Category: History

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Wading In — Compromised Court weighs Roe Vs. Wade

Wading In

Compromised Court weighs Roe Vs. Wade

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

December 1st, 2021

Listening to the arguments this morning at the Supreme Court in the matter of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case on whether the state of Mississippi can ban abortion at 15 weeks gestation:

Right wingers are frantically seeking justification for striking down Roe Vs. Wade, the seminal and oft-upheld abortion ruling that gives women access to abortion.

Roberts wants to know if anyone is hurt by pushing viability back from 24 weeks to 15 weeks. An embryo isn’t even remotely viable at 15 weeks, making Roberts’ proposed definition an utter joke. Kavanaugh wants to punt, saying in effect, the Supreme Court has nothing to do with rights and the states should decide that sort of garbage. (Yeah, this clown is on the Supreme Court.)

Amy Coney Barrett wanted to know if invalidating a woman’s right to an abortion would invalidate other “rights” like birth control. That’s a bit like asking if a law forbidding Moslems from voting would affect the rights of Jews or Catholics to vote.

And then there’s Slappy.

Thomas asked Rikelman, attorney for Jackson, to identify the constitutional right that protects abortion. “Is it privacy? Autonomy? What would it be?”
“It’s liberty,”Rikelman replied. “It’s the textual protection in the 14th Amendment that the state can’t deny someone liberty without the due process of law.” Ouch. Slappy the lawn ornament got slapped.

Attorneys for Dobbs are trying to handwave the concept of “undue burden” away, saying it’s impossible to define and difficult to enforce. Never mind that the concept enters into nearly all court decisions regarding access to and exercise of personal rights. Remove that concept, and there’s no reason why a county can’t charge people $100,000 to file a property damage suit. See how simple it is?

It seems likely that the Court will strike down Roe Vs. Wade. They’ll bend over backward trying to pretend it isn’t a religious issue (it is) and not even remotely secular.

Sonia Sotomayor asked of the attorney for Dobbs, “How is your interest anything but a religious view? It’s debated in religions, so when you say this is the only right that takes away from the start the ability to protect the life, that’s a religious view isn’t it? Where does the life of a woman and putting her life at risk enter the calculus?”

The court will have to trash dozens of decisions and overrule the wishes of the American people (Attorney for Dobbs is arguing that abortion is “injurious to democracy”!) in order to make this potential ruling stand.

Sonia Sotomayor said, “Fifteen justices over 30 years have reaffirmed that basic viability line,” she said, alluding to how Roe v Wade has been upheld since the 1992 Planned Parenthood v Casey decision.

“Four have said no, two of them members of this court. But fifteen justices have said yes, of varying political background.

“Now, the sponsors of this bill, this house bill in Mississippi, are saying, ‘We’re doing this because we have new justices on the supreme court’. Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the constitution and its reading are just political acts?”

Sotomayor continued with the question: “If people believe it’s all political, how will we survive? How will the court survive?”

Answer: it won’t. People will know the court has been hopelessly corrupted by a fascist president and his theocratic supporters. An institution designed to uphold the Constitution will now willfully disregard the same document because they are Dominionists and put their vicious and cruel religious opinions ahead of the rights the Constitution is meant to protect.

You may be in a place like California or New York and think to yourself, “Well, the state government isn’t going to strike down abortion,” and you might be right. But the god-struck minions of the anti-choice movement aren’t going to stand for abortion being allowed anywhere in what they see as their country that they run on behalf of Jesus. Kavanaugh maybe be nattering about states’ rights now, but he’s as intellectually and ethically vacuous as any Republican representative. He won’t hesitate to argue that the federal law overrules all state laws as soon as there’s a federal law to uphold. And 34% of the most conservative of all states control the Senate, 42% the vote would make the House Republican.

In the meantime, I expect a vast underground railroad to form, similar to the one that helped emancipate hundreds of thousands of slaves from the cruel authoritarianism of slave owners, and for much the same reason. It will uphold the human right of women to have control over their bodies and not be forced into having a child they do not wish to have. You think the Blob Squad won’t see that as an intolerable state of affairs?

I will do anything I can to support such an underground railroad, and urge everyone to put human rights ahead of cruel and unjust laws. Fuck the Dominionists, and fuck their vicious and authoritarian moral posturing. They have no right.

And the Court, more and more, will find itself shouting from within the vacuum it is about to put itself in.

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Contempt — The fascist right can dish it out. Can they take it?

Contempt

The fascist right can dish it out. Can they take it?

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

November 12th 2021

“[Steve] Bannon, 67, is charged with one contempt count involving his refusal to appear for a deposition and another involving his refusal to produce documents.” With that a federal grand jury today indicted Bannon with two felony counts. The Select Committee investigating the January 6th riots promptly announced that it would seek similar indictments against Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on similar charges.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said, “Since my first day in office, I have promised Justice Department employees that together we would show the American people by word and deed that the department adheres to the rule of law, follows the facts and the law and pursues equal justice under the law. Today’s charges reflect the department’s steadfast commitment to these principles.”

It couldn’t have come at a better time. The fascist right, including that organized crime cartel The Republican Party, have been further and further outside of the constraints of the law, and growing ever more egregious and assertive in their sneers at the law. People, including me, were wondering if the Democrats and the legal and judicial authorities of the land had the resolve and courage to stand up to these fascist scofflaws.

It came at a time when at least some of the more egregious rioters at the January 6th insurrection were getting some serious jail sentences, four years or more. Decent people in America were sickened and disgusted by a parade of stories of people who beat cops and threatened the lives of public officials who were being treated with kid gloves. It came as a time when a flag-wagging clown of a judge was openly rooting for the defendant, who was accused of murdering two unarmed protesters at a Black Lives Matter rally and injuring another. Another murder case, in which two white men waylaid and killed a black man for the crime of jogging on a public street (or at least, that’s the excuse they offered) had a defense attorney comfortable enough in his ignorant racism to complain in open court in front of the judge and jury about the “black pastors” allowed to sit with the family of the victims. That was too much even for that judge, who upbraided the attorney for his swinish remark.

Of course, death threats are proliferating. A Republican Congressman got death threats from some anonymous piece of shit for the ‘crime’ of voting for the infrastructure bill that passed Congress last week. Another guy, Kenneth Gasper, 64, was arrested Wednesday for a telephoned death threat against Rep. Andrew Garbarino, who also broke ranks with the party on that vote.

Both threatening calls came in the wake of Congressional Joke of the Month Marjorie Taylor-Greene, who slammed the 13 Republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill as traitors, and America’s Jabba the Hut gone rancid, Donald Trump, who whined long and loudly about a bill that he himself used to say he was going to present to Congress, He would do this every six months or so, grandly announcing it was “Infrastructure Week.” Of course nothing would happen because of Donald’s greatest strength as President—his utter incompetence and inability to lead.

It isn’t enough that Republicans have abandoned the values and beliefs they once held as Americans: they’ve abandoned the values and beliefs they once held as Republicans. According to Michael Moline at the Florida Phoenix, “The state of Florida would pay workers to quit their jobs by giving them unemployment benefits rather than submit to vaccine mandates under legislation filed for Gov. Ron DeSantis’ special session of the Legislature, due to convene next week.” Imagine: Republicans, paying people for refusing to work. Savor it.

If you need evidence of the hypocrisy and profound stupidity of Trump’s followers, there it is in a nutshell. They want to murder people for supporting something Trump was for just a year ago.

And there have been myriad incidents of people assaulting hapless employees for requesting people to wear masks per the law, or even for obeying federal rules regarding vaccines. One guy assaulted an American Airlines flight attendant so badly she needed surgery for facial damage. AA, to their credit, banned the guy from their planes for life, but he needs to be up on felony assault charges.

Heroes of the Heil Trump Brigade have been threatening and abusing school boards, voter registrars and volunteers, and regular employees.

If you threaten the life of anyone, it is a felony. If you make lesser threats against a public official, that is also a felony, and no, it isn’t free speech under the Constitution.

It’s time we went after Trump’s scofflaws. They need to be tracked down, reported, and arraigned.

Today’s move against Steve Bannon was a good start.

 

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Gods and Governments — Religious and Secular mixed rule is always toxic

Gods and Governments

Religious and Secular mixed rule is always toxic

October 10th 2021

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

One sentiment you hear from religious fundamentalists in the United States is something along the lines of “God should be the government” It’s nothing new; religions have always sought to gain political and economic power and influence, and there are hundreds of examples throughout history where they have succeeded in doing that. These political cultures are broadly referred to as theocracies.

Usually in such a regime there is a religious hierarchy that interprets divine will (which is always most obliging to their wants and needs) and then passes edicts on to a secular authority who do the dirty work—mostly in the form of executing, banning, or enslaving.

Ancient Egypt is an example that is well known, as is China. The Byzantine Empire was an uneasy and often bloody power-sharing arrangement between the government of Rome and the Catholic Church. Most European countries had similar arrangements, leading to civil wars, pogroms, and the occasional genocide.

Edward the Second threw the Jews out of England, and those slow to leave learned to their regret that England was on an island.

King Henry VIII had 983 senior clerics killed as part of his drive to replace the Catholic Church with his own brand.

Elizabeth 1 killed thousands of Catholics in England, and in Ireland a million and a half Catholics died from cruel English policies based in large measure on the idea that idolaters should not be countenanced.

Adolph Hitler had Catholic support during his rise to power, but the relationship went sour and Hitler, too, sought to replace Catholicism with his own peculiar blend of Nordic mysticism, Christianity, and “racial science.”

The Test Acts codified prejudice against all non-Protestants in England. It’s still against the law in England for a Catholic to be Prime Minister, although since Tony Blair that law only gets lip service.

Pure theocracies in Europe are fairly rare: Münster and Zurich are the only well-known examples, and both rapidly turned into cults and collapsed.

Modern theocracies are mostly limited to the middle east these days: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and to an extent, Israel.

America was founded on the notion that keeping religious and secular power separate was the key to avoiding religious strife (nearly all the Founders had ancestors who, within the past 300 years, had been imprisoned or executed for religious reasons) and to a certain degree, that has been successful.

The first Christian-based religious strife in North America came when Protestants came to America seeking freedom of religion. No, not the Puritans—the French Huguenot, who settled in Florida, then a Spanish colony. The Spanish were unamused by the infestation of heretics, and proceeded to wipe the colony out.

While the founders wanted to end religious persecution (the Constitution explicitly bans Test Acts), the Protestant majority brought with them the attitudes and prejudices of the mother lands. Despite the noble intentions of the Constitution, many states actually had Test Acts in their laws, forbidding Catholics, Jews, or other unbelievers from holding office, or even owning property. I’m told that in six states, atheists legally cannot hold office to this day. Some communities mandated church attendance for all well into the 19th century.

Much of the genocide of native peoples was met with anything ranging from indifference to beaming approval by church authorities. “Godless heathen” very nearly became one word.

However, the anti-Catholic practices of England and other lands ironically made it harder to discriminate against Catholics in America because of the huge influx of refugees seeking freedom in America. By the twentieth century Catholicism was the biggest single Christian sect in America.

But it would be a mistake to think religious oppression—both oppressor and oppressed—ended there.

Catholics in Boston had to violently riot for the right to have their own schools—and were met by rioting Protestants who didn’t want to allow such a thing. Their Lord’s Prayer was the one true Lord’s Prayer, and people who didn’t accept that should not be allowed to teach their children.

But compared to Europe, America got off lightly (except for the aforementioned Godless Heathens, of course). Even as Churches in Europe lost direct control of secular governments—a long bloody process in itself—most European conflicts remained thinly disguised religious disputations.

The only way a society can be free is by holding religion at at least arm’s length from the centers of power. The Founders understood this all too well. They knew something about governments “run by God”–such governments are cruel, repressive, and deeply antipathetic to the notions of independent thought and individual freedom. One only need read the Bible, or the Talmud, or the Q’uran to see how deep this antipathy goes. How long can dissent last in a form of government where the Law says dissent should be punished by death? Well, you can find an answer for that with Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan.

All theocracies are viciously repressive. All require a steady stream of executions and terror to force compliance from the flock, formerly known as the electorate. Holy Books don’t discuss liberty, or freedom to disagree. They instead give lessons on disemboweling non-believers or forcing abortions on unfaithful women (Numbers 11, look it up). There has never been a theocracy that was multicultural, enlightened, or particularly literate. Ever. And it won’t start with the Christians Dominionists and Falangists of present day America.

The last thing anyone wants, or needs is ‘government under God.’ If someone could figure out a way to ask God, they would probably find he was pretty much against the idea himself. He has enough smiting to do as it is.

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Americuh — Means exactly what you want it to mean

Americuh

Means exactly what you want it to mean

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

September 18th 2021

Kristi Noem, the religious loop that is the more-or-less governor of South Dakota, opposes even allowing children to wear masks at school to prevent spread of COVID. She does, however, want to force them to pray. There isn’t a single documented case of prayer preventing, let alone curing COVID. But Noem figures that this is America, and so she can uphold the rights of the governed by making them perform useless genuflections as they sicken and die. Children in particular, because Jesus was an American.

Right wingers love Americuh. Ask them what they love about America, and if they don’t violently attack you for having the effrontery to even ask the question, will rhapsodize about god and the flag and Ronald Reagan. Some will mention Donald Trump, and at that point you might as well walk away, because nothing sane or non-sickening is going to follow.

There actually was a poll a few years back that asked “What do you love most about America?” Most of the answers seem to have come from people who have seen too many truck ads. “Sunsets” “Good dogs” (Good dogs?) “Fields of grain” “Endless highways.” Some seem to think America is a conglomeration of fast food joints: “hot dogs” “hamburgers” “barbeques.” Others tie their national identity to pro sports. “Football.” “Basketball” “Baseball” “Hockey.” Yeah, that last one is mostly Canadian, but these people see Canada as a suburb of Minnesota where the snow ploughs empty their loads in the winter. Music will provoke distinctly American responses: jazz, rock and roll, heavy metal, but usually not r&b, hip-hop or swing. Great literature gets mentioned: Batman, Spiderman, Captain America, at least before he turned Nazi and worse, African American. The Jury is still out on Superman, who arrived here without a green card, and Wee Hughie and Butcher don’t sound like they’re from around here, do they?

Basically, Americuh is just a symbol. A coalition of vacuous gases, an empty shibboleth upon which any meaning or emotion may be imposed. In other words, just like Jesus, the flag, or cat facial expressions. It just sits there looking pretty to the beholder because it is the projection of what the beholder deems to be pretty.

While this sort of goofy, mawkish type of pseudo-patriotism isn’t limited to the right, the right have used it for a sleight of hand that dates back in its present form to the McCarthy era, and in a darker form to the earliest days of the Republic.

You see, they have a little secret: they love America till the cows come home. (Cows are Americuh, too. Moo!) Love, love, love, just caint git enuff of thet Americuh!

But they hate the United States. It showed up in that poll I mentioned. All the stuff people loved about America, but you had to scroll down a long way, far down into the single digits, before you started seeing things like “Bill of Rights”; “The Constitution”; separation of church and state; voting; freedom of speech; freedom of the press; or rule of law. The stuff that made the United States unique to begin with, the things many other countries since 1789 have emulated. Some of them didn’t even get listed.

If you point this out to a right winger, most will indignantly deny it. In fairness, many will be sincere. Most sane conservatives respect and adhere to the Constitution and understand that it, not religions or corporations or good dogs, is the moral, legal, and foundational underpinning of the United States of America.

But to many right wingers, even though they can’t say so out loud, the Constitution is the enemy of what they stand for (that great nebulosity, Americuh). The Constitution is government. The Constitution is rule of law. The Constitution is civil rights for all. The Constitution recognizes obligations just as it recognizes rights. It is a profoundly liberal document.

It also represents the strong desire of the Founders to keep churches out of the government, and in return, governments out of the churches. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, held his proudest accomplishment the separation of church and state in his Constitution for the State of Virginia. He, along with most of those who wrote the Constitution, understood the horrors of theocracies and theocrats, and resolved to never let it happen here. They didn’t want a country under god or any other imaginary religious symbol. They respected the rights of people to believe, but assigned no right to impose their beliefs on others. The Constitution, in language that exempts it from any amendment, forbids religious tests for any position of public trust.

To the far right and the MAGAts and that crowd, the United States is the enemy of all they hold near and dear. It doesn’t let them subjugate minorities or non-believers and justify their stances by turning the terms oppression and oppressed on their heads, inverting their meaning.

That explains how the people who want to tear down the democracy—the Trumpenproletariat, the Religious Freaks, and the neo-Nazis—can all do what they can to destroy the United States, but wave flags and bibles (Stars and Bars alongside Stars and Stripes, no less!), and simultaneously proclaim they are patriots because they “luv Americuh.” They love a largely mindless symbol and hate the reality.

It allows them to wave flags as they try to destroy the country.

Kristi Noem doesn’t want to “impose” social efforts to protect children (which the constitution strongly stands for) but she does want to impose her trashy little religion. She is the epitome of the far right, the lost Americans who threw away their social and historical background to live in a truck commercial.

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Kabuling for Dollars — The end of the occupation

August 19th 2021

It’s hard not to feel horror at the events this week in Afghanistan. The awful scenes of panicking Afghanis clinging to the side of a C-19 as it took off and falling to their deaths would shake anyone up. Rachel Maddow was reduced to tears recounting the incredible tale of the efforts to get a translator (one of thousands) out of the country with his family. The only other time that happened was when the story broke of what the Trump administration was doing to refugee children.

But Afghanistan was always going to end this way. It didn’t matter if it was now, or 2020, or 2002. The end of the American occupation of Afghanistan was always going to be bloody and painful, because that’s how occupations almost always end. That’s why they are against international law.

And make no mistake—this was never “a war in Afghanistan” as people who should know better keep calling it. It was an occupation.

Remember how it began? Nine Eleven had just happened, and the Bush administration decided that Osama bin Laden was the mastermind behind it. Osama was hiding in Afghanistan (and he probably was) with the connivance of the Taliban government (probably not the case). So the US sent troops into Afghanistan to find and arrest him.

Even I didn’t have any problem with that. ObL was an obvious suspect because of his role in the previous attack on the Twin Towers, and I hated and despised the Taliban, cruel, corrupt and often insane, like all authoritarian religious regimes. If they were hiding Osama, then fuck them. Go in, get him, and get out.

Only it became obvious within weeks that Osama was long gone, flown the coop to Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, two countries the US didn’t invade searching for him. Instead, the US stayed in Afghanistan, setting up a puppet regime and pouring billions into the place. Supposedly the US was going to rebuild Afghanistan, new roads, new schools, new infrastructure, all the shit the government wasn’t doing in America. In reality, the money covered the costs of occupying the country, billions in bribes to the local warlords not to cause trouble, and maybe 5% which actually went to “rebuilding”. All told, some two trillion dollars got poured down a rat hole, nearly all of it wasted and in the pockets of people we didn’t want to help.

The US paid people to be their friends there, and that went about as well as paying people to be your friend usually goes. And Bush and Obama didn’t have a clue how to end it, especially since the neo-liberals who engineered the disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq were ready to pounce, and declare any administration willing to pull out “soft on terrorism.”

The US occupied Iraq on the insanely stupid excuse that Saddam Hussein, mortal enemy to the Taliban and Iran, was secretly helping them. They managed to end that one by surrendering well in advance and letting the Iraqis choose their own government first. So the people didn’t have to overthrow a puppet regime.

Remember “Vietnamization”? Nixon figured, correctly, that if they let the Vietnamese people choose their government, there would be less unrest when the Americans left. Only the people in North Vietnam didn’t get to vote, and so they considered the Saigon government a puppet regime. Weeks later, it was gone, and Saigon was now Ho Chi Minh City.

In Iraq, they surrendered to the people they invaded Iraq to rid the country of first, and then left.

Trump actually tried to do something like this, releasing some five thousand political prisoners, including much of the new government in Kabul and a lot of warlords who didn’t toe the line, in hopes that there wouldn’t be a bloody dumping of the Vichy regime in Kabul when US troops were pulled out, originally slated for May 1st 2021. But the planned talks at Camp David never happened, and Biden had too much on his plate to take it up. So there remained a puppet regime in Kabul, which lasted nearly a week.

The Taliban moved fast, and swept into power. But a lot of people hate and fear them, and not just American puppets and lackeys. As mentioned, they are a theocracy, the most vicious and hateful form of government known to man, and women and anyone who don’t want strict adherence to Sharia Law (which would be most Muslims) have every reason to fear them. Expect Afghanistan to be a bloody mess for some time to come.

To Republicans who say this is Biden’s fault: Fuck you. Bush began the occupation, and Trump set things up so it would end as badly as possible. For the human sewage who are shouting they don’t want Biden dumping refugees on them from Afghanistan: double fuck you. Biden should offer to trade you and your family to the Taliban for every decent person and his family in Afghanistan who tried to help and now needs to get out. America is far better off with them and without you.

Still, the US is out of there, and the hemorrhaging of money has slowed. Maybe some of you will learn from this—occupations are a waste of time and money and usually end with many people getting hurt. The only way an occupation will work is through centuries of attrition (the Norman invasion of England) or genocide (the Americas by Europe). As foreign policy, they never work and usually backfire. Don’t do it.

I doubt it will work. The UK, the USSR and the US have both tried occupying Afghanistan and all left weaker and poorer for it. The USSR tried occupying eastern Europe. History is full of failed occupations, or ones that ended in mass murder and social destruction.

For people who think America had any friends in Afghanistan, don’t be an ass. Most of the flunkies were paid, and America is doing a marvelous job of screwing over the few who honestly liked the Americans now. Like the Fox News/GOP filth who are saying NIMBY to refugees from Afghanistan.

Stop trying to run other people’s countries. They don’t like you and your values for pretty much the same reason you don’t like theirs, and you’re no better than them. Stay inside your own borders, and work on making life better for your own people. That will attract better responses from other countries than all the occupations in the world.

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Gleichschaltung — The lessons of history lies in the history of lessons

Gleichschaltung

The lessons of history lies in the history of lessons

July 17th 2021

“By educating the young generation along the right lines, the people’s State will have to see that a generation of mankind is formed which will be adequate to this supreme combat that will decide the destinies of the world” (Hitler, 1939).

The Germans had a word for it, because of course the Germans have a word for everything: Gleichschaltung. It is, according to Webster’s dictionary, “[T]he act, process or policy of achieving total coordination and uniformity by forcibly repressing or eliminating independence and freedom of thought, action or expression.”

The Nazis keenly appreciated the truism that if you educate the child you control the thinking of the adult. With absolutely no sense of irony, they adopted the philosophy of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who believed that that if you “Give me just one generation of youth, and I’ll transform the whole world.” and “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”

To that end, the Nazis transformed education in Germany. All subjects were to be patriotic, designed to instill awe, reverence and obedience to the German state. Biology taught the superiority of the Aryan race. Economics became lessons in the fiscal sacrifices children should expect to make in service to a Greater Germany. Large segments of physics were no longer taught, contaminated by “the Jewish influence” of most leading physicists. Geography studied borders in Europe in order to show how enemies of Germany had cheated the nation of its birthright over the centuries. Physical education was heavily emphasized as a strong and fit body was expected of every German child against they day he would have to fight for the state. There was no higher honor than dying for the Führer. And Hitler demanded that “A young German must be as swift as a greyhound, as tough as leather, and as hard a Krupp’s steel.”

Perhaps the most transformed subject was that of history. Most history books, depicting Germany in less-than-glorious light, were burned. As were students who might agree with those books. Most of those students had already been sent off to the camps in any event.

German history could reveal no flaw or deficiency in the German characters, other than an ability to be sometimes tricked and set back by the perfidy of traitors, Jews, bankers, unions, intellectuals, and Germany’s many enemies, foreign and domestic.

As a sidenote, I’ve always wondered how, if a {country, culture, religion, etc.} was so wonderful and so benign, there was such a major problem with enemies. Or perhaps what I’m really wondering is why people being taught this sort of drivel didn’t see it for the self-serving bullshit that it actually is.

German history depicted Germans as brave, noble, resolute, Moral strength was always betrayed by cringing dissolute venality, another concept that I have Questions about.

Pretty much all of German history was turned into dualistic schlock, good versus evil, resolute versus the weak. It was all right to admit that Germany was defeated in the Great War, but not to say that they annoyed the neighbors and got their asses handed to them on a plate. No, the Germans were winning, as per God’s will, but power brokers tapped the sides of their hooked noses and evil minions swarmed out to undermine Germans, causing them to fall ill and die, whilst passing along German strategy and logistics to unfit foes who could never have prevailed without cheating.

The fascist right in America, applying their own Gleichschaltung to the lesson history has to offer about the fate of fantastical authoritarian movements, has adopted the concept for use in seizing control of America’s schools and libraries.

They needed a bogeyman to scare people into thinking that honest history was anti-patriotic, so they decided that liberals were misusing history to make children hate their own country, and in the case of white children, their own race. Sound familiar?

The bogeyman has a name: Critical Race Theory. Now, keep in mind that despite claims from the Republican party, Critical Race Theory isn’t taught in schools. No, that’s a college-level concept, one designed to examine the role systemic racism has played in America’s history, culture, economy and education. Teachers don’t sit the kids down and say, “Johnny, because of your skin color, you are an imperialist pig.”

It isn’t Critical Race Theory the fascist right wants to abolish: it’s honesty. To them, it’s utterly unthinkable that recitations of America’s glorious and morally resolute past should be defiled and debased by unnecessary references to slavery, subjugation of the native populations, or bloody wars against countries that posed no threat to America. “What do we need all that negative stuff for anyway?” they cry. “The only reason people would want to teach that sort of anti-American stuff is to make American children less resolute, weaken their morals, and make them less willing to serve the Führer.

To that end, I’ve seen some ridiculous examples of Republican-cleansed history. America didn’t want slavery—England forced it upon them! The South didn’t secede; they were just standing for State’s Rights. (Someone brilliantly asked the question the other day, “What did those States have a right to?” It’s a good question. States don’t have rights.)

All too often, history curricula are perverted to political and economic exigencies. We love to tell ourselves comforting lies. A nation’s history is far more likely to be undermined, not by its foes, but by its admirers. The greatest enemies to the teaching of history are the ones who want to glorify a nation, erase its faults and its flaws, and discount all the mistakes made.

When it is done for the direct and malevolent purpose of brainwashing, then it becomes truly evil.

“This is a Reichstag moment, the gospel of the Führer,” said Gen. Mark Milley, the chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top US uniformed military commander, worried that Trump was about to try to stage a coup of some sort.

When the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is openly comparing the then-president to Adolf Hitler, then what should we say of the followers of Trump, who wish to impose Gleichschaltung on the schools? At the cost of honesty, in the futile aim of glorifying the State?

They aren’t concerned about history, they don’t have the maturity to admit America isn’t perfect. They are fascists. They live on control, and comforting lies.

Stop them while we still can.

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The Great Federal Divorce — “We’re Doing it for the Children”

The Great Federal Divorce

“We’re Doing it for the Children”

July 14th, 2021

YouGov.com had a poll this week that showed that amongst Republicans in the South, a full two-thirds (66%) favored secession from the United States. I didn’t find it particularly surprising (If you had asked me to guess at the number, I would have said ‘half,’ but things are becoming more polarized because of recent events), since the South, for years a victim of genial federal neglect (a neglect demanded by by the South in the name of ‘States Rights’ and in reaction to Reconstruction), became a victim of it’s own cultural blend of aristocracy and authoritarian corruption. Washington kept getting blamed for the deep flaws and corruptions of the various state governments and the power brokers who ran those governments.

Now we have the dominant party in the region steeped in the madness of a cult of personality, rife with paranoid beliefs that communists, blacks, Jews and liberals plan to open concentration camps so they can put microchips in people. The craziness is wide spread (50% of independents and 20% of Democrats ALSO support secession) and infused with the inculcated notion that secession would really, really work this time, that the South could rise again and be a gentil bastion of apartheid and corporate and autocratic manipulation.

It’s nonsense, of course. North Carolina, Texas, Georgia and Florida are the only states that would have a hope of a go at it economically, and they would immediately lose hundreds of billions in Federal dollars (just all the Federal military facilities closing!) and a great deal of their tourist trade. And they would be dragged down by the resultant pauper states that would comprise most of CSAv2. But these are people who believe Trump is a noble and heroic Christian, that COVID-19 is a sinister plot, and that Democrats are all secretly Marxists.

But while I was looking over that poll, I noticed something, Out here in the West, the same poll revealed a similar sentiment. Forty seven percent of Democrats—almost half—want to secede. Thirty three percent of independents, and 27% of Republicans also favor secession.

Those are surprisingly big numbers.

Nearly every state in the country has a secession movement of one kind or another. In fact, it’s a nearly world-wide phenomenon. Local interests believe (or fantasize) improvements or profits if they can only over throw the tyrannical interests in whatever capitol happens to be ignoring them. Where I live, near the Oregon border, we have a “State of Jefferson” movement that would create a state from the six southernmost counties of Oregon and roughly the top third of California. While culturally and financially homogeneous, which led to its appeal (a straw vote in our county back in the 90s showed 90% approval for the idea) it would have been a disaster, since even back when we had healthy forests, logging, tourism and ranching would not be enough, and we would quickly become the poorest state in the Union. The movement was funded by ranchers, loggers and other local power brokers as a way to feather their nests, but in recent years has been taken over by the Sovereign Citizen crowd and more recently, the QAnon freaks. It’s still a popular notion, but in the harsh glare of reality, it’s a terrible idea.

The Pacific Northwest has always had a secessionist movement. Clear back in 1975, there was a book, “Ecotopia” by Ernest Callenbach, that wanted to create a stable ecological paradise from Northern California, Oregon and Washington. Some of the more radical members of that movement also wanted to include British Columbia and Alaska, giving the nation monopolistic control over the entire west coast. Others, including me, suggested simply joining Canada, and inviting the rest of America that wasn’t part of the deep South. A fictitious map in the ‘90s showed such a division, with the US (and/or Canada) in blue, and “Jesusland” in red. Some included the prairie states, such as Kansas and Oklahoma.

But few took it particularly seriously. Especially since the only way Ecotopia would be a going concern would be through massive exploitation of natural resources, a somewhat forlorn hope for imagined prosperity even back when the forests still had some water in them. And given the vast economic cost to the United States such a secession would entail, it’s very unlikely the US would allow the west to break away peacefully. Few would miss Mississippi, but California is a whole ‘nother matter. That state alone is about 18% of the American economy. And almost a third of the food supply.

Secession is always a background hum in local politics. In some cases, such as Hawai’i or British Columbia, it’s an ongoing struggle by the Indigenous against the colonial cultures that invaded and destroyed their worlds. Others, such as Ecotopia, are benign fantasies of local rule, a mish-mash of idealism and utopianism. Others have a dangerous edge of anger to them, a desire to remedy wrongs that often as not, are self-inflicted, and a desire to restore a vicious and ugly past, transmogrified into a kind and just lost world but with the same underlying currents of oppression and bigotry.

The numbers are disturbing: in a healthy society, one might expect secessionist sentiment to range between 10 and 15%. But they are elevated, and in the case of America, fostered by interests that would benefit from a national breakup.

Chances that their interests will dovetail with yours are slim. Your most likely fate is to end up a serf in a third world pisspot country.

For those who want a divorce, think it over. In this case, the odds are greatly against you benefiting from it.

NOTE: Two corrections made: Georgia was omitted as one of the states that might be self-sustaining in the event of secession, and surf is now down, and serf’s up.

 

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A Harder Trek – They Called Us Enemy by George Takei

They Called Us Enemy by George Takei

A harder Trek

May 24th 2021

Co-written with Justin Eisinger and Steven Scott and illustrated by Harmony Becker.

Top Shelf Productions 2019, 204 pages

 

I first learned of the Canadian internment of Japanese-descended people in British Columbia—some 90% of the Japanese and Japanese-descended residents in that province—when I was 12 years old. My father told me of it. It wasn’t taught in schools. Later, I learned that it was suppressed by two sides of the quiet debate: those who felt a deep shame over the mistreatment of loyal Canadians based solely on race, cowardice and ignorance, and those who felt they should have just shipped all the “Japs” back “home” or simply exterminated them or made them slaves.

There weren’t many Japanese—either actual Japanese or Canadian descendants—in eastern Canada, but it did make one minor change in my outlook towards people. I had shied away from anyone with a Germanic name. In both the UK and Canada I had been taught that Germans were the most horrible people on Earth, who killed millions. Aside from the fact that kids in the playground who had “German-sounding” names (about half of them were probably Ukrainian) had nothing to do with Hitler and it was patently absurd to assume they killed Jews for the fun of it (and I would talk about a bad trade as having been ‘Jewed’ or ‘Gypped’ with absolutely no sense of irony), there was the realization that outrage over mistreatment of one group of people didn’t justify similar mistreatment of other groups of people. (I don’t think I actually ever mistreated any kids with eeevil surnames—I just avoided them). How could I hate Germans for what their leader did to innocent people when Canada was doing a milder version of the same thing and there were Canadians—some in military uniform—willing to say “we should have just exterminated them.”

It was a few years later that I learned that a similar mistreatment of people based on nothing more than the shape of their eyes also occurred in America. While not quite as vicious as the Canadian internment, it was on a much greater scale—some 220,000 people, many of whom had been born in America, were American citizens. I actually felt a bit of relief when I learned that; I had treated the internment as a nasty family secret, and didn’t want my new American friends to learn what a loathsome country I was from. Obviously I still had some thinking and processing to do.

History eventually caught up to the self-comforting lies we told ourselves about how pure and noble we were in the war, fighting ultimate evil and so on, and in both Canada and America, the realization that we had done something horrible led to regret, and to some extent, redress.

One of the youngest victims of the anti-Japan hysteria in the wake of Pearl Harbor was George Takei, now the noted actor and social advocate. Not yet five years old, he and his family were rounded up and sent off to live in the horse stables of Santa Anita racetrack, their home, business and assets seized and sold. Only his father, Takekuma Norman Takei, had actually ever lived in Japan, from his birth in 1902 until he came to the United States in 1914. George Takei’s mother and siblings were all born in America and never set foot in Japan. They had done nothing wrong. In fact, nobody of Japanese descent had done anything wrong. The Attorney-General of California, future Chief Justice Earl Warren, said, “We have no reports of spying, or sabotage, or fifth column activities by Japanese Americans, and that is ominous, because the Japanese are inscrutable.” If any element of this hysteria summed up the unreasoning fear and moral cowardice of the leaders of America (and Warren went on to become a champion of civil rights despite this), that statement encapsulated it.

It was the only time blind hatred and abject fear put the victims of the internment in a Catch-22 position. Long after Takei’s family was moved from the piles of horse manure in Earl Warren’s California to the swamplands of Camp Rohwer, Arkansas, the government demanded that those they had capriciously robbed and imprisoned sign an oath swearing to fight for America if so asked, and to abjure allegiance to the Emperor of Japan, an insulting demand and an even more insulting assumption. Americans whose families had lived in America for three generations or more felt no more allegiance to Hirohito than I do to Bonnie Prince Charles. Most refused to sign on moral principles, and the Supreme Court upheld a government directive deeming such principled Americans to be “enemy aliens.” Later, when the war ended, the government announced they would tear down the camps, and the internees were free to go where they pleased—in a land where looking Japanese could and in all likelihood would get you lynched. Or, the government added slyly, admit to being enemy aliens, renounce citizenship, and eventually get deported to Japan (where over 100,000 children starved to death in 1946, so you can imagine the welcome Americans who couldn’t even speak Japanese would get). Or they could remain in the camps, safe from the lynch mobs. The Supreme Court struck down that agreement as unconstitutional two days before Takei’s mother, who was born in LA and had never been to Japan, was due to be shipped out.

Takei’s graphic novel is full of pathos and pride, dignity and assault, big and small. It’s a fantastic effort, and I would love to see it as a book to be studied in middle-grade level schools in the US and Canada. He shows the monumental injustice that happened, but more importantly, shows what needs to be done.

In a heated argument with his father, Takei, then adolescent and judgmental, responded to a remark the elder Taakei made that “…of all the forms of government that we have, American democracy is still the best.” with “Daddy, how can you say that? After all you went through, losing everything you and mama worked for?” His father replied, “Roosevelt pulled us out of the Depression and he did great things. But he was also a fallible human being, and he made a disastrous mistake that affected us calamitously. But despite all that, our democracy is still the best in the world because it is a people’s democracy.”

Fascism has corruption and cruelty built in as a feature. Theocracies are even worse. The only reason monarchies work these days is because they keep the monarchs sedated and in fancy cages. Takei Senior was right.

But horrors like the internments, mild as they may seem next to the routine horrors of fascist regimes as existed in Germany and Japan at that time, are not to be tolerated in a people’s democracy, and while it took time, it didn’t take the utter destruction of the nation and years of occupation by democratic forces to get America and Canada to admit to their crimes. Time is a poor excuse: Takei’s father didn’t live to see the eventual efforts to right a terrible wrong. Takei, I’m happy to say, has.

Takei is a social advocate, not just about hate crimes against people who look different, but against gays and the dispossessed. And while his book would be important and necessary at any time, we now face a new wave of anti-Asiatic bigotry, based on the incredibly flimsy notion that COVID-19 may have originated in Wuhan, China. Weak and cowardly people think that’s a good excuse to beat up people who look Chinese. But America has a resurgent, paranoid and angry fascist movement, one whose gullible fools believe the Chinese engineered the virus in some way and use that to justify pogroms against Japanese, Chinese, and everyone else they hate, which is most of the country.

Takei’s book, compassionate and unyielding at the same time, is a badly needed antidote to the ongoing madness.

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Fighting Fascism — The GOP and the 14 signs of fascism

Fighting Fascism

The GOP and the 14 signs of fascism

 

May 15th 2021

Back in 2003, Laurence W. Britt wrote an op-ed piece for Secular Humanism magazine called “Fascism, Anyone?” The magazine wryly notes that it is “the most reprinted—and most pirated—article in the magazine’s history.” It’s better known around the web as “The fourteen signs of fascism” and it serves well as a warning against any kind of extreme authoritarianism. Of course, fascism is almost by definition extreme authoritarianism, but ever since World War 2, fascists never, ever refer to themselves as fascists. In the US, they like to call themselves “conservatives” or “patriots.” They are neither.

I’ve used Britt’s essay several times in essays since it came out as it it has become a sine qua non for defining—and fighting—fascism.

I’m going to take the titles of each of the 14 signs and give a brief description of how this is a very nearly exact match for policies and practices of today’s Republican party. Readers are invited to take any of the 14 referents and argue how they DON’T represent what are laughingly referred to as “Republican values” these days. Those who like to use the tu quoque logical fallacy (whataboutism) will be happy to know that I’ll freely admit that some points do apply to Democrats as well as Republicans, although most do not. With Republicans, the score is 14 out of 14.

Here they are in the order Britt laid them out, with my own thoughts on how they apply now with the 2021 version of the GOP.

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.

No politician dares appear on a stage without a dozen or fifty American flags in the background. It long passed the point of being ridiculous, but nobody dares say so—in either party. People are obliged to refer to America as a family member or a lover, rather than just a place. The United States is a country. America is a shit pot of cows and trees and Starbucks. It’s not illegal to say so. Or unpatriotic.

2. Disdain for the importance of human rights.

Three words. “Kids in cages.” Republicans kept kids in cages for weeks and even months, and committed the unspeakably cruel crime of permanently separating them from their families, just because of the common fascist belief that cruelty equals strength.

3. Identification of enemies/scape-goats as a unifying cause.

This week it’s Asians. And transgenders. And Hispanics. And Blacks. And the Poor. And intellectuals. And about 70% of the entire country, really.

.4. The supremacy of the military/ avid militarism.

I read an article that some 120 retired line officers—generals and admirals, all retired—signed a “stop the steal” petition. Bad enough that so many of them would gleefully sign on to what amounts to an act of treason, but that there are so MANY line officers in the first place shows how bloated, inefficient, top-heavy and corrupt the military has become. The military budget is nearly as large as the rest of the world’s combined, and yet it is suicide to suggest cutting their budget. They are the most expensive under-performer in the world. Fascist fetishism of the military does not win wars. And degrades the very military it’s meant to glorify.

5. Rampant sexism.

Gawd. Where to begin? I’ll just note that Marjorie Taylor-Greene is just the latest in a shameful parade of mentally disturbed women the GOP put in the public eye to do their dirty work for them. Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Ann Coulter, Nazi Barbie…the list goes on and on. The permanent sneer that accompanies Republican attitudes toward women is their desire to ban abortion and birth control, but not provide mothers with paid time off, free child care, preschool and neonatal and pediatric care, available in all civilized nations.

6. A controlled mass media.

As with corporations and the government in a fascist country, the issue of whether the media control the party or the other way around is nearly impossible to discern. Which is the puppet and which is the master? In this case, Fox News and the GOP are two facets of the same paste jewelry.

7. Obsession with national security.

How many “crisis at the border” situations have we had since 1992? How many were real? Even after electing a president whose regard for national security was problematic at best, Republicans continue to supercharge the notion that any dissident voices, no matter how patriotic or benign, are threats to national security. Black Lives Matter is a threat. The Naziesque Proud Boys are not. Well, Brownshirts protected Germany from the Jews in the name of national security, so there really isn’t anything new under that dark sun.

8. Religion and ruling elite tied together.

Authoritarian religion and fascism always have gone hand in hand and now is no exception. People who wonder how professed Christians could possibly align with a moral and ethical wastrel like Donald Trump haven’t read history. These people don’t worship God; they worship Power. And fascism is all about the power, baby.

9. Power of corporations protected.

Have you ever wondered why the Republicans seem to be on the wrong side of nearly all major social and economic positions? A decent minimum wage? Sick leave for all? Child care? Universal health care not tied to employment? Decent drug prices? That represents corporate power, which wants a weak and dependent labor force.

10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated.

See #9. This isn’t a battle between capitalism and socialism; this is a war between the bosses—corporations and the aristocracy—and the workers.

11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts.

The coronavirus pandemic highlighted the anti-science stance of the GOP. Intellectuals tend to ask awkward questions about such sacred cows as the role of gods and businesses in society, and scientists figure stuff out rather than making shit up, which angers the churches.

12. Obsession with crime and punishment.

The GOP have actually gone a bit quiet on this in recent years since Trump forced them to abandon the pretense that they were anything other than an organized crime cartel. They don’t mind calling for the death penalty for political dissidents such as BLM or the largely imaginary ‘antifa’ (and what political movement would hate a group for being antifascist, you ask?) but they have to remain resolutely silent about the criminality of Trump and much of his administration, or well-known figures in his circles such as Matt Gaetz or Jeffery Epstein. Many turn to conspiracy theories and projection, which allows them to remain resolutely ‘tough on crime’ whilst still stealing with both hands.

13. Rampant cronyism and corruption.

Two words: Trump family.

14. Fraudulent elections.

If the GOP has any central principle at all, it is that of stealing elections whilst loudly shouting that it’s the other guys who are stealing elections. From draconian Jim Crow-type laws to to gerrymandering efforts to overthrowing election results through manipulation of the electoral college through outright insurrection and threats of violent overthrow of the government, the GOP, who hate 70% of all the people in America, have realized they cannot win free and fair elections so they are doing everything in their power to prevent free and fair elections from interfering with their self-assumed right to rule.

Fascism attracts vicious autocrats who bend normal human reason and values in their lust for power. Even without the monsters of the second world war, fascism, with its authoritarian nature, have the same evil reputation that theocracies and other dictatorships have, and for the same reason. Power isn’t from the people: it’s power OVER the people, and it is without exception ugly and vicious and corrupt on all levels.

The GOP are authoritarian and anti-American. They ARE fascists. Do all you can to fight them.

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DecPop — It’s been 70 years since 1950

DecPop

It’s been 70 years since 1950

April 27th 2021

Back in 1974, when the average number of births per woman was 3.65, Phillip José Farmer wrote a novella, “70 Years of DecPop”. The premise was that a mad scientist released an aerosol that rendered 99.999% of all humans sterile (world population was about 4.5 billion at that time) and from there studied the devastating effects the immense drop in population would have over the ensuring 70 years.

It was a bit of a gloomy read. Humans didn’t react well to forced sterilization, and few economies were equipped to deal with shrinking markets and less demand on resources.

At that point, the birthrate had already declined significantly from its peak in 1964, when it was at 4.65. Much of the decrease was credited to a decline in religious oppression, the increased availability of birth control, and in a rebuke to Malthus, improved living conditions with greater food and shelter security. People in poor nations no longer had 12 children in hopes that one of them might live to take care of them when they got old.

At that time, sociologists expected the birth rate to climb back up, and there was even a book by Paul and Anne Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, that forecast widespread famine and war as a result of population outstripping resources such as food and clean water.

Didn’t happen. Food production soared, outpacing population growth. And the Ehrlichs hadn’t realized that most famines aren’t the result of actual food shortages, but of politics. The rich stockpile and the poor starve. Nearly all famines were easily avoidable back then. They still are.

And the birth rate continued to decline, against all expectations. By 1993 it had dropped below 3.0. By 1997 it was at 2.5.

This year it’s expected to reach a magic number: 2.1 Two point one is the birthrate at which population stops growing, known as Zero Population Growth, or ZPG.

Many developed nations had already reached that mark in the 1990s and first decade of this millennium. Almost all of western Europe, Japan, and Canada had native birthrates below 2.1. Population growth came solely from immigration.

In the United States, immigration drove population growth until 2015, but since then immigration has dropped below the level of the birthrate, which means that the next decennial census might show a population drop for the first time in American history.

The preliminary results of the 2020 census show the second smallest rate of growth in American history, with only the 1930s being (slightly) lower. For ten years, population growth was just 7.4%.

A lot of reasons have been given for this. Trump and the Republicans actively messed with the census, hoping to undercount the poor, minorities and anyone else who might be a threat to Republican power. While there’s no doubt that they tried, it’s not clear that they were particularly effective at sabotaging the census. A 2017 projection claimed the 2020 census would show 332,639,000, The actual census was 331,500,00, a shortfall of 1.16 million. Further, the growth rate drop was part of a trend, 7.4 in the ‘10s from 9.7 in the noughts, and from 12.34 in the nineties. Republican buggery had an effect, but a relatively small one. Independent surveys show that the growth rate was under 0.6% for the past three years.

Sorry for all the numbers, but they make a case. Population growth has not only slowed, it has stopped. Even in the US, where population growth came mostly from immigration, is seeing a dramatic decline in immigration, despite the fearmongering from the Nazis on the far right. It’s well under half what it was twenty years ago, and the percentage of non-native-born in the general population has leveled off at 14%.

And it’s the same world wide. Japan is in the early stages of a population crash that may see their population drop by 60% by 2100. Russia had a massive population drop following the collapse of the USSR, brought about by initial chaos and followed by an Ayn Rand gangrape of the country by western corporations during the Yeltsin years. Then Putin came along and turned Russia into an autocratic and repressive nightmare. Russia’s population is down nearly 40% from 1990.

According to the BBC: “Japan’s population is projected to fall from a peak of 128 million in 2017 to less than 53 million by the end of the century. Italy is expected to see an equally dramatic population crash from 61 million to 28 million over the same timeframe. They are two of 23 countries – which also include Spain, Portugal, Thailand and South Korea – expected to see their population more than halve.”

It’s only a matter of time before capitalists, who depend endless unsustainable growth, will realize that their consumer base is both shrinking and aging. (One of the darker elements of that DecPop story is the small number of young people trying to cope with the billions of elders who outnumber them by hundreds to one). Capitalism is ill-equipped for this coming change.

Climate change, disease and war will accelerate the drop in population. Some people believe the population drop is propelled by pollutants—forever chemicals, micro plastics, and the like. If true, that could be an existential threat to humanity.

Remember, this census doesn’t even include the nearly 600,000 dead in America from Covid, and it’s becoming clear that this pandemic will have over 10 million dead before it runs its course world wide.

Population drop is a good thing—the Earth is able to sustain perhaps three billion people comfortably, assuming those billions aren’t as wasteful and foolish as we have been. But the economic and political repercussions led by people unwilling to take a hit in profits, also make it a risky time for humans. We normally spend all our efforts fighting greed and corruption, but capitalism celebrates greed and corruption, and is very willing to be very destructive in preserving such.

Our numbers will drop, but we’ll ensure that it won’t be pretty.

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