban on immigrants. Literally.

General Erwin Rommel and the 15th Panzer Division between Tobruk and Sidi Omar, 1941

Here's how to channel outrage over Trump's ban on immigrants & refugees into direct action:

1. Contact your representatives, at the local, state and national levels. The Refugee Council USA has a toolkit that walks you through this process, including sample letters & advice on how to reach out/who to reach out to.

2. Donate to some of the civil liberty & human rights organizations that are already working on this. I've listed a few below that are either working directly with refugees in the US, or challenging Trump's ban in court.

ACLU (who is challenging the executive order in courts)

National Immigration Law Center (impact litigation & advocacy)

International Rescue Committee (both advocacy organization, and support organization) 

National Council of La Raza (immigration support and advocacy)

Council on American-Islamic Relations (policy and diplomacy)

3. Volunteer at local refugee resettlement governmental and non-governmental organizations. Even visit your local mosque to offer your support, and to let them know you'll stand with them against Islamophobic attacks. Find local refugee resettlement organizations here. 

4. Write op-eds and try to get them published in the media organizations of the "other side" of the immigration/refugee debate (aka Breitbart, Fox, etc.) Or anywhere, really.

5. If you hear of anyone being detained at any airport under Trump's Executive Order, call the ACLU hotline at 415-621-2488.

6. If you speak Arabic, contact one of the above organizations, and offer translation services.

7. If anyone hears of someone held up at and denied entry at Logan Airport in Boston because of Muslim or refugee status, please have them or relatives contact: ACLU Massachusetts at 617-482-3170 x330. Contact name is Matthew Segal (he's the legal director there).

Remember that those who cannot speak are counting on your voice right now. Don't believe it could never happen here. Or it could never happen to you. Talk to those who have spent time on both sides of the refugee lines. Tragedy happens to anyone.

The narcissist in your bed.

The irony of coupledom: all the many ways and instances in which the existence of the mate actually stands in the way of you getting the love, sex and emotional sustenance you need that they’re supposed to be providing, and the other person’s feeling that you similarly thwart his/her need-gratification by virtue of having your own separate existence, rather than simply being a convenient delivery-system for love, sex and emotional sustenance, as they had secretly (or not so secretly) hoped.

Yesterday we had a fight about whether I’d been dismissive about him saying his feelings had been hurt by my dismissing his feelings during a previous fight, and whether his being angry at me about it meant that I was obligated to put aside my own feelings on the subject to consider his feelings on the subject, and whether, if I couldn’t do that, I was guilty of dismissing his feelings (once again). He wouldn’t fucking shut up about it. If I get peeved because he’s angry at me about some stupid thing, I’ve hurt his feelings. No, worse – I’m denying his feelings about whatever non-event he has so many feelings about.

Could Laura Kipnis' brain be more delicious and subversive? I don't think so. Read the rest.

When "religious freedom" is a guise for theocracy (and other Bannonite perversions of language).

Since the election of the Trumpuppet in Chief, Steve Bannon's theocratic, white nationalist populism is the ruling agenda. And the basis of our national security strategy. Willing sycophants line up in the hallways of the White-As-Hell house to flatter the leader while pushing forward the dreams of the fundamentalist Christians. It's a travesty to all except the anointed.

The thinking goes like this: to control the males, we need to empower them. Since Bannonites know there is no way to empower unsalaried, white males economically, they resort to the false power of oppression. Enter the Men's Rights Activist movement and the rationalization of rape culture as a tool to keep the male masses from revolt.

As Steven T. Asma points out, religious extremism thrives on toxic masculinity:

The jihadi loser has the ultimate frustration: as he develops through puberty, he acquires some of the most intense emotional drives of the human operating system – in particular, lust – but his culture informs him that his own desire, his own body, and the bodies of women, are impure and require repudiation. That interminable frustration can be channelled into a zealous mission to purify everything in the acid of an imaginary and bogus strain of religion. Male power is thought to be diminished – a kind of purity defilement – from uncontrolled women (the alluring single woman or the infidel) but when a woman is in some ‘appropriate’ state of affiliation (the obedient wife) there is no pollution and the male’s power is increased by his domination of her.

This is not essentially different from the sanctioned sexuality one finds in other Axial age religions, East and West. Indeed, Islam is historically far less concerned with sexual asceticism than Christianity, as the role model of the many-married Muhammad demonstrates by contrast with that of Jesus. Yet the fear and loathing of emancipated female sexuality is a palpable drive within contemporary radical Islam. And the rape cultures of Boko Haram and ISIS represent a further devolution of the ‘controlled female’ fantasy, with rape and slavery sanctified as an act of worship.

Asma contends that the absence of religious basis for these modern extremisms doesn't matter given an "irresistibly tempting psychodynamic for frustrated young men who are easily drafted into a pathological band of brothers". The "terminally frustrated male" finds relief in the "promise of women slaves" and other RedTube-inspired entitlements.

On this view, to quote Joe Herbert, "young men are natural fanatics".  

MRA's have long relied on resentment to fuel anti-feminist agendas. By promising a world of free and ready weaponry, by weaponizing resentment, Bannonites empower the rage that has emerged as a national security threat from religious extremists. They do so under the belief that such forces can be harnessed or controlled. As a cis female, I strongly disagree.

The sociologist Jack Katz analyses the criminal mind in Seductions of Crime (1988), pointing out that many murderers see themselves, at least at the moment of slaughter, as righteous avengers. ‘What is the logic of rage,’ Katz asks, ‘such that it can grow so smoothly and quickly from humiliation and lead to righteous slaughter as its perfectly sensible (if only momentarily convincing) end?’ In both cases, the subject has a feeling of impotence or powerlessness. He feels victimised by forces outside himself (in the case of humiliation) and by forces inside himself (in the case of rage). The lone shooter who feels repeatedly humiliated at what he perceives as the visible success of others – the emancipation of women; the social acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people; the integration of refugees – feels like his very identity is being broken and degraded. Rage promises to retake the situation and correct his perverse moral landscape.

Of course, it helps to keep building the sense of white victimization with talk-radio and rape culture agitprop. Marco Roth traces the history of this movement back to the Civil War:

Racist vigilante groups derived a sense of their legitimacy from the idea that they were defending themselves against lawless blacks and Northern “carpetbaggers.” Their tactics were the perennial tactics of terrorists everywhere: attacks on lines of communication, both railway and telegraph; attacks on schools and teachers who wanted to educate the minority population; night visits to prominent but poorly protected ideological opponents. Cross burning happened later. In those early days, the Klan was likely just to beat a man for twenty minutes with a horse stirrup before either hanging him or agreeing to let him go as a warning to others. More relevant for our more repressed era, they also scored a remarkable PR success with the aid of rehabilitated Southern congressmen, who dismissed reports of white Southern violence as mere “waving the bloody shirt”; that is, as fictions spread by northern “radicals” to incite more civil violence. In a 2008 case study of what he calls “terror after Appomattox” in Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina, the historian Stephen Budiansky concludes that the Confederate vigilantes “made a victim of the bully and a bully of the victim, turned the very act of Southern white violence into wounded Southern innocence, turned the very blood of their African American victims into an affront against Southern white decency.”

Writing back in 2010, Roth was prescient enough to draw a line between Sarah Palin's Tea Party and the current white nationalist zen:

This is no longer a culture war, a revolt of stoics against the “culture of complaint,” but something deeper and older that precedes the identity politics movements it aims to subvert. Forty-two years after the Civil Rights Act, white people who still think of themselves predominantly as “white people” want to air their grievances with the aid of a social movement. One half of what passes for American two-party discourse calls now for another rebirth of a nation: the Caucasian States of America, a postmodern ethno-nationalist republic.

The fact that Bannon's angry white men have God on their side should be of particular concern. As Keiryn Darkwater explains, many fundamentalist Christians have been raised to believe they are fighting a war for civilization-- and Mike Pence is their Messiah.

This "Christofascist" movement has been incubating for decades in groups like Operation Rescue, Homeschool Legal Defense Association, Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, just to name a few. Darkwater describes her homeschooled, Christofascist upbringing:

When the Tea Party rose in 2009, that was my culture. The Tea Party was step one. I was laying the groundwork for those elections in 2006. These people didn’t come out of the blue like it seemed. This plan, this Christofascist takeover of the US government, has been in the works for decades. When evangelical conservatism started becoming popular and more mainstream around the 1970s, the foundation was being laid for the tragedy playing out right now.

Christofascists have been wanting someone like Pence in the White House and, until now, didn’t have a way to get one in. They know Trump is easily manipulated and will change his mind with the wind if it makes him feel more powerful and famous. Trump couldn’t care less about policy, a fact he’s made quite obvious. The Right has given a tyrant power and fame; he will do whatever they want him to do in order to keep it. This way they can sneak Pence in on a piggyback while filling Congress with even more evangelical conservative Republicans. Compared to Trump’s abrasive and terrifying behavior, Pence seems much less threatening. This is not the case. Pence has a proven track record of legalizing discrimination and acting against women and marginalized people. Those of us who didn’t leave the far Right are being elected to federal positions or are taking over states and cities. With Pence in office, even the reasonable-seeming incumbents – who have been and are still at the mercy of the Tea Party – are growing more bold in their attempts to further the Christofascist agenda: To Take Back The Country For Christ.

This was the mantra we heard. This was our mission. This is how we were to win: Outbreed, Outvote, Outactivate. Every class, every event, every pastor or guest speaker reiterated this, choosing to risk the 501c3 status of their church to push their agenda. To take back the country for Christ, we needed to outbreed, outvote and outactivate the other side, thus saith The Lord.

I can hear a liberal redneck angel whispering in my ear right now, the warm twang of Trae Crowder....

Of course fools have a right to believe in a Transylvanian anti-Christ that uses the UN to advance Satan's rule of the planet. You have the right to believe rhinoplasty makes you a better person. You have the right to believe women are bitches. You have the right to a quiver-full of whatever you want in your womb. But you don't have a right to plant a seed in mine.

Yes, you have a "right to believe" in the Easter Bunny, but that right does not extend into a right to coerce belief from others. Mark Rowlands explains the difference, a difference that matters because much of the emphasis on religious freedom is actually an emphasis on making public the previously "private" shameful beliefs. The moral majority can't run this country with God on their side-- it turns out they need humans as well. Compliant, obedient humans. 

Before we protect Bannon's "right to choose" an appropriately anti-Semitic school for his children, we should ask more questions, including the extent to which Bannon's privileges as a parent include the right to breed stupidity. Or what qualifies an ass to destroy a country. Or why we are sitting around debating the difference when there are airports to occupy and protests to mount.

 

Other provocative, must-reads:

Claire Landsbaum on the home MRA's have found in Bannon's White-As-Hell house (Huffington Post)

Robert Westbrook on the end of presidential virtue and the age of "virtuous reality" (The Baffler)

Joan Cole on how torture produces fake news-- and leads to wars like the one in Iraq (Truthdig)

Jay Coakley on why sports are a religion in America (Nautilus)

James Q. Whitman on why the Nazis studied American race laws with unbinding interest (Aeon)

Julianne Ross on the 8 biggest lies MRAs spread about women (Mic)