"Everyone Needs To Have Something They Can Feel Good About Hating" (Cully Barnaby)

The Barnaby family: Joyce (Jane Wymark), DCI Tom (John Nettles), and Cully (Laura Howard)

"Witch hunts never are [concluded]. You burn
one, you have to find another. . . .
"Everyone needs to have something they can feel
good about hating." -- Cully Barnaby

by Ken

Among the luxuries I've been allowing myself during an already-perhaps-nervously-long period of, er, transition is a slowly ongoing traversal, via Netflix, of the whole of the British mystery series Midsomer Murders (1997-present) -- for my money (in this case literally) the best thing Netflix has to offer, with the whole of the first 19 series already available and Series 20, which just aired in 2018, presumably to follow. (According to Wikipedia, Series 21 is scheduled to begin shooting sometime this year.)

While watching the 34th episode (out of 122 to date, including Series 20), I was stopped in my tracks by an exchange near the start of the final scene, which finds the Barnabys -- DCI Tom (John Nettles), his long-suffering wife Joyce (Jane Wymark), and adult daughter Cully (Laura Howard) -- at home in the kitchen, in various stages of sitting down to family dinner. At this point Tom is nearing wit's end over his seemingly stalled investigation of a series of ostensibly witchcraft-related murders-by-fire in the village of Midsomer Parva -- the first in an actual bonfire on the village green, the others custom-created "individual" mini-bonfires.

Passing the torch of hate

I was so taken by Cully's insight that the, um, logic of witch hunts dictates that they don't end, can't end -- "You burn one, you have to find another" -- that I paused the proceedings in order to undertake the ever-so-laborious process of transcription and then the additional labor of trying to do something about the need I hope you'll understand I felt to do something with the result of those labors. For me this all resonates wildly in the Age of Trump, who himself (we need to remember) is less a cause than a symptom of the social malignancy afflicting us here and now in the year 2019, though of course Trump has spent his whole life doing everything in his malignant powers, in the spirit of his mentor Roy Cohn, to accelerate the malignancy. What Cully is describing is a habit of mind generally found in in right-wing movements and autocracies, and positively beloved of both masters and subjects in right-wing autocracies.

As the scene began, poor Tom Barnaby -- so restless that he's unable to sit or stand still -- has been poring over some sort of old bound book, clearly not getting the answer(s) he's looking for.

CULLY BARNABY [to her father]: So, how's the witch hunt?
DCI TOM BARNABY: The witch hunt is not concluded.
CULLY: Witch hunts never are. You burn one, you have to find another.
JOYCE BARNABY: That's horrible, Cully!
CULLY: It's true! Everyone needs to have something they can feel good about hating. Plus, everyone loves a bonfire.

-- from "The Straw Woman," Episode 6 of
Series 7 (2004) of Midsomer Murders

#

Why does The Donald lie?

[Click to enlarge.]

"In returning to this sort of language now that he’s got the nomination—and escalating it with his use of the phrase 'founder of ISIS'—Trump is, on the face of it, harming his prospects for November. . . . He sounds like he is talking to his angry base, and supplying them with an inflammatory narrative that can be trotted out for years, and decades, to come."

-- John Cassidy, in a new newyorker.com post, "Why
Trump's Crazy Talk About Obama and ISIS Matters"

by Ken

Idea for a post: "Prophetic utterances uttered by a young imp known as The Donnie." As for example: "Someday I'm gonna be so rich, people will have to laugh at my jokes." Not for today, but still safely lodged in the Idea Hopper. Meanwhile, now all grown up, or as grown up as it appears he's ever going to get, The Donald sprinkles his little "jokes" all over the damn place, most recently inspiring this Borowitz Report:

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—Clarifying his position on a key national-security issue, Donald Trump said on Friday that as President he would be willing to use nuclear weapons, “but only in a sarcastic way.”

“People who are worried about me having the nuclear-launch codes should stop worrying, O.K.?” Trump told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “If I ever used nuclear weapons, it would be really obvious that I was just being sarcastic.”

Pressed by Blitzer to explain the difference between a sarcastic and non-sarcastic nuclear attack, Trump responded, “You’d use the weapons and everything, but then you’d say, ‘Just kidding.’ ”

Trump did not specify which nations he would target for a sarcastic nuclear attack. “I can’t say right now,” he said. “But there are a lot of countries that need to lighten up.”

Stunning as this latest round of Donald-esque delusions and lies is, it's hardly a novelty, in that by now we have learned to expect pretty much anything when our boy opens his yap. Now I've already argued that this isn't in itself ground-breaking -- that, after all, we had a president who served for eight years (2001-09) without ever intentionally uttering a public word of truth. (I say "intentionally" to allow for the possibility that on occasion, in his usual slapdash, devil-may-care way "Chimpy the Prez" Bush may have delivered an accidental word of truth.) And in 2008, we had a presidential campaign in which the Republican candidate not only did the same but upped the ante, nestling lies within lies, and even lies within lies within lies. What's more, at least as of that magical year 2008 it appeared that every campaigning Republican in the country had fully adopted the new GOP fuck-the-truth standard

Still, there is something different about The Donald: the sheer brazenness of his lying. As witness the present case. As The New Yorker's John Cassidy puts it in the newyorker.com post from which I quoted up top, "Why Trump's Crazy Talk About Obama and ISIS Matters":

On Thursday morning, Donald Trump doubled down on his latest verbal outrage: the claim that President Obama was the “founder” of ISIS. Actually, the Republican Presidential nominee tripled down. Appearing on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” he described himself as “a truth teller” and went on to say that the President was “the founder of ISIS absolutely, the way he removed our troops.” Referring to Hillary Clinton, Trump added, “I call them co-founders.”

Peripatetic as ever, Trump gave another interview, a short time later, to Hugh Hewitt, the conservative radio host, who said to him, “Last night, you said that the President was the founder of ISIS. I know what you meant. You meant that he created the vacuum, he lost the peace.”

Trump wasn’t having it. “No. I meant that he’s the founder of ISIS,” he said. “He was the most valuable player. I gave him the Most Valuable Player award. I give her”—Clinton—“too, by the way.” Hewitt evidently thought that this was unfair to Obama. “But he’s not sympathetic to them,” he said. “He hates them; he’s trying to kill them.” Trump was unabashed. “He was the founder,” he said, referring to Obama. “His, the way he got out of Iraq, that was the founding of ISIS.”

If this rings a bell, perhaps it's from the similarly loony rewrite of history done by The Donald's hand-picked running mate, The Unspeakable Pence, who managed -- in distancing himself from the still more extreme position of the man who has chosen him to be a heartbeat away from his presidency -- to "explain" that Capt. Hamayun Khan's killing in Iraq in 2004 was the fault of the devil Obama and the chaos he created in Iraq, even though at the time of Captain Khan's death Chimpy the Prez not only was still president but would still serve another full term.

And the problem for the country is that this may seem quite believable to the people who are prepared to vote for The Donald. Which is not only terrifying but ironic, because clumsily buried beneath the Trump and Co. lies about Iraq is a truth that the country has never been prepared to face: that indeed all sorts of humongous international problems were created, or at least exacerbated, by American actions in Iraq (and also Afghanistan) -- except not the devil Obama's, but none other than Chimpy the Prez and the invasion that was "justified" by an entire fabric(ation) of out-and-out lies.

From which episode two lessons need to be remembered, it seems to me:

(1) The country as a whole swallowed Chimpy and the Neocons' lies pretty much whole.

It's not as if absolutely nobody was in possession or at least in search of the truth about Iraq (and Afghanistan). Enough of it was already gleaned that it should have made a difference if the country had given a damn about the truth. And, as we've noted frequently, even in the aftermath of the disaster of our involvement in Iraq, the people who had advocated for the truth were almost uniformly punished, while the people who had formulated or at least propagandized for the lies were almost uniformly rewarded.

(2) Similarly, the country ignored the real-world effects of our military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Again, there were observers pointing out that our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, far from combatting terrorism, were laying the groundwork for a whole new generation of terrorists, for wider-spread and more destructive terrorism. But the country as a whole made it clear that it didn't want to hear anything about that. Only to be easy pickings for the Trump and Co. rewrite of history. Does this make any sense?

As a matter of fact, it does. Because at some point in the above-alluded-to second term of Chimpy the Prez, that same broad middleground of America, people who had once treated Chimpy as divinity, and denounced even the mildest criticism as "Bush-bashing," lost its devotion to the lies of Chimpy and Co. Partly it was the inescapability of the messes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the contrast of the reality with the bright and cheery lies Chimpy had fed them and they had swallowed so eagerly. Partly it was the visible ineptitude of the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina. Partly it was assorted other first-term Chimpy-chickens coming home to roost. And eventually there was economic catastrophe presided over by Chimpy and his team. This idea of creating your own reality and pretending it's actual reality is fun as far as it goes, but sometimes the real thing has a way of getting in the way.

Interestingly, though, when the former Chimpyites turned on their onetime idol, it didn't take the form of them blaming him for what he'd done. He simply disappeared from their consciousness. By the time of the 2008 presidential campaign, it was as if he had never existed, even though he was still the president of these United States. Barack Obama, by contrast, gets blamed for everything that Chimpy never did get blamed for.

As I argued at the time, it wasn't that the Chimpyites were prepared to come to grips with reality. No, it was more like they had become passionately disillusioned with the years' worth of lies Chimpy and his people had told them but they were demanding, often angrily, newer and better lies.

And now they're getting 'em. And, I worry, swallowing 'em.

This scares me for two reasons. First, I'm still not persuaded that The Donald can't win. If people are sufficiently determined to reject reality in favor of a more "acceptable" concocted version, they can do it. And the degree of Hillary hatred makes this possibility substantially less impossible. But second, even assuming the Trump candidacy crashes and burns, the broad national disaffection he's tapped into, and the descent into delusion he's proposed as a response, will remain fixtures of the political landscape going forward.

Which, as it happens, is the very subject John Cassidy pursues in this post of his. Following the chunk from the post I quoted above, he asks, "What are we to make of all this?" And he continues:

At this stage, some will argue that it isn’t worth the effort to interpret Trump’s misstatements, or to point out the truth of the matter—in this case, that a Jordanian named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi founded ISIS, in 2004. At the very least, it should be obvious to everyone by now that Trump doesn’t deal in reality; he deals in mythmaking, demagoguery, and carnival barking.

When he’s not tied to a teleprompter, Trump often seems to say the most provocative thing that comes into his head, with little thought for the consequences for his campaign, or for the campaigns of other Republicans. He’s like a small child, trying to be the center of attention, even if that means he has turned himself into an object of outrage and ridicule.

If you take this view of Trump, there isn’t much more to be said. He’s the melting figure on the cover of this week’s Time magazine [see image above -- Ed.]: a reality-television shyster who somehow captured the nomination of a major political party and is now dissolving in front of us. The only remaining questions for you are how big a majority Clinton will rack up, and whether the Republicans can limit the damage in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

"I’ve got a lot of sympathy for this interpretation.," John writes. "But, just for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Trump is smarter and less myopic than he seems."

Let’s assume that what he’s really focussed on isn’t winning this year’s election, a task he now realizes is beyond him, but creating a long-term Trumpian movement. A nationalistic, nativist, protectionist, and authoritarian movement that will forever be associated with him, but which also has the capacity to survive beyond him.

And he cites the current reactionary movements in France, Austria, and the U.K., not to mention the similar movements in our own history.

History tells us that for right-wing populist movements to succeed, a number of things need to be in place. For one thing, they need a narrative that mainstream political leaders, and political parties, are guilty of not merely incompetence but betrayal.

And John refers us to "the 'stab-in-the-back' myth" in post-1918 Germany, which led to the rise of Hitler, and to post-de Gaulle French right-wingers' accusation that the Général had betrayed France by "giving up" Algeria and that later French governments had betrayed France by embracing the European Union. Looked at this way, John argues, the kinds of anti-Obama indictments The Donald has been pronouncing (he notes, for example, that Trump "first suggested that Obama and Clinton created isis seven months ago, long before this week’s comments") suggest a larger purpose than merely electioneering for 2016. Which brings us to the quote atop this post. Here it is again, with a sentence I omitted in the middle restored, and with the continuation included:

In returning to this sort of language now that he’s got the nomination—and escalating it with his use of the phrase “founder of ISIS”—Trump is, on the face of it, harming his prospects for November. He certainly doesn’t sound like he’s trying to win over the soccer moms in Columbus, or the office workers in Tampa, that he needs to win the election. He sounds like he is talking to his angry base, and supplying them with an inflammatory narrative that can be trotted out for years, and decades, to come. It’s a tactic that politicians outside the United States, such as Jean-Marie Le Pen and Jörg Haider, have used to good effect in building up far-right nationalist movements.

John goes on to make quite a nice case about the potential effectiveness -- in the context of building a longer-term movement, of The Donald's blithering about the election being stolen -- a scenario to which a lot of Americans are apparently susceptible, as long as it doesn't include that actual attempts at election-fixing by the soldiers of the Right, with some interesting backup from other scribes.

You may be relieved to learn, as I was, that John doesn't really believe The Donald is masterminding "an enduring America First movement that will eventually supplant the Republican Party."

I wouldn’t give him that much credit. He’s precisely the self-centered, shortsighted, and insecure figure he appears to be, and he’s now flailing around for excuses to explain a humiliating defeat in the making. In his interview with CNBC, he said, “If, at the end of ninety days, I’ve fallen short . . . it’s O.K. I go back to a very good way of life.”

But that doesn't mean the country will pick up as if nothing happened in the event that The Donald simply leaves the mess behind him and "go[es] back to [his] very good way of life."

Four years from now, or eight years from now, a more disciplined and self-controlled figure could take up where he left off. If at that time the United States were facing a serious economic or national-security crisis, more Americans—conceivably even a majority of them—might be willing to accept the argument that regular politicians have failed and betrayed them, and that drastic measures are called for. Healthy democracies don’t decay overnight. They gradually rot from within, with termites like Trump undermining their foundations.

Which is kind of what I've been trying to say, John, only you've said it much better.

#

"Abortion Can No More Be Legislated Than Niagara Falls Can Be Dammed with a Spoon"

Former right-wing evangelical Frank Schaeffer confesses his sins (seriously)

by Gaius Publius

Another in our series, "They knew and they didn't care." The video above shows ex-evangelical minister Frank Schaeffer talking about the birth of the anti-choice movement and how it's responsible, among other things, for the presidency of George W. Bush. Schaeffer on that:

"We [the anti-choice part of the right-wing movement] created that audience — alienated, angry people convinced of their own victimhood. So, they became a majority while the mainstream media slept, and when everybody suddenly woke up to the fact was when George W. Bush was sitting in the White House as a totally unqualified crazy person who launched two wars we didn't need to be in. So the fallout had a direct ramification on American history."

The title quote —  "Abortion can no more be legislated than Niagara Falls can be dammed with a spoon" — comes after the four-minute mark, as Schaeffer says he's come to think of abortion as simply a fact of life, "like broken relationships, and abortion is no different ... part of the warp and woof of life, part of our mortality as a human being."

It's really a striking clip, both for the admission and for the language it's couched in. And yes, he admits he was in it for the money.

Schaeffer Knows What He Did

Schaeffer and his family are directly and personally responsible for the anti-choice movement in this country, and in this five-minute clip he sees unblinkingly — and profanely (this is not-safe audio if your boss is nearby) — what he, to his deep and passionate regret, helped do to the entire country.

It's not a surprise, this confession, because he's said many of these things before. But it's on the level of Lee Atwater's deathbed regret for his Willie Horton-ization of Republican politics. Schaeffer and his family had that great an impact on the political landscape of, let's face it, almost the length of our lives.

The interviewer is Samantha Bee, though she makes no appearance. Also, it really is a profane clip. Schaeffer is both colorful, a delightful speaker, and effective. Headset warning.

GP
 

Enemies of the State – Reflections on Insurrection and the Second Amendment

"Famous Whiskey Insurrection in Pennsylvania", an 1880 illustration of a tarred and feathered tax collector being made to ride the rail (click to enlarge; source)

by Gaius Publius

Not long ago, this excellent piece by Ken explored the real meaning of the Second Amendment. An added, also excellent, comment by John Puma contributed to the discussion. I'd like to summarize what these two are saying, then print the whole of the first part of Justice John Paul Stevens' dissent in Heller, the Scalia-authored Supreme Court majority opinion that "found" a right for personal gun ownership in the Second Amendment, an amendment about "militias." At the end, I'll add a comment of my own about American insurrection.

Quoting Adam Gopnik's good essay on this subject in The New Yorker, Ken writes (my emphasis):

To the inevitable argument "that the Second Amendment acts as a barrier to anything like the gun laws, passed after mass shootings, that have saved so many lives in Canada and Australia," Adam replies: "In point of historical and constitutional fact, nothing could be further from the truth: the only amendment necessary for gun legislation, on the local or national level, is the Second Amendment itself, properly understood, as it was for two hundred years in its plain original sense."

So what is the "plain original sense" of the Second Amendment? Keep in mind the times. The Constitution was establishing a strong federal government, and the relationship between that government and the (formerly supreme) state governments were continuously at issue. Each state had a state "militia" — a state army, in other words. Would the federal government require that these state militias be disbanded and replaced with a (standing) federal army?

Keep in mind as well that these state militias (state standing armies) had many functions, including suppressing insurrections — in the South, especially slave insurrections, as Thom Hartmann points out. In fact, according to Hartmann, these "militias" were also called "slave patrols," tasked with hunting down runaways.

But state militias weren't just for use against the slaves. This shows the role of state militias during the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791 (links at the source; my emphasis):

The Whiskey Rebellion, also known as the Whiskey Insurrection, was a tax protest in the United States beginning in 1791, during the presidency of George Washington. The so-called "whiskey tax" was the first tax imposed on a domestic product by the newly formed federal government. It became law in 1791, and was intended to generate revenue to help reduce the national debt.[3] Although the tax applied to all distilled spirits, whiskey was by far the most popular distilled beverage in the 18th-century U.S. Because of this, the excise became widely known as a "whiskey tax". The new excise was a part of U.S. treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton's program to fund war debt incurred during the American Revolutionary War.

The tax was resisted by farmers in the western frontier regions who were long accustomed to distilling their surplus grain and corn into whiskey. In these regions, whiskey was sufficiently popular that it often served as a medium of exchange. Many of the resisters were war veterans who believed that they were fighting for the principles of the American Revolution, in particular against taxation without local representation, while the U.S. federal government maintained the taxes were the legal expression of the taxation powers of Congress.

Throughout counties in Western Pennsylvania, protesters used violence and intimidation to prevent federal officials from collecting the tax. Resistance came to a climax in July 1794, when a U.S. marshal arrived in western Pennsylvania to serve writs to distillers who had not paid the excise. The alarm was raised, and more than 500 armed men attacked the fortified home of tax inspector General John Neville. Washington responded by sending peace commissioners to western Pennsylvania to negotiate with the rebels, while at the same time calling on governors to send a militia force to enforce the tax. With 13,000 militiamen provided by the governors of Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, Washington rode at the head of an army to suppress the insurgency. The rebels all went home before the arrival of the army, and there was no confrontation. About 20 men were arrested, but all were later acquitted or pardoned. Most distillers in nearby Kentucky were found to be all but impossible to tax; in the next six years, over 175 distillers from Kentucky were convicted of violating the tax law.[4] Numerous examples of resistance are recorded in court documents and newspaper accounts.[5]

The Whiskey Rebellion demonstrated that the new national government had the will and the ability to suppress violent resistance to its laws.

Even after the ratification of the Constitution, state militias had a military function.

Justice Stevens' Dissent in "Heller"

Now read Justice Stevens' excellent takedown of Justice Scalia's majority opinion in Heller. Trust me, you'll enjoy it (my emphasis in italics; links in the original):

Stevens, J., dissenting

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

No. 07–290

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, et al., PETITIONERS v. DICK ANTHONY HELLER 

on writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit

[June 26, 2008]

Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Souter, Justice Ginsburg, and Justice Breyer join, dissenting.

The question presented by this case is not whether the Second Amendment protects a “collective right” or an “individual right.” Surely it protects a right that can be enforced by individuals. But a conclusion that the Second Amendment protects an individual right does not tell us anything about the scope of that right.

Guns are used to hunt, for self-defense, to commit crimes, for sporting activities, and to perform military duties. The Second Amendment plainly does not protect the right to use a gun to rob a bank; it is equally clear that it does encompass the right to use weapons for certain military purposes. Whether it also protects the right to possess and use guns for nonmilitary purposes like hunting and personal self-defense is the question presented by this case. The text of the Amendment, its history, and our decision in United States v. Miller, 307 U. S. 174 (1939), provide a clear answer to that question.

The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia. It was a response to concerns raised during the ratification of the Constitution that the power of Congress to disarm the state militias and create a national standing army posed an intolerable threat to the sovereignty of the several States. Neither the text of the Amendment nor the arguments advanced by its proponents evidenced the slightest interest in limiting any legislature’s authority to regulate private civilian uses of firearms. Specifically, there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.

In 1934, Congress enacted the National Firearms Act, the first major federal firearms law.1 Upholding a conviction under that Act, this Court held that, “[i]n the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a ‘shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length’ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.” Miller, 307 U. S., at 178. The view of the Amendment we took in Miller—that it protects the right to keep and bear arms for certain military purposes, but that it does not curtail the Legislature’s power to regulate the nonmilitary use and ownership of weapons—is both the most natural reading of the Amendment’s text and the interpretation most faithful to the history of its adoption.

Since our decision in Miller, hundreds of judges have relied on the view of the Amendment we endorsed there;2 we ourselves affirmed it in 1980. See Lewis v. United States, 445 U. S. 55, n. 8 (1980).3 No new evidence has surfaced since 1980 supporting the view that the Amendment was intended to curtail the power of Congress to regulate civilian use or misuse of weapons. Indeed, a review of the drafting history of the Amendment demonstrates that its Framers rejected proposals that would have broadened its coverage to include such uses.

The opinion the Court announces today fails to identify any new evidence supporting the view that the Amendment was intended to limit the power of Congress to regulate civilian uses of weapons. Unable to point to any such evidence, the Court stakes its holding on a strained and unpersuasive reading of the Amendment’s text; significantly different provisions in the 1689 English Bill of Rights, and in various 19th-century State Constitutions; postenactment commentary that was available to the Court when it decided Miller; and, ultimately, a feeble attempt to distinguish Miller that places more emphasis on the Court’s decisional process than on the reasoning in the opinion itself.

Even if the textual and historical arguments on both sides of the issue were evenly balanced, respect for the well-settled views of all of our predecessors on this Court, and for the rule of law itself, see Mitchell v. W. T. Grant Co., 416 U. S. 600, 636 (1974) (Stewart, J., dissenting), would prevent most jurists from endorsing such a dramatic upheaval in the law.4 As Justice Cardozo observed years ago, the “labor of judges would be increased almost to the breaking point if every past decision could be reopened in every case, and one could not lay one’s own course of bricks on the secure foundation of the courses laid by others who had gone before him.” The Nature of the Judicial Process 149 (1921).

In this dissent I shall first explain why our decision in Miller was faithful to the text of the Second Amendment and the purposes revealed in its drafting history. I shall then comment on the postratification history of the Amendment, which makes abundantly clear that the Amendment should not be interpreted as limiting the authority of Congress to regulate the use or possession of firearms for purely civilian purposes.

I

The text of the Second Amendment is brief. It provides: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Three portions of that text merit special focus: the introductory language defining the Amendment’s purpose, the class of persons encompassed within its reach, and the unitary nature of the right that it protects.

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State”

The preamble to the Second Amendment makes three important points. It identifies the preservation of the militia as the Amendment’s purpose; it explains that the militia is necessary to the security of a free State; and it recognizes that the militia must be “well regulated.” In all three respects it is comparable to provisions in several State Declarations of Rights that were adopted roughly contemporaneously with the Declaration of Independence.5 Those state provisions highlight the importance members of the founding generation attached to the maintenance of state militias; they also underscore the profound fear shared by many in that era of the dangers posed by standing armies.6 While the need for state militias has not been a matter of significant public interest for almost two centuries, that fact should not obscure the contemporary concerns that animated the Framers.

The parallels between the Second Amendment and these state declarations, and the Second Amendment ’s omission of any statement of purpose related to the right to use firearms for hunting or personal self-defense, is especially striking in light of the fact that the Declarations of Rights of Pennsylvania and Vermont did expressly protect such civilian uses at the time. Article XIII of Pennsylvania’s 1776 Declaration of Rights announced that “the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state,” 1 Schwartz 266 (emphasis added); §43 of the Declaration assured that “the inhabitants of this state shall have the liberty to fowl and hunt in seasonable times on the lands they hold, and on all other lands therein not inclosed,” id., at 274. And Article XV of the 1777 Vermont Declaration of Rights guaranteed “[t]hat the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the State.” Id., at 324 (emphasis added). The contrast between those two declarations and the Second Amendment reinforces the clear statement of purpose announced in the Amendment’s preamble. It confirms that the Framers’ single-minded focus in crafting the constitutional guarantee “to keep and bear arms” was on military uses of firearms, which they viewed in the context of service in state militias.

The preamble thus both sets forth the object of the Amendment and informs the meaning of the remainder of its text. Such text should not be treated as mere surplusage, for “[i]t cannot be presumed that any clause in the constitution is intended to be without effect.” Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 174 (1803). [...]

The rest is a good read as well, though occasionally legalistic, as you'd expect.

Again, the concern of the framers was to protect armed state militias ... only. If they were concerned with protecting the hunting rights of citizens, as the contemporaneous Pennsylvania and Vermont Declaration of Rights documents did explicitly, they would have done so, explicitly. Scalia's opinion, joined by the right-wing majority of the Court, is a 180-degree reversal of the plain meaning of the Second Amendment.

Which leads us to one or two more considerations.

Enemies of the State: The American Insurrection

I have two takeaways from this discussion. Both are striking, and they echo each other in that they stand in 180-degree opposition to each other on exactly the same topic, American insurrection.

First, the primary argument (the "rationale" in sales terms*) of the American Right in favor of a "gun rights" interpretation of the Second Amendment is this: The reason (they say) the Founders wanted citizens to be armed is to oppose the federal government. Yet, as John Puma points out, Article One, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution enumerates the powers of Congress, one of which is (paragraph 15, my emphasis):

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

▪ So ask yourself — How can anyone, for any minute, consider that a Constitution that protects the government's right to "suppress insurrections" also adds a right that encourages and arms them? The Constitution is plainly, obviously, an anti-insurrectionist document.

Second, it's been clear for some time that the American Right is not interested in government as established by the Constitution. Their elected officials aren't interested in using the power of Congress to govern, in using the power of the Executive Branch to enforce the law; nor are their appointed justices interested in using the power of the Court to enforce the Constitution.

Using the power of government to subvert the government is itself insurrectionist. Which tells us two things — the insurrectionist strain in voters of the American Right (per their arguments in favor of "gun rights") is matched by the insurrectionist strain in their leaders and those who hold office in their name.

▪ So ask yourself — Why is the rest of the country not treating this insurrection as an insurrection, like the Whiskey Rebellion, instead of treating it as just another difference of political opinion? In other words, why are we not treating the virtual (and sometimes literal) armed rebels in the hills as a threat to the existence of our government?

That's a serious question. The rest of the country does not see the American Right as an insurrection, is determined not to, in fact, and also is encouraged not to. The reasons they don't and won't see the insurrection as an insurrection are both revealing and determinative of the outcome. After all, would the modern and mainly corrupted Democratic Party be able to sell its own brand of "rule by the rich" if they didn't have Republicans to point to as political enemies, instead of what they are, enemies of the state itself?

It seems at least possible that if the Democrats didn't keep the insurrectionist Republican Party alive as political enemies, their leaders would have to offer actual popular solutions, Sanders- and Warren-esque solutions, instead of only offering solutions favored by the wealthy that finance both parties.

I'm serious. Picture a world in which the Republicans were delegitimized as a political party. What would happen to the Democratic Party? It would split, of course, into a party that could only offer blackmail as a reason to vote for them, and a party that offered solutions to real problems instead.

Interesting considerations, no?

*The "rationale" in sales terms — The "rationale" is the cobbled-together explanation you give your spouse for why you want some god-awful something he's certainly going to oppose and you're determined to buy. And yes, this is how sales pitches work. They teach you about the "rationale," just this way, in courses about writing these pitches. The rationale always comes second in the pitch, after you stimulate the "want," the lizard brain reason for buying in the first place ("chicks will love you" or "fish will jump out of the water into your net"). 

GP

This is a serious question: Are right-wingers CAPABLE of telling the truth about anything?

Q: What's wrong with this picture?



by Ken

The answer to the question "What's wrong with this picture?": It's fake.

At Right Wing Watch, Brian Tashman posted the above tweet (also posted to the tweeter's Facebook page) by "right wing 'intellectual' Dinesh D'Souza," along with the note that "D’Souza isn’t the only conservative to post the picture, despite the fact that it’s fake," and also an update:

D'Souza changed the Facebook post to read: "Even if the #ConfederateFlag was edited into this Hillary photo, WHAT is going on with those glasses and that hairdo?"

And, oh yes, Brian posted the actual photo, as unearthed in multiple previous iterations via "5 seconds of Google image search" by The Vicious Babushka at Little Green Footballs:



VicBab had noted:

Interestingly, the first photo to appear in my Twitter feed this morning was from @Bipartisanism, a liberal account. When I pointed out that the photo did not match other instances of the picture and that it was a Photoshop, he deleted the Tweet.

In those unaltered iterations, right-wingers had been chortling over Hillary's pants. Note that the unspeakable Dinesh D'Souza, once word apparently reached him that he had circulated a fake "photo," didn't go for the pants, he went for "those glasses and that hairdo." Very sophisticated. A lesser intellect might have contemplated some sort of apology. [UPDATE: Looking again, I realize that Dinesh couldn't "go for the pants," because they're mostly edited out of the version of the doctored photo he circulated. This doesn't excuse his contemptible, pea-brained ridicule of the young Hillary's fashion choices, but perhaps it explains why he felt he had to find someplace else to go. Certainly not to an apology, though.]

I hope I don't have to rehash D'Souza's place in the annals of Modern Conservatism. From his role as a cofounder of the infamous, odious propaganda-and-hate sheet the Dartmouth Review, he became a principal architect of then-young Republicans transforming lamebrained ideology into a pseudo-philosophical orgy of assaultive, lying imbecility -- while passing themselves off, as Right Wing Watch notes, as "intellectuals."

They don't actually have a philosophy, of course. What they have is a crippling personality disorder that apparently results in a contemptuous break from reality. From it they've fashioned a movement. Unbelievable.



In the January-February issue of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine -- a pretty good magazine, by the way -- ABC News investigative reporter Matthew Mosk '92 did a piece called "D'Souza's America," with the deck: "Following his felony conviction, conservative firebrand Dinesh D'Souza '83 has been humbled -- a little -- by his new life under guard in a San Diego halfway house. But silenced?" I couldn't help but read the whole thing, to see if it contained any insight into what makes this loathsome toad tick. Mostly I learned what a truly vile loathsome toad he is -- whiny, self-congratulatory, utterly unapologetic.

Despite having been caught red-handed breaking campaign-finance laws on behalf of a right-wing-nutjob friend engaged in a futile challenge to NY Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's reelection, and being caught even redder-handed trying frantically to cover up his shenanigans, and consequently pleading guilty, the slimebag insists he's the victim of a political witch hunt -- and while awaiting sentence went on TV multiple times to say so (if you guessed Fox Noise, you guessed right), to the considerable irritation of Federal District Court Judge Richard M. Berman, who played a clip of one of those appearances at his sentencing. Matthew Mosk writes:

“Notwithstanding Mr. D’Souza’s contention in his post-plea TV interview that you saw,” Berman said sternly, “I’m totally confident that Lady Justice is doing her job and that she’s not taking off her blindfold to target Dinesh D’Souza.

“Almost every defendant expresses remorse for his mistake,” Berman said. “They often mean it was a mistake in hindsight, and they are certainly sorry that they got caught. But Mr. D’Souza’s crime was clearly no mistake.” As Berman prepared to hand down the sentence, he continued, sounding almost exasperated, “I’m not sure, Mr. D’Souza, that you get it. It’s still hard for me to discern any personal acceptance of responsibility in this case.”

This, remember, in a defendant entering a guilty plea! Who nevertheless received, Mosk writes, "not a sentence of 10 to 16 months in federal prison, as federal guidelines permit, but Berman’s order that D’Souza spend eight months in a community confinement center," and --

spend an eight-hour day each week teaching English as a second language to immigrants, an exercise Berman said he hoped might bring some humility to a defendant the judge described as an “almost compulsive talker” and “not a listener.”

D'Souza has made a glorious career of ruthless, often borderline-psychotic, obviously knowing lies (he's too smart not to know that he's lying his guts out), on the apparent principle: Lie Big and Lie All the Time. It's hard to imagine a more dishonest creature walking the earth, in a life and career of unmitigated filth and degradation. For which he has garnered massive attention and been lavishly rewarded, and has paved the way for a generation of savagely cretinous like-minded pseudo-intellectual hooligans.

With Matthew Mosk, the closest Dinesh comes to self-awareness is an eventual acknowledgment, when pressed about his brush with the judicial system: "It may be I've had a charmed enough life that I began to think the rules don't apply to me. If that's the case, this is a very good thing to show me that they do." So, if that's the case, Dinesh has learned that he has to be a little more careful when it comes to bothersome "rules."

I suppose it's no wonder, then, that such a person can scarcely devote a second thought to the insignificant action of having spread a lie about Hillary. After all, how many thousands of much bigger lies about her has he already spread?

I mean the question I've put in the post title seriously: Are people like this not just unwilling but unable to tell the truth anytime it comes into conflict with the delusional version of "reality" ricocheting through their savage, ravaged brains?

Ronald Reagan awakened discontented Americans to a new version of reality, which offered as its test question not "Is it true?" but "Does it make you feel better?" And he also encouraged scapegoating, suggesting to Americans that if factual reality makes you feel bad, there's no reason on earth not to blame it on somebody, and the Americans he was preaching to needed only a wink from St. Ronnie to know who some of those somebodies might be.

All these years later these impulses have become so deeply embedded in the right-wing psyche that the victims seem to have truly no idea how complete their break from reality is. Which is why I pose the question of whether that break from reality makes it not just undesirable but impossible to deal with factual reality.

#

The years of Obama-bashing have helped bring racism, sexism, and all the other "-isms" of hate out of the shadows

"The United States has never been "post-racial" as some would claim . . . . That said, prior to the emergence of Obama, outward expressions of virulent racism had been increasingly muted and forced underground by decades of hard work. . . . What has happened in the intervening years of the Obama presidency has been nothing less than a great unleashing -- the legitimization of racism and racist expression."

-- Bob Johnson, in "Conservative demonization of Obama
allowed racists to crawl out from under their rocks" (Daily Kos)

by Ken

Last night I indicated that I meant to come back to Ian Welsh's post yesterday, "In Light of Eric Garner," in which he urged us: "Understand this, if you understand nothing else: the system is working as intended." He argued that the Staten Island prosecutor case who succeeded in getting the grand jury to bring no indictment in Garner's death --

made the decision that the system wants: police are almost never prosecuted for assault or murder and on those rare occasions that they are, they almost always get off.

Donovan did what the legal system wanted him to do.

As for the police in question, well, they did what the legal system wants them to do, as well."

Where are several points here I wanted to come back to.

(1) THE PROPOSITION THAT "THE POLICE IN QUESTION
DID WHAT THE LEGAL SYSTEM WANTS THEM TO DO"

To argue this proposition, Ian works from "a transcript of [Eric Garner's] last words":

“Get away [garbled] … for what? Every time you see me, you want to mess with me. I’m tired of it. It stops today. Why would you…? Everyone standing here will tell you I didn’t do nothing. I did not sell nothing. Because every time you see me, you want to harass me. You want to stop me (garbled) Selling cigarettes. I’m minding my business, officer, I’m minding my business. Please just leave me alone. I told you the last time, please just leave me alone. please please, don’t touch me. Do not touch me.”

”I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe,” he said, as officers restrained him.

"Defenders of the police," Ian says, will say that Garner "was non-compliant."

Non-compliant.

If a police officer tells you to do anything, you do it immediately.  If you do not, anything that happens to you, up to and including death, is your problem.

The legal system exists, today, to ensure compliance.

American oligarchical society rests on people not effectively resisting.  All gains now go to the top 10%, with the rest of society losing ground.  Incarceration rates blossom in 1980, which is also the year that the oligarchical program is voted in and becomes official.  (Trickle down economics can be understood no other way.)

Any part of the population which is inclined to resist, must be taught that it cannot resist.  Get out millions to demonstrate against the Iraq war: it will not work. Protest against police killings of African Americans, it will not work.

Nothing you do will work.

You will comply, and you will learn that resistance is futile. . . .

What's more, society finds the right people for its front-line compliance enforcement. Ian notes that "most of what police are paid is in social coin":

[T]he right to demand immediate obedience and fuck people up; the solidarity of the blue line; the feeling of belonging and power, is what makes the job worth having for (probably most) of the people who are now attracted to it.

Being a thug; having social sanction to be a thug, is enjoyable to a lot of people. Since that’s what cops get to do, those are the sort of people who tend to be attracted to the job. The police are the biggest toughest gang around, and belonging to them has most of the rewards of gang life, without the dangers of going to jail.

(2) THE FACT THAT PEOPLE "OUTSIDE THE MAINSTREAM"
REALLY NEED TO LEARN THE FUTILTY OF RESISTANCE

"The more outside the mainstream you are," Ian says,

the more you will learn it. African Americans, Latinos, poor whites (in that order.) Those who are fundamentally authoritarian, but somewhat opposed to the system (like the Bundy ranch) are treated more carefully (though the militia movement has its martyrs). But the fundamental lesson of life is to do what your lords and masters tell you to, and to not protest any law or order, no matter how nonsensical, trivial, or unjust it is. . . .

Compliance when given specific orders and learned hopelessness about protest or organizing are the aims. Ordinary citizens must understand that they cannot change the system if elites do not agree with the changes they want made If they try, they will be arrested and receive a criminal sentence, meaning they can never again have a good job.

In this system the wolves or goats identify themselves. An injustice is committed, people protest and the most aggressive protestors (which doesn’t always mean violence) are arrested. Certainly the organizers are. Those people are, as a result, usually destroyed economically even if they aren’t locked up for years.

The system is doing what it is meant to do. It teaches compliance, it teaches hopelessness and it identifies those who will not obey laws that don’t make sense (marijuana possession, for example), or who will fight or organize against the system and then it destroys them economically and often psychologically through practices like solitary confinement and prison rape.

The system will not change until those who want it to change have the raw power to force it to change, because it does serve the interests of its masters by destroying or marginalizing anyone who is actually a danger to oligarchical control of the system.

(3) THAT RACE ISN'T AN ACCIDENTAL COMPONENT OF THIS

The paragraphs I quoted above in connection with society finding the right people for its front-line compliance enforcement, and paying them mostly "in social coin," is preceded by this:

Race is an effective tool in this system, dividing the lower classes (and almost everyone is lower class now) against each other. No matter how bad a poor white’s life is, well hey, he ain’t black. He or she can feel superior to someone, can have someone to kick down at.

In this connection, in last night's post I also recommended I also recommended Bob Johnson's Daily Kos post "Conservative demonization of Obama allowed racists to crawl out from under their rocks," which argues just what the title suggests. I doubt that many DWT readers will need much persuading of the point that "the United States has never been 'post-racial' as some would claim," notably in the context of a black president in the White House.

Bob points out during the 2008 election campaign "the ugly racists in conservative leadership . . . spent months stirring racial resentment and fear based on Obama's 'otherness.' " He offers assorted examples, including "racist fear-pandering by anyone and everyone associated with Fox News," which collectively "set the stage for what was to come: nearly seven years of unending racist attacks, both overt and subtle."

And the effect, he says, has been "nothing less than a great unleashing -- the legitimization of racism and racist expression," which has undone such progress as had been made through "decades of hard work" that came before, whereby --

outward expressions of virulent racism had been increasingly muted and forced underground by decades of hard work. The most vicious racists had crawled under rocks, spewing their loathings in private or secret among others who shared their views.

And Bob describes and documents some of the ways in which the right-wing pols and media, despite earnest protestations to the contrary, have systematically exploited the race card to expand and consolidate political power. He points out, for example:

The rise of the Tea Party during the health care debate, no matter how contrived or staged, was simply the organizing by right wing power brokers of those holding racial resentments. The Tea Party provided racists with a sheepskin, euphemistically labeled "dissent," as a way to publicly espouse their virulent racial hatred.

On the Right, it's a win-win. For the troops who support the cause, it's more of Ian's payment "in social coin" -- a class of people to feel superior to. To the part of the country already infected with the virus of racism, the "vindication" of the killer cops in Ferguson and Staten Island is cause for celebration, bringing them more proudly, confidently, and visibly out in the open.

And for the oligarchs who exploit these sumbitches, it's legions of sumbitches to exploit. As Bob puts it:

Conservatives have fostered this retreat to gain power. It's a cynical strategy laced with abhorrent consequences for us all. It may take a long time to put that genie back in the bottle.

IT'S NOT JUST RACISM THAT THE RIGHT PROMOTES

As Howie noted in an October 22 post ("At The Root Of The Republican Party War Against Women -- Primitive Southern Baptists"), I have been kind of obsessed with a piece by Thomas Powers in the October 9 New York Review of Books, "Texas: The Southern Baptists in Power."

Formally, the subject at hand is the rise of the Southern Baptists to political control in Texas, enforcing an agenda of virulent racism, sexism, and homophobia. But of course it's not just Texas, and it's not just racism. This chunk of the Powers piece that haunts me:

The goal of “the Christian Right” as it waded into American politics was not vanilla concern with good government, but something gem-hard and Bible-based. The word “inerrant” is unfamiliar to most Americans, who take a softer view of religion than Southern Baptists. Dressing up for church, helping the poor, praying for peace, the sweet hope of marriage vows, the solace of ashes to ashes and dust to dust at the graveside—that seems to cover it for most Americans. Southern Baptists have an iron spine forged in a hotter fire: they believe salvation is what the universe is all about; the way to be saved is spelled out in the Bible; you can trust the Bible because everything in it is true, and that includes the story of Eden—woman’s role in man’s fall.

At the SBC’s annual meeting in Kansas City in 1984 the fundamentalists pushed through a resolution barring the ordination of women “because the man was first in creation and the woman was first in the Edenic fall.” With this measure the fundamentalists closed a perfect loop. Women were not allowed to be “over” men, which means they cannot teach men where religion is concerned, which means they cannot be ordained and serve as pastors, which means they cannot challenge the interpretation of the biblical verses that confine them to a secondary status. Driving the resolution was a fear held in common with their fundamentalist brothers in the Muslim and Jewish worlds—fear of the loss of control of women.

Increasingly, now, the "mainstream" world that Ian Welsh sees the oligarchs defending so relentlessly looks very much like the primitive view of mankind Thomas Powers describes in his piece. And it's open season for all the "-isms" that target the groups that stand defiantly outside their mainstream. From the hate-mongerers' standpoint, the cool thing is that different "-isms" have stronger appeal to different target groups, and they happily reinforce one another. Once you're free to hate one group, you've got a free pass to hate any other one.


WE'RE SEEING THE RESULTS IN THE FORM OF
"ABHORRENT CONSEQUENCES" ALL AROUND US

We see the results in the form of "abhorrent consequences" all around us. It's been a while, notably, since contempt for and hatred of women could be expressed as openly as it has once again come to be. Does anyone believe that the orgy or rape happening all around us -- on campuses and in the military, for sure, but everywhere else as well.

Which is why it seemed to me at the time important to try to correct the nearly universal misunderstanding of what poor Todd Akin mean with his clumsy reference to "legitimate rape." It was obvious to anyone who looked at what he actually said that he wasn't saying that rape itself is in any way "legitimate." He was, instead, distinguishing what he takes to be an extremely small number of real, or "legitimate," rapes relative to the large number of claimed or supposed rapes. This is an increasingly prevalent view on the Right: that all those women who are crying "rape" weren't really raped. They're just trying to get back, for disturbed reasons of their own, at men being men (and boys being boys), doing to women just what God created women to have done to them.

This is also why, incidentally, the apparent fiasco of the Rolling Stone University of Virginia gang-rape story is a disaster. Among people looking for proof that the vast majority of claimed rapes aren't "legitimate" rapes, it will be taken as final proof.

#

Remembering Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan: Does he serve as an inspiration for modern-day right-wingers?

by Ken

We've celebrated "Postcard Thursday" -- courtesy of the Inside the Apple blog team of Michelle and James Nevius, authors of Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York and Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers -- before, and today we're, you know, doing it again. I'll have a little something more to say in a moment, but first let's just do "Postcard Thursday." (If you're not signed up to receive it, or other updates from the team, you can take care of that here.)

Today's postcard, as you may have figured out, is posted above. Here's what the Inside the Apple team has to say about it:

Postcard Thursday: "Wrong Way" Corrigan

On July 17, 1938, Douglas Corrigan took off from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. He'd filed a flight plan intending to fly west to Long Beach, California (from which he'd arrived a week earlier). Instead, Corrigan flew east and, supposedly due to a faulty compass and thick fog, found himself 26 hours into the flight approaching Ireland instead of Long Beach. The stunt earned him the nickname "Wrong Way" Corrigan and a place in history.

To this day, it is unknown if Corrigan made the transatlantic flight by mistake or if he had been planning to pull the stunt for some time. In 1935, he'd been denied an application to fly to Ireland because his Curtiss Robin OX-5 plane was deemed unsound. A skilled mechanic, he had made numerous modifications to the aircraft (the $900 he spent in upgrades is what is referenced in today's postcard), but still his application to file a transatlantic flight plan was turned down. Eventually, Corrigan made so many custom changes to the Robin that it was deemed unsafe for flight.

Finally, on July 9, 1938, Corrigan flew from Long Beach to Brooklyn, his flight hampered only by a small fuel leak. Upon arriving at Floyd Bennett Field, Corrigan decided against repairing the leak, but instead filed a flight plan to return to California. He took off the morning of July 17 and flew 28 hours, 13 minutes, to the Baldonnel Aerodrome in Ireland, becoming an instant celebrity. Upon his return to New York (via steamship) he was feted with a ticker-tape parade. His autobiography was an instant best-seller and he was soon shilling for all sorts of "Wrong Way" products. His story became the film The Flying Irishman in 1939.

Despite mounting evidence that Corrigan had purposefully flown to Ireland, he maintained until the end of his life that it was a simple navigational error.

Since Michelle and James are in the hustle-till-you-drop period for Footprints, and it's worth keeping up to date on their plans, because they've been scheduling a series of events a savvy person might want to go to even if they weren't hoping to get you to buy their book, I'm happy to throw in a book plug here. It is, after all, a product I bought and use myself.

Not that Michelle and James are buddies of mine. I've done two walking tours with James, and I've never actually met Michelle, though last June I got to see her in action along with James as they provided "New York"-based commentary after a performance of Bronson Howard's 1887 play The Henrietta by Metropolitan Playhouse (directed by the company's "producing artistic director," Alex Roe), which "explores America's theatrical heritage to illuminate contemporary American culture." (In the latter part of the 19th century, the now-unknown Bronson Howard was known as "the dean of American playwrights."I thought it was fascinating that the company had invited Michelle and James to share their New York expertise, and they were great.

Beyond that, I can say that they're both very nice and very bright and very knowledgeable and above all very curious, in particular about New York City, and that that high degree of curiousness along with those other qualities makes them excellent guides for anyone who wants to get below the surface of the city. It's reflected in both Inside the Apple and Footprints in New York.

I certainly haven't read either book cover to cover -- meaning that there's still plenty for me still to discover, as well as rediscover. Inside the Apple is special among NYC guidebooks because, while it's organized in walkable geographical units, the text itself ranges through history with such abundant cross-references that you almost invariably start in one chapter and wind up somewhere else entirely, having probably stopped off in several other points along the way. So it's an ideal "dipping in" book, and so is Footprints, as I wrote here earlier, works from the premise that geographical places are made real and alive by the people who have lived and worked there.

#

A tale of two Popes -- the one in the Vatican, who takes Jesus' words to heart, and the one in North Carolina

As I confirmed during my December visit, there is evidence of backlash against North Carolina oligarchist "Puppet Master" Art Pope's way-far-right agenda.

by Noah

There are two Popes in the news lately. Both represent organizations that claim to speak for Jesus Christ. One's name is Pope Francis, leader of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Francis is the better-known of the two, and his actions befuddle and anger U.S. Republicans. The other's name is Art Pope. Art Pope is the North Carolina Republican Party's pope.

Unlike many past Popes, Francis seems to take the reported actions and words of Jesus to heart and uses his own words and actions to lead his organization toward the betterment of humanity. Art Pope plays for the other side.

While Pope Francis seeks to aid the poor and the powerless, even leaving the Vatican at night dressed as an ordinary priest to comfort the homeless, Art Pope's mission is to exploit the poor and the powerless to gain more power, even seeking to expand the numbers of poor in his state. Art Pope is a mini-me to the Koch Brothers. He has a lot of money but not Koch Brothers Kash, so for now he has been content to buy just one state out of 50.

As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.

-- Jesus, as quoted in the Book of Matthew, 25:31-46

Art Pope preaches a very different gospel. He has used his material goods to elect and buy the best and truest form of Republican government he can. The end result has been a takeover of North Carolina by political perps that is as extreme as any since the days of segregation. But the agenda that Art Pope pushes is not based solelyon race. Women, senior citizens, Hispanics, and students are all targets of this pope.

It is oligarchist Art Pope who has financed an insane asylum that serves as the North Carolina legislature and governor's office. He is now even Gov. Pat McCrory's budget director, all but officially making the governor his hand puppet.

In 2010, 75 percent of all the outside money that came into North Carolina's legislative elections came from groups backed by Art Pope. His candidates won 80 percent of those races. Pope's money then financed a 2012 election that was so successful for Republicans that it ended in this being the first time since 1870 that the Repug Party controlled the governorship and both houses of the state legislature, the General Assembly. Without Art Pope putting his money behind his agenda, there is no feo-fascist Gov. "Puppet Pat" McCrory; there are no attacks on the teachers of North Carolina (right down to removing money for instructional supplies).

In fact, Puppet Pat seems to think that education should exist only to train people for jobs -- vocational training for worker bees, as it were. Puppet Pat wants Pope's legislature to pass laws that would provide funds to universities "not based on how many butts in seats but how many of those butts can get jobs." Apparently McCrory never learned that education deals with the brains in your head. His stated outlook reveals that education is not about expanding the mind or improving society and moving it forward. As for the promised jobs, they haven't materialized, as his policies continue to damage the state economy.

Without people like Puppet Pat who are so willing to do the bidding of the money men, there is no chronic union-busting; there are no attacks on the voting rights of legal North Carolina citizens; there is no well-orchestrated attack on democracy itself. He is his state's Scott Walker. To Art Pope, just as to the Walker-backing Koch Brothers, there are the privileged few and "the least of these," with nothing in between: lords and serfs. It's a push back to the past -- way back.

Thanks to Art Pope and his government-by-court-jester, Puppet Pat has been able to cut unemployment benefits in North Carolina by 35 percent and the number of weeks of eligibility from 26 down to 20, the result being that 170,000 citizens of his state are prevented from federal emergency extended benefits. That move alone has removed a sizable amount of money that would have gone into the state's economy. (The demonstrators in the photo are State Sen. Earline Parmon [right] and Democratic activist Mary Dickinson, who's planning a run for the NC House from District 74, the Winston-Salem area. We'll hear from Senator Parmon below.)

Puppet Pat then proudly boasts that he has balanced the budget of the state unemployment fund three years ahead of schedule. Talk about balancing the budget on the backs of the middle and working classes! This is Republican class warfare at its best (worst). Under Pope's direction, Puppet Pat has also gleefully signed a bill from Pope's legislature that opts the state out of the expanded Obamacare Medicaid provision. That heinous act alone has denied health-care coverage to 500,000 people in North Carolina. What would Jesus do?

The Art Pope-financed agenda has also resulted in the repeal of the Racial Justice Act, a law that enabled inmates on death row to challenge their death sentence based on questions about whether they even got a fair trial.

Then there is the matter of trying to vote in North Carolina. As a direct result of a Republican-controlled U.S. Supreme Court deciding to do away with key provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (a goal of the Republican Party and other racist entities for decades), North Carolina has let its freak flag fly by passing some of the most restrictive voting regulations since the Jim Crow era.

NC House Bill 589 not only contains exceptionally strict photo ID requirements, it eliminates seven days of early voting, eliminates same-day voter registration, and, most egregiously, prohibits the counting of provisional ballots that are cast in the right county but wrong precinct. I don't know about you, but I've lived in the same place for 30+ years but my precinct number has changed a few times along the way. The potential for foul-ups is always there, especially when polling places move.

"Puppet Master" Art Pope and Gov. "Puppet Pat" McCrory

Most importantly, the provisional-ballot game is the most un-American game in American electoral politics. It works like this: If you are challenged at your voting place, whether it's because your registration name doesn't exactly match the name on your driver's license, electric bill, passport, birth certificate, or now Voter ID card or because some A-hole doesn't like something about the way you look, you are not allowed to go into the booth or vote with a voting machine. Instead, you are handed a "provisional ballot." Are you so trusting and naïve that you think your provisional ballot actually gets counted? OK, sometimes they do get counted, usually after the election results are certified. I bet you never heard about that one from David Gregory, Wolf Blitzer, or any of the game-show-host rejects at Fox.

In an effort to prevent students from voting because they tend to vote Democratic, polling places have been moved far from campuses. Also, previously students and others were allowed to register to vote well in advance of their 18th birthday. What happens when your birthday falls on or a bit before Election Day? Answer: You can't vote. When asked how this new obstacle to voting would prevent voter fraud, McCrory replied cynically: "I don't know enough. I'm sorry. I haven't seen that part of the bill." Nice.

There has also now been at least one attempt by Republicans to tell a man named Montravius King (right), who just happens to be African-American, that he can't even run for his local City Council. Oh, would Jesse Helms have loved that one! Welcome to Art Pope's North Carolina. We'll even tell you if you can run for office against us. Sound like 1950s Russia?

Can a return to the good ol' boy Jim Crow days of certain citizens being forced to guess the number of jelly beans in the jar or naming the starting lineup of the 1940 Detroit Tigers before they can touch the voting-machine screen be far behind?

Need you ask about Puppet Pat's position on abortion? Not only has he signed state legislation designed to limit access to abortion after saying he would not do so when he campaigned, he decided to rub it in the faces of women who protested outside his office by personally handing them a plate of chocolate-chip cookies. In other words, "Get back in the kitchen, bitches."

The Backlash

I've often thought that history swings like a pendulum. In this case, North Carolina has swung so far to the right that a backlash was inevitable. Buyer's remorse is growing. That can only help the Democrats in the coming midterm elections. Even some voters who voted Repug in 2012 are disappointed in things like the new voter-suppression legislation in their state. It seems they thought it would be "others" that suffered once Republicans took over. They never dreamed how big that group of "others" was and that it could possibly include anyone who isn't a member of the upper strata. According to a recent PPP poll, Puppet Pat's approval rating is down to 38 percent, and 53 percent of state residents disapprove of the state House and Senate Repugs.

There are other signs that the pendulum is starting to swing back because of the force of how hard Puppet Pat and the Art Pope agenda have pushed the state to the extreme right. Civil disobedience, in the form of what are called Moral Mondays protests, have made the news in recent months. Those who participate in the Moral Mondays actions meet at the state house in Raleigh on Mondays to protest the actions of the lunatic asylum inside. Then they enter the building peacefully and are arrested. Many local progressive religious groups are involved and, in fact local religious leaders such as William Barber II, the head of the North Carolina chapter of the dreaded NAACP are greatly involved in the organization of the protests. I like to think that, perhaps, the other pope, Pope Francis, might even smile about Moral Mondays. The concept is even spreading to other states, like New York.

[Click to enlarge]

Now the protests are branching out with smaller protests targeting specific retail stores -- stores that are owned by Puppet Master Pope. Among the stores owned by Art Pope are the Roses, Maxway, and Super Dollar chains. These stores, located in low-income and African-American neighborhoods, offer low-income citizens cheap goods at dirt- cheap prices. It's the "dollar store" concept. Sounds great. Great bargains on everything from batteries, toothpaste, and dish soap to items that even the slave-labor countries of Republican dreams might be embarrassed about. You get the picture. There's no question that stores like these can be helpful to a very tight budget in the short run. The evil lies in what Art Pope does with the profits.

$40 million linked to Art Pope's stores has gone to political donations and far-right-wing groups like the cynically named Americans for Prosperity. In other words, Pope uses his stores, whose low, low everyday prices appeal to poor people, to elect politicians sho will pass legislation to keep them poor or make them even more poor. You get the feeling that if people like Pope and McCrory could house the citizens of North Carolina in super-size Roach Motels, they would. Then they would tell them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. It's the republican way, after all. Check out the Art Pope Exposed website.

On December 14th, I went to a demonstration


It was one of several demonstrations in the state that day. It was a brutally cold and rainy day. Even sleet hit the umbrellas of the 20 or so protesters who braved the weather. It's a start, and there will be more. That's a measure of the passions involved. The fact that there were seven police cars in attendance to keep an eye on such an "unruly crowd" was a measure of Art Pope's power over the local authorities. Paranoia strikes deep. It should.

Demonstration participants included State Sen. Earline Parmon, Rep. Evelyn Terry, and 2014 NC 74 candidate for the State House Mary Dickinson. Said Parmon:

We want people who shop at Art Pope's stores to understand how he uses the profits to support causes that hurt working-class and minority people, whether it is refusing to expand Medicaid coverage, voter-restriction laws, tax reform that foremost benefits the wealthy, disqualifying North Carolina from federal jobless benefits or cutting back on public education spending.

Art Pope recently responded to such protests in a letter to State NAACP President William Barber II, saying in part that he was --

shocked that you and your allies would demand any public official to support your political positions, by threatening a business which is not part of state government.

"Not part of state government"? Really? When the profits go to purchase the state government? Nice try, Puppet Master Pope. You don't mind it at all when poor people shop at your stores, just when they might dare to try and vote against you and your toys in the state house. Tell you what: When you die, you can be Pope in Hell, toasting like a little marshmallow on a stick. Hopefully that will be before you have the chance to create Hell in North Carolina. Meanwhile the real Pope might remind you:

And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers. . . .

-- the Book of Matthew, 21:12

The display window of Maxway, one of Art Pope's stores. Note the contrast of the Christmas wreath on the door -- mixed message of enticement, welcome, and bars. Pope's Maxway was the only store in the neighborhood that I noticed having bars on the windows, including a pawn shop right next door. Is this some sort of weird Pope conceptual-art piece?

#

9/11 and the case for reality (Part 3): Are we a "peace-loving nation" or a nation committed to permanent war?

With the launch of "Operation Iraqi Freedom," former career military officer (now professor of international relations at Boston University) Andrew Bacevich has written: "Claims that once seemed elementary -- above all, claims relating to the essentially benign purposes of American power -- now appeared preposterous."


"I thought I knew a lot about war; even if Sherman was right that 'war is hell,' it was frequently necessary, we did it well, and -- whatever those misinformed peaceniks said -- we made the world a better place.

"But then I went to a war zone. . . ."

-- Jeremiah Goulka, in "Confessions of a Former Republican"

"All of my adult life I had been a company man, only dimly aware of the extent to which institutional loyalties induce myopia. Asserting independence required first recognizing the extent to which I had been socialized to accept certain things as unimpeachable. . . .

"George W. Bush's decision to launch Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 pushed me fully into opposition. Claims that once seemed elementary -- above all, claims relating to the essentially benign purposes of American power -- now appeared preposterous. The contradictions that found an ostensibly peace-loving nation committing itself to a doctrine of preventive war became too great to ignore. The folly and hubris of the policy makers who heedlessly thrust the nation into an ill-defined and open-ended 'global war on terror' without the foggiest notion of what victory would look like, how it would be won, and what it might cost approached standards hitherto achieved only by slightly mad German warlords."

-- Andrew Bacevich, in "The Unmaking of a Company Man"
(the introduction to his book Washington Rules:
America’s Path to Permanent War)

by Ken

Before the detour yesterday ("What makes Willard's thuggish imbecility on Libya different from his usual thuggish imbecility?") necessitated by the "Mutt" man's Mutt-ish outburst, I had intended to continue my "9/11 and the case for reality" series, in particular proceeding from Tuesday's Part 2, "The right-wing worldview has long coupled delusions with lies, not least in matters of 'national security.'"

In a sense, though, we were continuing the theme, because it wasn't just the "Mutt" man's terrifyingly outsize ignorance and cynicism on display ("I'll say any damn thing I have to to get what I friggin' want, which is to park my carcass in the Oval Office"). There was an actual strain of ideology embedded in the Muttster's thuggish reiteration of the view "America don't apologize, America kicks butt -- bring it on, suckuh!" Remember that many of the right-wing pols who were horrified by the "Mutt" man's orgy of self-indulgence objected not to the substance but to the manner of it -- to the politics rather than the "principle." (Sorry, I have to put quotes around "principle.")

This is the very mindset we were talking about Tuesday, drawing on testimony from two reformed right-wingers who have told their conversion stories in Tomgrams from Tom Engelhardt's TomDispatch.com: Andrew Bacevich ("How Washington Rules," from 2010 -- in the form of the introduction to his book, as noted above) and Jeremiah Goulka ("Confessions of a Former Republican," from a couple of weeks ago). "What both men are talking about," I wrote Tuesday, the 11th of September, "are the lies and delusions that lay at the heart of foreign policy -- in the name of 'national security' -- in the Bush regime. And today is the anniversary of what should be its eternal shame."

The eternal shame shines on! Since Tuesday night we have learned that the "Mutt" man, despite his previous disinclination to twist his silver-plated tongue around matters of foreign policy, is proud to light the light and carry the torch for that eternal shame.

It's hardly a secret that right-wing pols as far back as memory goes have honed their skills at using phony-baloney mindless jingoism to monopolize the votes of voters bred to respond to this very bogosity. One of the fascinations of both Jeremiah Goulka's and Andrew Bacevich's stories is their frankness about their unquestioning acceptance of this worldview. It's a sterling reminder of how gullible even very smart people can be.

On Tuesday I quoted this telling paragraph from Jeremiah Goulka:

Lots of Republicans grow up hawks. I certainly did. My sense of what it meant to be an American was linked to my belief that from 1776 to WWII, and even from the 1991 Gulf War to Kosovo and Afghanistan, the American military had been dedicated to birthing freedom and democracy in the world, while dispensing a tough and precise global justice.

Tonight I think we need to read on a bit:

To me, military service represented the perfect combination of public service, honor, heroism, glory, promotion, meaning, and coolness. As a child, I couldn’t get enough of the military: toys and models, movies and cartoons, fat books with technical pictures of manly fighter planes and ships and submarines. We went to air shows whenever we could, and with the advent of cable, I begged my parents to sign up so that the Discovery Channel could bring those shows right into our den. Just after we got it, the first Gulf War kicked off, and CNN provided my afterschool entertainment for weeks.

As I got older, I studied Civil War military history and memory. (I would eventually edit a book of letters by Union Gen. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.) I thought I knew a lot about war; even if Sherman was right that "war is hell," it was frequently necessary, we did it well, and -- whatever those misinformed peaceniks said -- we made the world a better place.

But then I went to a war zone.

I was deployed to Baghdad as part of a team of RAND Corporation researchers to help the detainee operations command figure out several thorny policy issues. My task was to figure out why we were sort-of-protecting and sort-of-detaining an Iranian dissident group on Washington’s terrorist list.

It got ugly fast. . . .

(One thing that seems ungracious to point out but I think still needs to be pointed out is that despite Jeremiah's from-the-cradle passion for military service -- "the perfect combination of public service, honor, heroism, glory, promotion, meaning, and coolness" -- he made that fateful first visit to a war zone not in military service but as a RAND Corporation researcher.)

As I noted Tuesday, for Andrew Bacevich the awakening didn't begin till he was 41, when in he got firsthand views of the 1989-90 former East Germany, which in his hawk's-eye view was the forward edge of the terrifying Soviet juggernaut poised to engulf the West, which he discovered instead to be a dilapidated wreck.

[I might add here that one of the fascinations of the final volume of the diaries of the language and literature professor Victor Klemperer (published decades later as The Lesser Evil: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer 1945-59), who miraculously survived the Nazi period in his home city of Dresden only to be confronted with the Soviet occupation, is his observation of the stripping of East Germany by the Soviets extracted, who shipped back to the Soviet Union everything they found which was remotely transportable, and left behind a client state that was close to a slave state.]

Bacevich wrote that, following his transformative observations in Jena and East Berlin, "Bit by bit, my worldview started to crumble." I quoted the paragraph that follows on Tuesday:

That worldview had derived from this conviction: that American power manifested a commitment to global leadership, and that both together expressed and affirmed the nation’s enduring devotion to its founding ideals. That American power, policies, and purpose were bound together in a neat, internally consistent package, each element drawing strength from and reinforcing the others, was something I took as a given. That, during my adult life, a penchant for interventionism had become a signature of U.S. policy did not -- to me, at least -- in any way contradict America’s aspirations for peace. Instead, a willingness to expend lives and treasure in distant places testified to the seriousness of those aspirations. That, during this same period, the United States had amassed an arsenal of over 31,000 nuclear weapons, some small number of them assigned to units in which I had served, was not at odds with our belief in the inalienable right to life and liberty; rather, threats to life and liberty had compelled the United States to acquire such an arsenal and maintain it in readiness for instant use.

Again, tonight I think we need to read a little farther.

I was not so naïve as to believe that the American record had been without flaws. Yet I assured myself that any errors or misjudgments had been committed in good faith. Furthermore, circumstances permitted little real choice. In Southeast Asia as in Western Europe, in the Persian Gulf as in the Western Hemisphere, the United States had simply done what needed doing. Viable alternatives did not exist. To consent to any dilution of American power would be to forfeit global leadership, thereby putting at risk safety, prosperity, and freedom, not only our own but also that of our friends and allies.

To Bacevich "the choices seemed clear enough": between "the commitments, customs, and habits that defined American globalism, implemented by the national security apparatus within which I functioned as a small cog" and "appeasement, isolationism, and catastrophe." And circumstances provided him with the perfect backdrop for this view: "Seeing the Cold War as a struggle between good and evil answered many questions, consigned others to the periphery, and rendered still others irrelevant."

Before his belated awakening he says, he had "occasional suspicions," including a bunch from his personal Vietnam experience, "which I had done my best to suppress."

I was, after all, a serving soldier. Except in the narrowest of terms, the military profession, in those days at least, did not look kindly on nonconformity. Climbing the ladder of career success required curbing maverick tendencies. To get ahead, you needed to be a team player. Later, when studying the history of U.S. foreign relations in graduate school, I was pelted with challenges to orthodoxy, which I vigorously deflected. When it came to education, graduate school proved a complete waste of time -- a period of intense study devoted to the further accumulation of facts, while I exerted myself to ensuring that they remained inert.

This is, I think, a valuable insight: the way the system uses ambition to cultivate and reinforce obliviousness in its would-be players. With his 23 years in the Army behind him, and his ambition gone with them:

Wealth, power, and celebrity became not aspirations but subjects for critical analysis. History -- especially the familiar narrative of the Cold War -- no longer offered answers; instead, it posed perplexing riddles.

Bacevich underlines that he was coming to grips with this wildly different reality in the '90s, a period "bookended by two wars with Iraq when American vainglory reached impressive new heights." More important than his "realization that I had grossly misinterpreted the threat posed by America's adversaries"--

was the fact that I had misperceived "us." What I thought I knew best I actually understood least. Here, the need for education appeared especially acute.

George W. Bush's decision to launch Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 pushed me fully into opposition. Claims that once seemed elementary -- above all, claims relating to the essentially benign purposes of American power -- now appeared preposterous. The contradictions that found an ostensibly peace-loving nation committing itself to a doctrine of preventive war became too great to ignore. The folly and hubris of the policy makers who heedlessly thrust the nation into an ill-defined and open-ended "global war on terror" without the foggiest notion of what victory would look like, how it would be won, and what it might cost approached standards hitherto achieved only by slightly mad German warlords. During the era of containment, the United States had at least maintained the pretense of a principled strategy; now, the last vestiges of principle gave way to fantasy and opportunism. With that, the worldview to which I had adhered as a young adult and carried into middle age dissolved completely.

I don't think the "Mutt" man really believes any of that nonsense he's been spewing about Egypt and Libya. Like everything else he says in the campaign, it's just stuff he says. What makes him dangerous isn't the substance of the stuff he says, such as it is, but his willingness to say any damned thing that comes into his head if it may help put him into a position to do the stuff he really wants to do, about which we know just enough to make me, at least, pretty terrified. (We also know that he's probably prepared to do, as president, all sorts of stuff he doesn't really give a damn about if it means gaining support for the stuff he does.)

But there are a lot of people out there who do believe in this brand of kick-butt jingoism, and that's very dangerous, especially as long as there are cynical politicians prepared to pander to them. I wish there was some way to help them to understand the things that Andrew Bacevich and Jeremiah Goulka came to understand.

We still have some additional important lessons to learn from Jeremiah, which go beyond the national-security sphere, and also underlie it. I wish they gave me some hope, but I'm afraid that the fact that they don't doesn't allow us to ignore them. Watch this space.

#